Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene (R-GA) marked National Girls & Women in Sports Day on Wednesday by spewing anti-trans rhetoric about transgender women competing in girls’ and women’s sports.
House Speaker Kevin McCarthy (R-CA) opened the first of two panel discussions on the issue by reading a statement from Rep. Greg Steube (R-FL) announcing the reintroduction of the anti-trans Protection of Women and Girls in Sports Act, which aims to ban transgender women from competing in women’s sports under Title IX.
The first panel featured Rep. Jen Kiggans (R-VA), former NCAA swimming champion Riley Gaines, Young Women for America ambassador and NCAA athlete Macy Petty, and former athlete Margot North, all cisgender women who have been outspoken in their opposition to allowing trans athletes to compete in girls and women’s sports.
During the second panel, moderated by Gaines, Greene spoke alongside Reps. Virginia Foxx (R-NC) and Lisa McClain (R-MI).
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“In Georgia, we don’t want the boys playing in the girls’ sports and taking over our teams,” the congresswoman, who is reportedly angling to be former President Donald Trump’s running mate in 2024, said.
Greene, who is a cosponsor on Steube’s bill, touted her history as “a former athlete,” playing softball and soccer as a kid, as well as spending “a lot of time in water sports” and competing “at the top level” in CrossFit as an adult. She also claimed to have stopped competing in CrossFit because she would have had to compete against transgender women.
Greene claimed that cis college athletes who oppose competing against transgender women are being silenced by college athletics programs and that “woke politics” are destroying women’s sports.
“I don’t care if it’s a mental illness, I don’t care what it is. It’s straight-up evil,” Greene said of trans women, “And they do not belong in women’s sports.”
Bizarrely, Green went on to try to frame her anti-trans position as “not a hate issue.”
“Not at all,” she said. “We respect people’s—maybe how they choose to identify or their sexuality. But we just don’t want biological males taking over girls and women’s sports.”
“It’s not a problem, how we feel towards the trans community or LGBTQ and however many letters or pluses you have to add,” Greene, who attempted to block the Equality Act in 2021, called for an end to Pride Month in 2022, and has called out politicians “groomers,” continued.
