“Are you kidding me?” - Martina Navratilova slams Massachusetts law allowing male participation in female competitions following field hockey incident

Martina Navratilova recently expressed her outrage over a Massachusetts law, that permits boys to compete on girls’ field hockey teams, after a female player suffered a serious facial injury from a shot by a male opponent.

The incident occurred during a playoff game between Dighton-Rehoboth High School and Swampscott High School when a female defender was hit in the face by a ball struck by a male player from Swampscott. The girl lost two teeth and had to be taken to the hospital for treatment.

The male player was allowed to join the girls’ team because field hockey is traditionally a female sport in Massachusetts, and there is no equivalent boys’ team at his school. This is based on the 1976 Massachusetts Equal Rights Amendment, which bans sex-based discrimination in educational sports.

However, many have criticized this rule as unfair and unsafe, arguing that it gives male players an unfair advantage over female players and exposes them to a greater risk of injury. Among them was Navratilova, widely regarded as one of the greatest female tennis players of all time and a vocal advocate for women’s rights and LGBTQ rights.

The 18-time Grand Slam champion shared an article by Telegraph UK on Tuesday, November 7, criticizing the law.

"Teenage female hockey player loses teeth after being hit by shot from male opponent- "The arguments generally fail due to the lack of correlation between injuries and mixed-gender teams."- are you kidding me???" Navratilova wrote on X (formerly Twitter).

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Martina Navratilova criticizes science magazine for dismissing sex-based differences in sports

Martina Navratilova at the 2022 US Open

Martina Navratilova recently slammed the popular science magazine ‘Scientific American’ for publishing an article that denied there are any sex-based differences between male and female athletes.

The article claimed that the gender gap in sports performance is not due to biological factors, but because of social and cultural biases. A quote from their November 2023 issue read:

"The inequity between male and female athletes is a result not of inherent biological differences between the sexes but of biases in how they are treated in sports."

This perspective drew significant pushback from numerous readers, who challenged the magazine for disregarding empirical evidence in favor of pushing a particular political narrative.

Navratilova took to social media on Sunday, October 22, to express her outrage and disbelief at the magazine’s stance.

"Hey @sciam - how the h*ll can you print this utter nonsense??? I mean how dare you. A name change is needed to Unscientific American," Martina Navratilova wrote on X (formerly Twitter).