Transgender cyclist Rachel McKinnon blamed President Trump’s eldest son, Donald Trump Jr., for an “explosion of hate messages” she said she received after he criticized her World Championship win.
“This BS will destroy women’s sports and everything so many amazing female athletes have worked their entire lives to achieve,” the Trump Organization executive tweeted on Monday. “I couldn’t care less how you identify, but this isn’t right.”
He doubled down several hours later, writing: “You can never be woke enough!”
“Sorry to all female athletes who spent their lives mastering their games,” Trump wrote while sharing another article about McKinnon’s win.
The International Olympic Committee in 2004 allowed transgender athletes to compete if they had undergone gender confirmation surgery and had been taking hormone therapy treatments for two years.
That regulation was relaxed in 2015 to remove the need for surgery, Cycling Weekly noted. Athletes must now have a testosterone level below 10nmol/L for at least 12 months prior to their first competition.
McKinnon fired back at Trump’s insinuation that her win was unfairly earned by noting that she has been competing since the previous, more “restrictive” policy.
“Y’all don’t have a problem with testosterone levels, you have a problem with trans women period,” McKinnon wrote. “Lowering the testosterone limit won’t affect me.”
McKinnon, a Canadian assistant professor of philosophy, told Sky News that she was born a biological male but now all of her medical records are listed as female, as well as her racing license.
“By preventing trans women from competing or requiring them to take medication, you’re denying their human rights,” McKinnon said.
McKinnon, the defending champion, set a new world best time in qualifying and won for the second consecutive year during last weekend’s 2019 Masters Worlds in Manchester, Cycling Weekly reported.
She faced similar criticism in 2018 after her first gold win, writing in a Washington Post op-ed that her testosterone level is so low that it is undetectable.
In the opinion piece, she criticized the Trump administration for reportedly weighing a change that would require individuals to identify as male or female based on their genitalia at birth, tightening gender definitions that had offered more leeway to transgender and gender nonconforming individuals.
“I would like to remind the administration that there is more than a decade of federal case law in the United States supporting trans identities and rights. Federal district and appeals courts have repeatedly found that transgender and gender non-conforming people are protected against discrimination on the basis of ‘sex’ under Title IX of the Civil Rights Act. That is, ‘sex’ also contains protections for gender identity and expression,” McKinnon wrote. “The memo wrongly claims that such a position is inconsistent with science.”
“This is a common refrain from people who oppose trans rights and who deny transgender identities as legitimate. Trans people, and those who support us, are denying reality, people say.”