When Natalie Daniels crossed the finish line at the 2025 Boston Marathon, she celebrated the enormity of her accomplishment: she had just completed her 18th marathon—and at six months post-partum.
For Daniels, the Boston marathon was a victory lap in honor of her female body that had just allowed her to birth her newborn son and still enable her to compete only a few months later.
“I just wanted it to be a celebration of what I am able to do with my female body,” Daniels told IW Features. “I can make this baby, I can have this baby, I can be a mom, and I can run a marathon.”
And yet, what should have been a celebration shared and supported by all the women in the race quickly turned into an attack on Daniels after she spoke out against the inclusion of trans-identifying male athletes in the women’s category. According to the 2025 Boston Marathon’s registration, 76 “non-binary” runners qualified for the event, many of whom competed in the women’s category.
“When I heard there was going to be men in the women’s category, my first instinct was honestly to drop out,” Daniels said at the time.
There is an undeniable biological component to long-distance running that gives males a greater advantage over women, Daniels explained. The inevitable result, then, of allowing males to compete against women is that the men will end up qualifying ahead of female runners, taking the places of women who worked so hard to meet the standards for the prestigious race in the first place.
“The Boston Marathon is arguably one of the most prestigious amateur events in any sport,” Daniels said. “When you qualify and you run Boston, your place matters. Your time matters.”
All serious female runners know this, Daniels said, which is what made the backlash from other female athletes, including Olympic distance runner Nikki Hiltz, a female who now identifies as “transgender” and “non-binary,” all the more disheartening.
Hiltz clipped a video of Daniels’ comments, condescendingly suggesting that Daniels shouldn’t care about what place she received in the marathon since she hadn’t finished in a top spot.
“Are you mad that instead of 900th you will take 901st?” Hiltz said in the TikTok video, completely disregarding the work, commitment, and physical hurdles Daniels had overcome that had made the Boston marathon such an accomplishment for her.
Following Hiltz’s comments, Daniels’ running club, Light Horse Track Club, informed Daniels that she must redact and apologize for her statements or risk being kicked off the team. Daniels refused and was later removed from the team.
“I got kicked off the team for referring to Nikki Hiltz, who is a biological female competing in women’s categories as a woman, for saying that she is a woman,” Daniels said.
But that was just the start.
Hiltz’s comments sparked a coordinated social media campaign against Daniels. She said she received threats, accusations, and insults—some of which even targeted her infant son.
And yet for Daniels, the threats, although discouraging, were eye-opening. They revealed just how self-destructive and contradictory gender ideology is, she said.
“Women are supposed to be just as good at everything as men. So if you are unhappy you got beat by a man? You need to work harder,” Daniels said. “The other side of it is that there’s really no biological difference.”
Gender ideology strangles truth, Daniels explained. It undermines the distinct nature of womanhood and the female body—particularly in regards to having children.
“The underlying narrative of gender ideology is that there is nothing unique about womanhood—and that is so false,” Daniels said. “Every single cell in our body speaks to that gender that we are, and whether or not a woman is given the gift of being able to have a baby, it doesn’t change how we were created. Every single part of our bodies was designed as carriers of that baby. [Gender] ideology reduces it down to something so dehumanizing.”
Not only does gender ideology undermine the uniqueness of womanhood, it creates a toxic standard for young girls growing up, Daniels said. Young girls look up to athletic figures like Nikki Hiltz, she explained, and now have to watch her tear down other women even as she is insulated in her own success.
“And it’s frustrating because our heroes, our professional female athletes are not just ignoring it, they’re praising this ideology,” Daniels said. “Young girls see these athletes and think the idealized version of a female athlete is a male body.”
For Daniels, the dangers of gender ideology became more clear through having her son. The female body is capable and adaptable but uniquely different from a man’s—and that’s OK, she said.
She recalled learning about her pregnancy the day before running the marathon that qualified her for Boston’s race.
“The first thing I ever did as a mom was run a marathon,” Daniels said. “I remember there was one part around 16 miles where things started to feel too tough and I wanted to drop out. But I thought, ‘No, baby—we’re going to do this together.’”
Daniels said she still trains with her son most of the time, and the opportunity to do so has shown her what matters most: her unique ability to care for another human being.
“It is such a beautiful, fun, and wonderful thing for me. I love getting to share runs with Cooper,” Daniels said. “I love watching him twist around now and look up at me while we’re running, and that means that a lot of my runs are much slower than they used to be. But it’s a more meaningful process.”
