Sport

WWE legend Mickie James lays the smackdown on transphobia after Arkansas signs anti-trans sports bill

Mickie James WWE YouTube

(YouTube/WWE)

WWE legend Mickie James has come out swinging for trans rights after Arkansas passed legislation banning trans athletes.

Mickie Laree James-Aldis, who wrestles under the name Mickie James, has won six WWE women’s championship titles, making her the 12th greatest female wrestling superstar in the company’s history, according to the WWE Network. So when she comes out fighting, someone’s going to go down.

Right now, James has her eyes on the state of Arkansas after it became the second in the US to ban trans women and girls from participating in school sports. The decision comes two weeks after Mississippi governor Tate Reeves signed a similar bill, which will go into effect on 1 July.

Arkansas governor Asa Hutchinson Hutchinson said in a statement Thursday (25 March) that his decision to sign the bill, which will ban trans women and girls from competing in sports teams that align with their gender identity, is a way to “promote and maintain fairness in women’s sporting events”.

“I signed the law as a fan of women’s sports from basketball to soccer and including many others in which women compete successfully,” Hutchinson wrote. “This law simply says that female athletes should not have to compete in a sport against a student of the male sex when the sport is designed for women’s competition.”

Mickie James took to Twitter to share her disgust at the news. She wrote: “Breaking news: Arkansas you can leave.”

 

After one follower asked James if she had ever wrestled against a trans woman, or if she had seen “just how bad a transgender destroyed a woman in UFC fights”, she confirmed that she has “wrestled several transgender women, actually”.

She continued: “And have had some pretty amazing matches with them. Thank you.

“I also trained with 90 per cent men most of my career.”

Another person tried the tired argument that “trans women are genetically different than cis women so it creates an uneven playing field”.

But Mickie James was having none of it and artfully dismantled the person’s argument. She wrote: “So women who want to play on men’s team is OK. But they aren’t allowed to play on a women’s team?

“So you are saying trans [people] should have a ‘league of their own’ or just not allowed to play at all. Just curious… is that not even more discriminatory?!”

Her comments drew in waves of support from LGBT+ fans. One wrote: “I didn’t know I could love you anymore, but this made me smile. Thank you for being a supporter of the LGBTQ community.”

Another person wrote they also didn’t think they could be a “bigger Mickie James fan”.

“Yet here I am,” they said. “Get ’em Queen.”

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