A growing number of both male and female athletes have risked a bitter backlash from LGBT activists and the mainstream media alike by rejecting the notion that biological men who identify as transgender should be allowed to compete against women in gender-segregated sports.
One of the most recent examples of this trend came from retired NFL tight end Rob Gronkowski, who provided his straightforward opinion on the matter during a recent Fox News Channel interview.
“There’s really no thoughts to really even share,” he declared. “It’s the obvious. There are men’s sports for men, there’s women’s sports for women. It should just stay like that.”
Reiterating his objection to the leftist push to force women’s sports teams to allow transgender players to join, Gronkowski said there “should really be no conversation” on the subject.
“How it’s been is how it should be,” he added. “Men play men’s sports, women play women’s sports. It’s as simple as that. It’s really unfair if a man went into a women’s sport and played it. It just doesn’t really make much sense to me.”
The four-time Super Bowl champion offered a more succinct take in response to a Daily Caller reporter’s question, shaking his head when asked: “Should men be allowed to play in women’s sports?”
REPORTER: Should men be allowed to play in women’s sports?
NFL’s @RobGronkowski: *shakes head no* pic.twitter.com/KKLcGLFomp
— The Post Millennial (@TPostMillennial) October 14, 2023
Competitive swimmer Riley Gaines has attracted both support and opprobrium for her impassioned call for athletic teams separated by biological sex instead of gender identity. After being forced to compete against transgender swimmer Lia Thomas, Gaines embarked on a public campaign that has opened her up to physical attacks and violent threats.
Aside from the unfair competitive advantage, she stated: “We were not forewarned beforehand that we would be sharing a locker room with Lia. We did not give our consent. They did not ask for our consent. But in that locker room, we turned around and there’s a 6’4” biological man dropping his pants and watching us undress and we were exposed to male genitalia.”
Despite the deafening calls from far-left activists, polling continues to show that the majority of Americans agree with Gronkowski’s stance. More than two-thirds of respondents in a recent Gallup survey stated that gender-specific sports teams should be separated by athletes’ sex at birth.
