Megan Rapinoe Is A Bigger Enemy To Women Than Any ‘Patriarchy’

In a recent episode of her podcast, Megan Rapinoe, the former co-captain of the U.S. National team, railed against the IOC for a decision to protect women’s sports for female athletes by requiring a cheek swab for sex screening.

This traitorous position is now a deliberate choice by Rapinoe, Bird, and others like them. Now that their professional athletic careers are over, they have become henchwomen for men intent on blowing up the safeguarding boundaries young female athletes need in sports and in locker rooms.

It’s time to recognize that athletes like Rapinoe and Bird have lost touch with reality. When you undermine the fundamental principle that women and girls deserve their own protected sports category, you forfeit any credibility you once had as a voice in women’s sports. Their own careers and platforms are entirely due to the women who carved out space for female athletes, but now hypocritically advocate to destroy the safety and opportunities they enjoyed.

The International Olympic Committee (IOC) recently made a policy statement affirming that women in sports deserve fairness, safety, and integrity. They recognize that screening for eligibility in competition is a necessary step to ensure women can compete on a level playing field. There is nothing controversial about that. Nothing.

We use scales to determine eligibility for weight categories. We use drug testing to ensure fairness across all categories. We require detailed physicals and medical assessments for para categories. We verify age for age-group competition. Screening for the male SRY gene through a quick and simple cheek swab is among the least invasive eligibility checks in sport.

Rapinoe, however, took issue with this decision, calling it “really hateful.” Her wife and podcast guest, former WNBA player Sue Bird, emphatically agreed, nodding along with each claim.

Rapinoe is correct in one respect: the decision is intended to “ultimately prevent people from competing in the women’s category that they feel have an unfair advantage.” Those individuals are male. The “people” the IOC is finally working to exclude from women’s sports are men, who possess inherent biological advantages.

The IOC’s screening focuses on the SRY gene, which is necessary for the development of male testes. If you have the SRY gene, you almost certainly undergo male development. Male athletes like Imane Khelif and Caster Semenya have made the rounds on public television after seizing Olympic glory and causing physical harm to the women they face in competition. Semenya’s statement that his “testicles do not make [me] less of a woman” has been widely cited.

We now understand that these male athletes are not isolated cases but two of dozens and dozens at the elite level. This has been a major scandal in women’s sports, and one that the IOC is finally trying to make right. It’s a return to common sense and a recognition that women absolutely deserve fair competition apart from men.

Megan Rapinoe’s suggestion that we cannot figure out what a woman is is crazy and simply untrue. She knows firsthand the performance differences between men and women and the effects of sex on athletic outcomes. It was her team, after all, who lost to a group of boys playing for a U-15 team. If professional women athletes lose to a bunch of 15-year-olds, what chance would the women have against grown men? Her former co-captain, Carli Lloyd, rightfully defended the loss by noting that the size difference between the boys and the women all but guaranteed the youth team’s victory. “They should beat us. Bigger, stronger, faster!”

This isn’t hard. Eligibility screening for the women’s category is necessary. The real issue now is ensuring these protections extend beyond elite sport. Women and girls should not have to reach the Olympic level to be treated fairly. SRY gene screening should be implemented at every level.

Young girls who love sports deserve the chance to dream, compete, and succeed without being measured against a male standard. The IOC’s decision to deliver women’s sports back to women is the beginning of the end to this utter nonsense, and we’re leaving the traitors of women, like Rapinoe and Bird, in our dust.

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Kim Jones and Marshi Smith are former NCAA athletes and the co-founders of ICONS, or Independent Council on Women’s Sports, a network and advocacy group comprised of current and former collegiate and professional women athletes, their families, and supporters.