Megan Rapinoe is Pulling Up the Ladder Behind Her

She got hers, and that’s all that matters

Megan Rapinoe / Instagram

It’s frustrating when women throw their support behind the gender cult at the expense of other women, especially women who have every reason in the world to know better. In the realm of sports, one of the loudest voices championing the inclusion of men in women’s categories is U.S. women’s soccer star Megan Rapinoe.

Rapinoe has been all over the headlines this week for her missed penalty kick at the Women’s World Cup in Melbourne, Australia. The United States women’s national soccer team was knocked out of the tournament, and it was certainly not an ending that the retiring Rapinoe had dreamed of for her final world cup run.

Many have taken glee in the team’s tournament demise and specifically at Rapinoe’s role in it, as she is a champion of several woke progressive causes. But the fact remains that, even if it isn’t the note she would like to be leaving on, Rapinoe has had a successful soccer career that helped her achieve fame and fortune. And now she wants to pull up the ladder and make it more difficult for up-and-coming girls to achieve the same.

Rapinoe has been a longtime critic of “transgender sports bans,” which, of course, are nothing of the sort. The types of “bans” she speaks out against are actually protections to keep women’s sports for women rather than for women and any man who declares himself to be one. This also includes confused boys who think—and are encouraged by confused adults to think—that they are girls.

In a 2021 opinion piece for The Washington Post, Rapinoe clearly shows she understands the importance of sports for young people, but she also shows that she only cares about these benefits for “trans” kids:

The value of participating in sports is well-documented. Transgender kids deserve the same chances to enjoy sports; to gain confidence, self-respect and leadership skills; and to learn what it means to be part of a team. When we tell transgender girls that they can’t play girls’ sports — or transgender boys that they can’t play boys’ sports — they miss out on these important experiences and opportunities. And we lose the right to say we care about children.

First and foremost, there is no such thing as “transgender girls” and “transgender boys.” These are children who should not be encouraged into a delusion and who can participate in sports and enjoy all of the benefits Rapinoe described by playing with members of their own sex.

Secondly, allowing boys to play with girls absolutely lowers the value and benefits of sports for girls. Girls may lose out on spots in teams or competitions, they may risk greater injury, and they may become so demoralized by having to compete against boys that they give up sports entirely.

These are not hyperbolic hypotheticals. Consider Hannah Arensman, who decided to end her cycling career earlier this year, writing:

I feel for young girls learning to compete and who are growing up in a day when they no longer have a fair chance at being the new record holders and champions in cycling because men want to compete in our division. I have felt deeply angered, disappointed, overlooked, and humiliated that the rule makers of women’s sports do not feel it is necessary to protect women’s sports to ensure fair competition for women anymore.

Rapinoe should understand this. In 2022, she gushed to Time magazine about how important the protection of Title IX has been for her and how it gave her “the opportunity to play soccer in college and get a scholarship.”

And yet, she goes on to say that she is “100% supportive of trans inclusion” in sports.

It is extremely difficult to believe that a woman like Rapinoe, who has spent her entire life playing sports, could be blind to the impact of allowing men into the women’s category, especially when she was on the U.S. women’s national team when they played the FC Dallas Under-15 boys academy team and lost 5-2. Does she just not recognize the differences between men and women?

As much as I question Rapinoe’s intelligence for her stance on this issue, it is very, very difficult to believe she could be quite that ignorant. So then, does she believe that people can actually change sex through hormones or simple self-declaration? Perhaps, but I would condemn her for being so ignorant about the cause she is pushing, especially when that cause harms other girls and women.

But I don’t truly believe that Rapinoe actually believes men and women are the same or that people can change sex. She essentially implies as much in the Time interview as well, waving away concerns about competitive advantage and placing inclusion above all:

I would also encourage everyone out there who is afraid someone’s going to have an unfair advantage over their kid to really take a step back and think what are we actually talking about here. We’re talking about people’s lives. I’m sorry, your kid’s high school volleyball team just isn’t that important. It’s not more important than any one kid’s life.

Rapinoe’s support for this delusion clearly stems from the desire to keep up appearances as a good progressive “on the right side of history.” And I don’t believe for a second that she actually cares about the hypothetical “trans” kids who can’t play on the team of their choosing. If she could muster up any empathy, then she’d be able to muster it up for the girls impacted in that scenario as well.

Rapinoe is also a lesbian, and I do understand the pressure that members of the so-called “LGBTQ+ community” feel to show support for the other letters in the acronym. But my sympathy only extends so far. Blind allegiance to a tribe at the expense of girls’ opportunities in their own sports is unconscionable.

(Plus, though she frames her support for men in women’s sports as an LGBTQ+ issue, Rapinoe is ironically largely helping heterosexual autogynephilic men, as they make up the majority of men who are trans-identified.)

Rapinoe was interviewed by Time magazine again this past July ahead of the World Cup, where she again framed the issue as being about “people’s lives” above all else:

The most amazing thing about sports is that you play and you’re playing with other people, and you’re having fun and you’re being physically active. We’re putting this all through the lens of competition and winning. But we’re talking about people’s lives. That’s where we have to start.

This is incredibly rich coming from someone who has enjoyed fair competition and plenty of wins throughout her career.

But Rapinoe’s stance is entirely ideological, which is why pointing out her hypocrisy and ignorance on this issue will never make a difference. It’s why reality simply doesn’t matter. If she admitted that allowing men into women’s sports is so egregious that it should grossly offend our fundamental human sense of fairness, she would be aligning herself with conservatives. Though she plays as a winger, she is no right-winger. Even a whiff of sentiments that have been successfully branded as “right-wing” (such as supporting fair sports for women) would tank her standing in the eyes of her progressive supporters.

I understand that it would be a difficult position to be in, but that’s no excuse for supporting lies. Megan Rapinoe would not have had the career she enjoyed if women’s sports did not exist, and she is doing her damnedest to destroy them now that she won’t have to personally deal with the fallout.