Following her performative exit from a regional fencing tournament, 31-year-old cisgender athlete Stephanie Turner will testify before Congress about her refusal to compete against a transgender opponent.

Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene (R-GA), chair of the Subcommittee on Delivering on Government Efficiency (DOGE), announced Tuesday that Turner and USA Fencing chair Damien Lehfeldt will provide testimony to the committee.  

Related

Fencer takes a knee rather than compete against trans opponent
USA Fencing’s decision to disqualify her has Martina Navratilova “fuming.”

The announcement misgendered Turner’s 19-year-old opponent in the female fencing competition, Redmond Sullivan, as a “biological male.”

Never Miss a Beat

Subscribe to our newsletter to stay ahead of the latest LGBTQ+ political news and insights.
Subscribe to our Newsletter today

“Women’s sports are for women only,” Greene said, announcing the invitation. “Radical leftists pushing to let biological men compete against women are destroying fair competition and putting female athletes in physical danger. Stephanie Turner had the courage to call out this insanity, and she’s a hero to women across America.”

“USA Fencing must be held accountable for demeaning women and denying them of the chance to succeed in their own sport. It is out of compliance with President Trump’s executive order and it should not be recognized as the National Governing Body for fencing if it continues to defy the law,” Greene said.

With the chairwoman’s views clear, and Turner reprising anti-trans activist Riley Gaines’ role in another trans sports outrage, it will be left to Lehfeldt alone to defend USA Fencing’s inclusive policy for trans athletes participating in sanctioned events for the sport. Sullivan was not extended an invitation.

Both the U.S. Department of Education and Texas State Attorney General Ken Paxton, now a candidate for U.S Senate, have announced investigations into USA Fencing following Turner’s fencing forfeit and subsequent outrage among right-wing media.

In March, Turner took a knee rather than compete against Sullivan at the Cherry Blossom Open tournament at the University of Maryland.

Video on the incident shared online by groups — including the Independent Council on Women’s Sports, which advocates against trans women in sports, and author J.K. Rowling, who described Turner a “heroine” for taking a black card rather than face a trans opponent — blew up across right-wing media, led by Fox News. 

In one of several appearances on the right-wing outlet, Turner told Fox host John Roberts, “I am a woman, and I have an athletic disadvantage to men, so I compete in the women’s division, which is where I rightfully am.” Turner didn’t disclose that a week before forfeiting, she competed in a co-ed tournament where she beat multiple male fencers.

The anti-trans sports apparel company XX-XY awarded Turner a $5,000 cash prize and the title of “Courage Wins Champion” for declining to compete against her trans opponent.

“I was bewildered — flabbergasted, even,” Sullivan told Rolling Stone of the moment when Turner refused to fence her.

“Nothing close to this has ever happened. No one has ever had a problem with me fencing in a women’s event,” Sullivan said. “She could have withdrawn herself from the tournament, or talked to the organizers and said, ‘Hey, I do not want to fence this person,’ and seen if they could have reshuffled the pools. She actively chose to have this interaction and film it and then send it to people to post it.”

Sullivan said she’s been frustrated by coverage that trades on the “patently false” idea that “sex is binary and immutable” and constantly describes Sullivan as a “biological male.”

Particularly galling, she said, was anti-trans sentiment couched in the language of feminism by activists like Rowling, Gaines, and out tennis star Martina Navratilova, who wrote on X that USA Fencing had thrown women “under the gender bullsh*t bus.”

“Feminism should include all women, including trans women,” Sullivan said.

She called Navratilova “morally bankrupt” for recycling toxic rhetoric that she and other gay athletes endured in the own struggles to play.

“In a world of Navratilovas, be a Billie Jean,” she added. That lesbian tennis legend supports trans women in sports.

Subscribe to the LGBTQ Nation newsletter and be the first to know about the latest headlines shaping LGBTQ+ communities worldwide.