Veteran sports columnist Matt Calkins has resigned from The Seattle Times after the newspaper declined to publish his column arguing that female athletes who oppose transgender women competing in women’s sports should not automatically be characterized as hateful or bigoted.
Calkins, who spent 11 years at the newspaper, announced his departure Thursday on Substack and published the rejected column himself.
“Some people saw bigotry. I saw bravery,” Calkins began the unpublished piece.
The column grew out of a July 28 WNBA game between the Seattle Storm and Indiana Fever at Climate Pledge Arena. Outside the arena, Calkins encountered female athletes participating in a rally supporting Fever player Sophie Cunningham, who has publicly addressed the debate over transgender participation in women’s sports.
One participant carried a sign reading, “Thank You Sophie For Speaking Up For Girls!”
After 11 years as a sports columnist at the Seattle Times, I have decided to resign. It was entirely my choice, and it was not an easy one. The impetus was the Times declining to run a column I wrote from the perspective of two female student athletes who were opposed to…
— Matt Calkins (@Matt_Calkins) August 20, 2026
The same game generated controversy when Storm co-owner Celeste Keaton confronted two teenage girls who were displaying their support for Cunningham courtside. Calkins interviewed one of those teenagers.
His broader argument was that female athletes can raise questions about competitive fairness without their position necessarily being motivated by hostility toward transgender people.
Calkins acknowledged the difficulties experienced by people who feel “trapped in the wrong body,” but argued that biological differences relevant to athletic competition cannot simply be ignored.
“By every measurable metric in sports — whether it be 100-meter times, vertical leaps, weightlifting, yards off the tee, etc. — the top males substantially outperform the top females,” Calkins wrote.
“In short: The separation is strictly for the sake of girls and women. So surely one can see why, to many, allowing biological males to compete against females undermines this division.”
Whatever readers might think of that argument, they did not get the opportunity to read it in the newspaper where Calkins had spent more than a decade writing sports commentary.
According to Calkins, he submitted the piece and then waited while it passed through multiple levels of editorial review.
“Thursday afternoon, my editor informed me that it wasn’t going to run because I didn’t tell him I was doing this in advance,” Calkins wrote on Substack.
“I didn’t buy this reasoning. If that were the case, the piece would have been killed on the spot, not passed through the hands of multiple editors over several days.”
Longtime Seattle Times sports columnist Matt Calkins is walking away after 11 years, saying the paper refused to publish his column giving a voice to female athletes who oppose transgender athletes competing in women’s sports.
“I couldn’t do my job as a columnist because I feel… pic.twitter.com/kAKq618qQH
— Fox News (@FoxNews) August 20, 2026
Calkins said the dispute was not his first experience having a column rejected when he challenged a prevailing position on a contentious subject.
“One was a piece questioning whether players for the U.S. Women’s Soccer Team were really the victims of discrimination in their equal-pay lawsuit,” he wrote. “Another was a more general column on cancel culture in sports.”
He also recalled writing a column after George Floyd’s death that featured state championship basketball coach Mike Bethea, a Black man who urged people not to stereotype police officers.
“The common theme? All of these challenged prevailing newsroom narratives and likely would have triggered the outrage mob,” Calkins wrote.
That history apparently contributed to his decision that this latest rejected column would be his last dispute of that kind at The Seattle Times.
The newspaper had not publicly offered a detailed response to Calkins’ allegations as of Thursday afternoon. HuffPost reported that a Seattle Times representative declined to discuss the situation, citing a policy against commenting on “personnel matters.”
That leaves competing explanations for what happened.
According to the explanation Calkins says his editor gave him, the problem was procedural: He had failed to notify the editor about the column’s subject in advance.
Calkins plainly does not believe that explanation. He points to the fact that the piece allegedly moved among multiple editors for several days before being rejected as evidence that its subject matter, rather than a procedural oversight, was the real problem.
The Seattle Times has not publicly confirmed that characterization.
