I guess it’s no real surprise that since The Orange Man moved into The White House that the level of hate speech would be going through the roof.  We expect right-wing reactionaries to go public like the angry woman who made her fortune selling Harry Potter books + merch to kids, but we cannot tolerate members of our community turning against other members. 

In 2000, Martina Navratilova the ex-Tennis Champion,  was the recipient of the National Equality Award from the Human Rights Campaign for being an activist.  However, following an article on trans players that Navratilova wrote for The Times in February 2019, Athlete Ally, an LGBTQ athlete advocacy group, removed Navratilova from their advisory board, stating her comments “are transphobic [and] based on a false understanding of science and data” and certainly not in keeping with some award-winning queer activist.

One month later, Navratilova apologized for using the term “cheating” when discussing whether transgender athletes should be allowed to compete in women’s sport. 

In August 2020, Navratilova, along with 300+ women, signed a letter to the National Collegiate Athletic Association in support of an Idaho law that bans trans women student athletes from competing in female sports. Then she started to rack it up even more and in April 2023, Navratilova supported a boycott of Nike because it had entered into a corporate sponsorship with Dylan Mulvaney, a transgender woman, to advertise a sports bra!!!

Then, an increasingly angry Navratilova turned on Drag Queens. In 2023 she criticized Native American US Secretary of the Interior Deb Haaland‘s interview of environmentalist drag queen Pattie Gonia outside New York’s Stonewall National Monument, calling the performer a “pathetic parody of women.  Navratilova has repeatedly condemned the International Olympic Committee for allowing Imane Khelif to box in the 2024 Summer Olympics, on account of her own  belief that Khelif is male, not female.

Actor Pedro Pascal is a vocal advocate for transgender rights, particularly in support of his sister, Lux Pascal, who came out as transgender in 2021. He has publicly defended Lux and the broader transgender community against transphobia and discrimination, including speaking out against J.K. Rowling’s anti-trans views and wearing a “Protect the Dolls” shirt at a premiere to support transgender women.

Pascal criticised the Harry Potter author for her reaction to the UK Supreme Court’s decision regarding definition of the words “sex” and “woman” in the 2010 Equality Act. The UK’s top judges handed down an 88-page judgement decreeing that the words referred to “biological sex” and “biological women”, thus excluding transgender people.  Rowling had financed to the tune of $95000 gender-critical group For Women Scotland who had brought the case.

Pascal responded by branding Rowlings actions “awful, disgusting sh*t” and “heinous loser behaviour”.  We are not goung to repeat her very predictable retort.  But than Navratilova,  also weighed in, saying Pascal was a “another Johnny-come-lately telling women to STFU”.