OutKick Sports owner Clay Travis has floated the idea of raising the first all-transgender WNBA team and says such an organization would be the “most inclusive” team in WNBA history.
Travis posted his scheme on X, attached to a video of Golden State Valkyries head coach Natalie Nakase saying that she thinks it would be perfectly acceptable to have trans “women” playing in the WNBA.
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Two retired NBA players (Enes Kanter Freedom and Royce White) have declared themselves eligible for the WNBA draft.
The writer of that headline has a very liberal definition of “star.” Freedom played for 11 seasons, mostly as a reserve; he got votes for the “Sixth Man of the Year Award” (given to the league’s top reserve) in a few seasons.
Regardless, this entire thing feels like trolling women’s sports to me.
What a fantastic idea. I absolutely love the idea of watching an anti‑trans conservative crusader set millions on fire trying to launch a WNBA franchise based on Lady Ballers — an unfunny parody movie so bad it barely survived its own trailer. Truly, what could possibly go wrong when your entire business plan is “copy a failed satire and hope reality cooperates”?
Yep. It’s perfectly possible, and reasonable, to have discussions about appropriate competition categories for transgender female athletes, eligibility criteria, etc. Sports physiologists and endocrinologists will be sussing out the ramifications of this complex issue for years to come.
But that doesn’t mean that it’s okay to make fun of trans women in the process. It wasn’t funny when bros were making these kind of jokes about “carpet munching” lesbian athletes a couple decades ago, and it’s not funny when they’re mocking trans women’s anatomy now.
As for male players pretending that they’re going to identify as trans women in order to compete… you know, in other contexts all the transphobic “gender critical” “feminists” get all severe about how “woman isn’t a costume” and pretend to think that trans women are just playacting at being women for funsies, and how that’s SO OFFENSIVE to the “real” (i.e., cisgender) women.
But then these cisgender men come along and announce outright that they actually are going to playact at being women for funsies, in order to caricature transgender women, and the GCs are all “Oh LOLOLOL tee-hee that’ll show 'em, you go ‘girl’!!” It doesn’t make sense.
It makes perfect sense. If their goal is to undermine the transgender-people-in-sports, then of course the GCs would applaud someone who play-acts as a woman to undermine it. That’s the point.
Their goal isn’t to undermine trans women in sports. It’s hatred of trans women (and mostly all women) period. Sports is just a socially acceptable wedge issue, how are we still all so naive?
The immediate goal is to force WNBA (and through it indirectly NCAA) into submission, by provoking/bullying them into publicly proclaiming official policy that only cis-AFAB to the satisfaction of these outsiders may qualify for women’s sports participation. It’s not just trans women, that’s the point wedge towards a greater aim of “WE will define what you women do or don’t.”
“I am calling for the establishment of a separate league of trans athletes in accordance with my long-standing belief that trans athletes should be segregated from other athletes. Immediately following the establishment of this league, I am calling for its disbanding in accordance with my long-standing opposition to granting recognition of trans people.”
Soooo, on draft night, the team drafting the two wannabes get to chop off their balls and remove their schwanz right there on stage. Of course, it would be pay per view.
Of course, the two insurmountable obstacles facing this approach are that 1) the WNBA would surely veto the creation of this Nashville Balls team, and 2) no currently-existing WNBA team is going to draft Enes Kanter and Royce White.
The third insurmountable obstacle is there are no trans WNBA players. Zero. There never has been. There are also no trans players in NCAAW to be recruited. Zero. There never has been.
When it comes to sports, I’m not sure it matters if they present as women. Or even if they identify as women. It’d be like saying the players have to have long hair, wear makeup, and frilly clothes. I wouldn’t be surprised if many athletes in women’s sports identify as non-binary or even as a man. This situation with Travis shouldn’t hinge on whether or not he identifies as a woman. Rather, the WNBA should have eligibility requirements for transgender players based on biological requirements, such as maximum level of testosterone. It’s not much different than other sporting organizations like Special Olympics and Paralympics specifying eligibility requirements based on physical ability. If Travis had to get on HRT to prove his point, he wouldn’t bother with any of this.
I was looking over the WNBA rules and eligibility requirements and I can’t find where the players have to be women. The name of the organization has the word “Women” in it, but the rules and eligibility requirements don’t specify women or woman anywhere that I can find. I’m not sure Travis even has to say he identifies as a woman in order to be eligible for the draft or be on a team.
Trans-panic is a very reliable [get out the RW vote] topic. Even among the non-MAGA right. Especially among the evangelical right.
This is a transparent attempt by the RW propaganda industry to keep trans-panic on the front burner until the Nov elections. Nothing else. Then it’ll quietly be shelved.