Former professional soccer player Elizabeth Eddy made headlines when she wrote an op-ed in the New York Post calling for clear biological sex eligibility standards in the National Women’s Soccer League to protect the fairness of women’s soccer — but it was not received well by her fellow players.
Eddy received intense backlash from her Angel City FC teammates, who publicly accused the piece of being harmful, transphobic, and racially motivated.
Unlike those teammates, BlazeTV host Allie Beth Stuckey is grateful to Eddy for sounding the alarm on what’s really going on in women’s sports.
“She did not back down,” Stuckey says, before asking Eddy about the initial response to her article.
“What ended up happening is, the article came out … and then before every game, our captains get sent out to the press to do media. … And the two captains shared their thoughts on the article, and they spoke on behalf of the team and the organization,” Eddy tells Stuckey.
“And that was really, really hard to hear because I’d had conversations with both of them in the past, and I was really close with both of them to the point where they were both invited to our wedding. One of them helped my fiancé plan the proposal,” she continues.
And while the article was not “racist” or “transphobic,” her teammates still claimed it was.
“I’ve had a lot of convos with my teammates in the past few days, and they are hurt and they are harmed by the article, and also they are disgusted by some of the things that were said in the article, and it’s really important for me to say that,” one of her teammates said at the press conference.
“And we don’t agree with the things written for a plethora of reasons, but mostly the undertones come across as transphobic and racist as well,” her teammate added.
“I was 100% shocked because … the words I wrote, there’s no way that could be conceived,” Eddy explains.
“Were you able to have a private conversation with them? … After they accused you, racist, transphobic, all of these things, were you able to have a reasonable discussion to be able to say, ‘Well, no, this is what I meant, and this is why it’s not racist,’ or was that not able to happen?” Stuckey asks.
While Eddy admits that those teammates who publicly discussed her article were not willing to have a private discussion with her, she did hear from multiple teammates that they didn’t stand by what the captain said.
“Were you disappointed by any people who said, ‘I completely agree with you, I support you, but I could never do that’?” Stuckey asks.
“Yeah, there’s a part of me that’s like, come on, because if you do, it snowballs and this thing actually changes in a shorter time frame than not. But at the same time, I can totally empathize with them because it was so hard for me to do this,” Eddy answers.
“I was waffling for months about it,” she adds.
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