The Christian apologist G.K. Chesterton once said, “A man is angry at a libel because it is false, but at a satire because it is true.”
Chesterton died in 1936, but might as well have been referring to today’s ongoing debate around whether or not biological males can or should play in women’s sports.
Earlier this month, two former NBA players, Enes Kanter Freedom and Royce White, declared themselves eligible for the WNBA draft after saying they now identify as women. Freedom now says he’s talked to even more ex-NBA players who are ready to join. This follows Indiana Fever guard Sophie Cunningham’s comments in a July ESPN interview that biological men should not compete in women’s sports or access women’s locker rooms.
The Left has said Freedom and White’s motives are insincere and a political stunt. Conservatives, on the other hand, have largely praised the men for taking on the sports league, hoping it will expose vague self-identification rules in women’s sports, perhaps once and for all.
The news has created a firestorm, to say the least.
But the juxtaposition raises an interesting question: If this is a stunt, why is it harmful? After years of watching males permeate female spaces, from locker rooms and shelters to track meets and bathrooms, the answer is a loaded one. By forcing the WNBA’s hand, White and Freedom may succeed in being able to underscore, in a unique way, the point conservatives have been trying to make with legislation, rallies, and think pieces for years.
Already, White and Freedom’s announcement has pushed the WNBA outside its comfort zone.
On Aug. 12, the WNBA convened a task force to discuss transgender athletes in the league. But as of this writing, it was unable to determine eligibility rules.
“Today’s meeting covered a wide range of topics, including ongoing discussions on transgender athletes and the continued hate and vitriol directed at players online,” the league said in a statement via a spokesperson. “There are no immediate eligibility matters affecting the WNBA, and we strongly denounce the bad-faith efforts to use these topics to demean or marginalize others.”
After Freedom announced his intentions, White did the same.
“I’m transgender. I’m a woman,” White told Fox News Digital. “I identify as sometimes identifying as a woman for [the] purpose of basketball, professional basketball, so I’ll be declaring for the WNBA draft in 2027 as well.”
White told the outlet he is pushing the league toward clarity. “I think the WNBA could come out and make a definitive statement about guys with a pair of balls playing in the Women’s Association,” he said, even claiming he might even sue for discrimination if they don’t let him play.
White has leaned into the stunt on social media. After liberal influencer Ed Krassenstein posted on X that “Real men don’t play women’s sports,” he responded, “You misgendered me again. That’s toxic heteronormative bigotry… We’ve moved on from that way of thinking about womanhood. Why are you so pressed? We only make up a tiny percentage of the population. You’re obsessed, you must be jealous of STRONG beautiful Black kweeeens!”
Responses to White and Freedom’s WNBA bid have varied. “NBA vets trolling their way into the WNBA are doing more to defend women than the WNBA’s self-proclaimed feminists ever did,” publicist Jillian Anderston posted on X.
“How do they know they’re bad faith? How are they identifying the bad faith? How dare they?” conservative commentator Ben Shapiro said on his YouTube channel, pointing out yet more irony. “How dare they suggest that Enes Kanter is somehow bad faith when he says he wants to play in the WNBA? How do they know that? Can they get inside his head? I mean, are they saying that he’s not a woman? Is that what they’re saying right now? And if so, how do they know?”
But former ESPN analyst Ryan Clark slammed Freedom and White for making a mockery of women’s basketball, calling them “clowns.”
“If we are men, and as former athletes, and we understand how hard it is to get respect in the game, don’t make a mockery about what these women are going through. Don’t make jokes about things you’ll never understand,” Clark said in a video on his podcast, The Pivot.
Some caution is in order about embracing the two veteran male players as poster children for the cause.
White has been active in Minnesota politics, and his stunt was well-timed. He ran for election to the U.S. Senate to represent Minnesota and lost in the Republican primary on Aug. 11. Court records show that in April, a judge ruled he was under a no-contact order for making threats of and being physically abusive toward his ex-partner and their son. White disputed the claims and is appealing the findings.
Freedom, who played 11 seasons in the NBA, is known as a political dissident and for being vocal about human rights abuses. Both men have obviously evolved into political activism, and neither man has ever, at least publicly, before considered himself transgender or struggled with gender dysphoria. This is an important point to those on the Left who are either indifferent to or annoyed with the ex-NBA players’ sudden interest in the WNBA.
At the same time, there have been real consequences to young women as a result of policies that have allowed biological males to compete. Take Connecticut, whose Interscholastic Athletic Conference allows students to participate in high school sports using their stated gender identity. Self-identification is enough. If authenticity is weighed, it’s unclear how.
The WNBA supports this, too. In June 2021, the WNBA posted on X about their support of Andraya Yearwood and Terry Miller. “We see you. We support you and all of the other trans athletes just trying to compete in the sports they love,” it reads.
But Yearwood and Miller are no ordinary athletes. They’re the male athletes who competed against females like Selina Soule, Alanna Smith, and Chelsea Mitchell in Connecticut in high school a few years ago, consistently besting girls and snatching over 15 women’s state championships. In 2019, the girls sued — the case is ongoing.
On behalf of the women and girls who have lost races to biological males and thus been robbed of scholarship opportunities, titles, championships, and other victories, the WNBA owes the females of this country an explanation: What really does the “W” in WNBA stand for anyway? It shouldn’t be that hard to define. Their silence, as the kids say, is deafening.
In 2021, the WNBA had no problem giving its support to transgender high school athletes, even though they were winning titles over young women. Yet now, the WNBA is not only reluctant to respond to Kanter and White’s proposition but seems hostile to it. In an Aug. 7 statement, the WNBA said, “We embrace justice, equity, diversity, and inclusion. Hate, abuse, and demonization of any person or group of people, including transgender people, only fuel fear, division, and harm. We will continue to have hard conversations. But we will not be used as political pawns.”
The WNBA may wish not to be used as a political pawn, but that commitment hasn’t kept it from happening regardless. The stunt, the satire, seems cruel to them because it is exposing an even more incisive truth that two-thirds of Americans agree on, according to Gallup: Transgender athletes should only be allowed to play on sports teams that match their sex at birth.
It is and always was cruel to allow biological males to compete against females in sports. For years, the Left — with the help of state policies and sports leagues — could see the obvious physiological differences males enjoy and opted instead to let them err on the side of self-identification, crushing women’s rights and opportunities.
FORMER NBA STAR ENES KANTER FREEDOM DECLARES FOR THE 2027 WNBA DRAFT
The problem with having a problem with the stunt, or with being used as a political pawn, is that either way the WNBA is now forced to address the dichotomy of the progressive’s view on transgender sports: Either White and Kanter can play because they identify as women against women, or they must define “woman” more broadly than self-identification alone, erasing years of standing firm on this worldview.
In refusing to reach a conclusion about their eligibility rules, the WNBA might believe it is embracing inclusion and rejecting bigotry, but the league is actually betraying the girls and women, as well as the Title IX protections that make the league possible.
The irony that this may be illustrated by a stunt by two former NBA players, done in jest to prove a point, doesn’t make the conclusion any less powerful or poignant for the women affected. As the comedian Joan Rivers once said, “Comedy is truth. We should not apologize for it.”
Nicole Russell is an opinion columnist for USA Today. She lives in Texas with her four children.