Megan Rapinoe, retired women's soccer star who built an entire career on the premise that women's sports deserve equal treatment, went on a podcast on October 21 and said she "can't wait to see an elite trans person play sports."
Then she explained why the girls who'd be competing against them shouldn't worry about it.
"God forbid somebody be good at sports and have some sort of advantage," Rapinoe told comedian and former CNN host W. Kamau Bell on his "Who's with Me?" podcast. "Sports is not fair in any sort of way ever."
Sports is not fair. From the woman who spent a decade demanding the U.S. Soccer Federation pay her women's team equally because — and this was the argument — fairness required it. The same Megan Rapinoe who filed a gender discrimination lawsuit, who became the face of the equal pay movement in athletics, who stood on every podium available to argue that women deserved the same resources, the same respect, the same competitive platform as men. That Megan Rapinoe now says fairness was never the point.
Most people just want to participate and play. That's a fine sentiment for a recreational soccer league on Saturday mornings. It is a career-ending sentence for any girl competing for one of the limited roster spots on a college team, or the finite number of athletic scholarships available in women's programs, or a spot on a national team that only has so many jerseys. Those girls aren't playing for participation. They're playing to win, and winning requires that the rules mean something.
Rapinoe's own career is proof of why women's sports exist as a separate category. She didn't compete against men. She competed against women, under rules designed to ensure that biological sex determined the competitive field. Those rules are why she had a career at all. They're why she had a platform. They're why anyone knows her name.
The argument she's making now — that advantages are just part of sports, that fairness was never really achievable — is the argument that dissolves the category she competed in. If sports isn't fair and was never meant to be, there's no reason to have a women's division. No reason for Title IX. No reason for the equal pay fight she led. The logic eats itself.
But Rapinoe doesn't need women's sports anymore. She's retired. The trophies are on the shelf. The endorsement deals are signed. The jersey is framed. She got everything the system of protected women's athletics could offer, and now — from the comfort of a podcast mic — she's telling the next generation that the system she benefited from doesn't need to exist in the form that benefited her.
"I can't wait to see an elite trans person play sports." She said it with enthusiasm, like she was announcing a new season. Somewhere, a sixteen-year-old girl training for a college scholarship heard it differently.
Rapinoe fought for years to make women's sports matter. She won that fight. Now she's handed the trophy to someone else and told every girl still competing that the game was never fair anyway.
She's right about one thing. It won't be.
