Megan Rapinoe on Who's With Me? podcast

    by Lucid Arthur: Sports

    The idea that someone could just announce they're a woman one day and hit the field isn't how Rapinoe sees it working. On W. Kamau Bell's "Who's With Me?" podcast, the two-time World Cup winner pushed back on that exact scenario while making a broader case: fairness in sports, in her view, was never really a thing to begin with. Her take is that if a trans athlete turns out to be decent at the game, that's fine by her. No fear there, she said. The whole thing amounts to a reported opinion on inclusion and what fairness even means, and Rapinoe's answer leans toward letting it ride.

    Transcript (en)

    I have a very direct question based around this whole trans thing is like, because I feel like this is the thing that isn't asked, especially with someone like you who competed at the highest level. Why aren't you afraid of trans women in sports? Because that's the big fear is that people want to pretend like it's like, suddenly, and I hate, you know, it's LeBron James with a wig on, blah, blah, blah. Yeah, I mean, that example just isn't happening, and I don't think that is ever going to happen. I think there's a lot that trans people have to go through if you're a trans person in sports to even play. It's like you couldn't just say one day I'm a woman and go play. That's not how it works. And also, I think for me, one of the biggest things is like, God forbid somebody be good at sports and have some sort of advantage, which, by the way, sports is not fair in any sort of way ever. Right. I can't tell you how free I feel now that I've started identifying as a woman. now that i can compete as female i'm ready to smash the other girls and is it correct you just started identifying as female two weeks ago i'm not here to talk about my transition i'm here to kick some fucking ass i said it's like it's not meant to be fair yeah i'm like what's fair i just point to victor wimbanyama is that fair what is it like what does that mean even so it's already not fair and also just like it isn't the most important thing in the world over someone's human rights or getting to play or being cool to people so i'm just like i don't know i've won everything at every level basically and played you know in sort of every competition and like i've just kind of like i'm the one who can speak to it like i i'm okay if like god forbid a trans person plays sports and they're halfway decent at it you know like it's it's fine