The Women’s National Basketball Association (WNBA) has perhaps done more to demonstrate the absurdity of transgender ideology than any American public institution.
And it has done so through its endorsement of that very ideology. Over the course of a couple of weeks in late July and early August, a series of events have demonstrated the ideological nonsense of trans ideology, while tying its adherence into knots.
Sophie Cunningham’s declaration that water is wet
The story begins with one of the most prominent players in the WNBA, Indiana Fever’s Sophie Cunningham, saying that it’s “common sense” to limit women’s sports to, well, women. Saying that her interest is to “protect women’s sports” from the intrusion of men pretending to be women, she told ESPN in July, “I think that I am here to extend love.
“But I also think with that love is truth, being honest,” she added. “And I want to protect young girls in a locker room, or young girls in sport who shouldn’t have to go against biological men.”
“That’s why you have Title IX,” she told The Athletic. “That’s why you have some of the greats in women’s sports. If Title IX and women’s sports weren’t protected, then you wouldn’t hear about any type of women in sport,” she continued. “And so, I think in the future, it’s just really important to protect.”
This is, of course—or rather should be—as non-controversial as saying that water is wet. But not in the ideological world of trans ideology. At a game in Seattle shortly after her comments, two teenage girls exhibiting support for Cunningham were called “*&^@ing insane.”
Responding to the controversy, Gabby Williams, a player for the WNBA Golden Gate Valkyries, said, “I would welcome a trans athlete on my team or against my team, anytime. I don’t think it’s a problem in the world. It’s just another way to kind of attack trans people.”
And Williams even identified a “trans” player as an illustration. “We’ve seen players like Layshia Clarendon, who stepped into that forefront, and have been brave enough, and courageous enough, to step up,” she said. “So I guess that’s the next battle we have to fight as athletes.”
Williams’s comment is even more ridiculous than it sounds. Layshia Clarendon is a retired WNBA player who identifies as “non-binary” and “trans” (which, of course, is absurd on its face). But Clarendon is a woman pretending to be . . . well . . . not a woman, I guess. She is not a man pretending to be women. In other words, Gabby Williams used a woman as an example of a “trans” person that she would welcome on her women’s team.
Retired U.S. National Women’s Soccer Team player, Megan Rapinoe has also weighed in, claiming that protecting women’s sports is bigotry. Rapinoe has nonsensically claimed that excluding men from women’s sports would eliminate women’s sports. (Yes, she really said that.)
Clay Travis’s $10 million wager
In the midst of all this kerfuffle, radio host Clay Travis, founder of the popular online magazine, Outkick, weighed in with a wager. Travis has said that he will sponsor and promote a basketball game between the WNBA’s defending champion Las Vegas Aces and a U.S. high school boys’ team of his choosing. Further, he will pay $10 million to the winner of the game.
Of course, neither the Aces nor any other WNBA team will take up Travis’s challenge. This is because everyone knows that thousands of boys’ high school teams would not merely defeat the Aces (or any other WNBA team), but annihilate them. Indeed, I doubt that the women’s team could stay within 50 points of such a boys’ team. It’s highly likely, in fact, that a junior high team of boys would dominate any WNBA team.
Travis has also said that he will support the creation of an all “transwoman” team to compete in the WNBA, calling his proposed franchise the Nashville Balls. Of course, this will never happen. But if it were to occur, such a team would never win a game by fewer than 80 or 90 points. Indeed, we would very likely see the first shutout in the history of major professional basketball.
This is not to denigrate women or women’s athletics. As the father of five girls who participated in high school athletics—three of whom went on to play in college—my interest is in protecting women’s athletes from the intrusion of cosplaying autogynephilic men. The science on the physiological differences—and athletic outcomes—between men and women is strong and settled. There are not two sides. There is no subtlety. It is not a complicated issue.
Boys and men have persistent, immutable natural biological advantages over women in every sport and every athletic event. If men were permitted to compete against women, women’s athletics would cease to exist, and Megan Rapinoe would be a minimum-wage barista rather than a wealthy and famous retired athlete.
This is why even a highly credentialed, bona fide left-feminist law professor such as Doriane Coleman from Duke University School of Law has argued, “Because of biological sex differences in strength, power and endurance, … there’s a performance gap of 10 to 50 percent between the best males and the best females.” Coleman explains that “Separating athletes in competition on the basis of sex is the only way to account for the female half of the population. No other sorting tool works to achieve this inclusion goal — not height, weight or any other physical characteristic.”
Thus, Coleman concludes, “Pretending biology isn’t what it is gaslights female athletes. It also undermines the feminist project that’s key to the female category’s raison d’être.” Put another way, to allow men to compete against women would eliminate women’s athletics altogether.
But ideology doesn’t care about facts. So trans advocates, such as the ridiculous Megan Rapinoe, advocate for forcing women to compete against men. This is despite the fact that Rapinoe’s wealth and fame were achieved solely because women’s soccer is a separate category. She is using the platform caused by her wealth and fame to advocate for the denial of the same opportunities to other women. Perhaps the most famous women’s soccer player in U.S. history wants to deny women a place in the game.
Enes Kanter reveals their gender identity
To illustrate the absurdity of trans ideology in sport, a retired NBA basketball player has declared “herself” to be “trans,” and has registered to enter the WNBA draft.
Enes Kanter is a 6’10″ 250-pound former player for several NBA teams, who retired after 11 years, in which he earned more than $100 million. At age 34, he would overwhelmingly dominate any women’s team by his presence alone.
How has the “trans” community reacted? By denying Kanter is really a woman. Again, I am not making this up. The very same people who claim that one’s gender is whatever one chooses are saying that Kanter is not a “real” woman. He is not “truly” trans.
Kanter’s purpose is not to mock women or women’s athletics. Rather, his purpose is to mock transgender advocates, such as Megan Rapinoe and Gabby Williams, for the absurdity of their ideology. Of course, it really doesn’t take someone like Enes Kanter to demonstrate the absurdity of trans ideology as it relates to sport. Trans advocates are very good at doing that themselves.
But Kanter forces the issue in such a way that it reaches the broader public, who may not be aware of the war on girls and women by girls and women. Transgender ideology is nonsense on nonsense. Sophie Cunningham and Enes Kanter are merely reducing the nonsense to its absurd conclusions.
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An essay that should receive a rare unanimous agreement.
Maybe we could find agreement among the aliens on Mars and Venus. Creatures on Earth do not know the term.
Perhaps gazing at the stars. Some of us are known to have received remarkable insight from God’s faithful hosts.
And yet this controversy pales in comparison to numerous acts of capitulation to the alphabet idntity group by our Church. I am still waiting to hear their rationalizations for the purpose of bisexuality.
The WNBA is absurdum, full stop. ESPN, Fox Sports, etc. have been trying to push the idea that “all the cool kids watch it, so you should, too,” but I don’t think people are really buying it. Ditto with soccer, especially women’s soccer.
How is the WNBA absurd? Because women couldn’t compete with men? Is women’s tennis absurd? Any sport involving women? Are lower level of sports absurd because a high school football team would be crushed by an NBA team? Or a triple A baseball team beaten by a MLB team?
I’m a lifelong lover of soccer and have watched some women’s soccer matches and enjoyed them. I’ve also watched and enjoyed women’s hockey, field hockey, and rugby.
No, because it is the WNBA.
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Depending on the sport, people will watch women–skating, gymnastics, and yes, tennis. Serena Williams didn’t make her money because no one was watching. The WNBA seems to be a joke. It appears the women just beat each other up as opposed to shooting hoops.
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I think it was Nadal (can’t remember exactly who said it, but it was a man), that noted that women will absolutely be paid thousands of dollars more than men in certain areas, for example: modeling being the big one. No one complains that male models make quite a bit less than female ones. In fact, I can’t think of a single male “super model.”
Tell me tou have never watched a WNBA game without telling me you have never watched a WNBA game 🤭
How can anyone watch someone(s) play basketball if they aren’t, you know, actually playing basketball??
Except people are clearly watching.
They may be watching; whether or not it is basketball is in doubt
“I’m a lifelong lover of soccer”
We already knew that.
This current situation is a striking example of how our educational system has profoundly failed these players. They lack the capacity for independent critical thought, having been so deeply indoctrinated that alternative perspectives are beyond their consideration. Their responses are limited to repeating the ideology they have been taught, without demonstrating the ability to question or analyze it critically. Any form of discussion is beyond their ability to participate.
What is absurd is a 34 year old millionaire man claiming he is a “woman for the purpose of basketball “. Absurd and insulting.
I’m allowing your transphobic remark, but please watch yourself.
To be clear, what is the income cut-off for the absurdity of a man claiming he is a woman in order to play basketball?
A phobia is a fear, not this catch-all expression for “an opposition to” something. Using phobia in this latter sense is quite imprecise revealing what I would suggest is muddled thought.
You would accuse Mr. Olson of muddled and imprecise thinking? Mr. Olson speaks with nuanced irony, a wide-ranging knowledge, and rare intellect. The trifling lecture on the definition of phobia reveals some chutzpah and dearth of fact.
Do know any history of Susanne’s treading Mr. Olson’s editorial water?
Don’t confuse editorial status with moral superiority.
Yes,you get to judge the comments. We get to judge your magazine.
I would never waste my actual moral authority on comments that demonstrate no sense of reality, logic, or humor. But thank you for keeping the lecture pithy.
An honorable defender of the faith like Mr. Olson does not seek to display moral superiority. There are times when ironic remarks are called for, unless you’re a humorphobic.
My point in referencing this man’s wealth is to say one would think that he could find less childish ways to amuse himself.
So the more money you have, the more grownup you are? Wow!
No. But the more maturity is expected of you. You may recall the term “noblesse oblige”?
Kanter demonstrates perfect ‘noblesse oblige.’ Weird that some folks don’t recognize it in front of their/your/his/her face.
Do you know him?
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Maybe, like Bruce Jenner, he realized his true self.
You mean exposing the self-evident childishness of allowing men in woman’t sports is childish?
I think she’s alluding to that why do rich people do strange things? Why do rich and famous people die of drug or other bodily overdoses, etc…? Have they nothing else to do that might be time/money better spent?
Perhaps the affluent can more afford to do strange things? More discretionary funds?
One of the perils of being wealthy especially if you didn’t grow up poor. One of the local matriarchs married one of the local boys who was in WW II who she met in Europe then – she said you have no idea what being really poor is like (where she grew up there). Her kids say she has never complained about having to work over here, based on her upbringing over there.
In a more simplistic view, if you’re not struggling to survive, e.g., tending kids, the livestock, gardening and canning and bringing home the bacon you have a greater chance at getting into trouble or seeking pleasure, right?
I remember that commercial from the 70’s where the lady sang she could bring home the bacon, fry it up in a pan and never let you forget you’re a man – I guess now maybe she might be one? (was it Enjoli?)
Dear Susanne’s statement gives a whole new meaning to the term, minimum wage.
What we’re seeing is the logical conclusion of the feminist movement.
If women are judged only by male standards, then eventually we have to accept that women don’t really exist at all.
“Dear Susanne’s statement gives a whole new meaning to the term, minimum wage.”
In so many ways….
[This entire combox has become very very funny.]
Didn’t we all start out that way in the womb?
Wasn’t the surgeon general under Biden trans?
What about a man approximately twice that age, who won the Olympic MEN’s decathlon doing it for for unstated purpose?
‘Absurd and insulting”…but very effective if every retired NBA professional claims to be a woman and tries out for the womens basketball league. Men can play your stupid woke games too.
And, as a take-off from the Greek play Lysistrata, no man should have sex with any woman who is pro-abortion..
A co worker’s friend had an affair and got pregnant. She told her husband about it; he immediately responded, “We’ll raise the child as our own.”
She promptly went out and terminated the pregnancy.
Those two male basketball players who’ve registered for the WNBA draft are simply having fun pointing out the absurdity of transgenderism and its basis in self-identification. (“I am who I say I am.”) They have intention of of mutilating their bodies and certainly won’t be drafted by any team.
But the ferocity of attacks on Sophie Cunningham inside arenas and out has been vicious in the extreme. It’s possible that she will be driven out of the sport by harassment or injury. She’s doubly resented for being straight and white, as is the Fever’s other star Caitlin Clark. BigTrans will not tolerate the mildest criticism.
Precisely. This is not a rich playboy having fun, this is a man using what skills he has to oppose the abuse of women by sexually confused men and the sycophants who promote them.
But I would say that no man should marry a pro-abortion woman, and no man should have sex with a woman he is not married to. Nor should any woman marry a pro-abortion man.
Simply an exercise in the progressive principle of gender fluidity.
Props to Eric Kantor for stepping up to protect women. This is something that can be done in any sport – men pretending to be women in order to take their opportunity to play sports away (and endanger their lives) should be met with men willing to defend women.
Amanda: agreed
He did it all with a slight wry smile upon his face. Cheers to him for making clear an irony of ironies.
There is, in fact one Olympic sport in which men and women compete against each other on equal terms. It’s the equestrian events. Equestrianism is, basically, a cooperative endeavor for a human and a horse, with the most physically demanding part done by the horse. The outcome has little to do with the sex of the rider, although women are under no illusion that they can force a horse to compete. Anyone interested in watching elegant teamwork at a high level might give equestrian competition a look.
Yup, horses don’t discriminate – they’ll throw or kick anybody they please!
1. Up until recently the WNBA was little more than a joke among men. Lots of men showed their true colors denigrating the female athletes based on how they look and what their bodies are like.
2. At this time, there are literally no transgender athletes in the WNBA. None. Throwing out the bame of the intersec 0layer as so.e kind of “gotcha” won’t actually stand. Too many people who don’t care under any other circumstance are now wringing their hands and clutching their pearls over what amounts to a bunch of “what ifs”
This is a made-up problem. Enes Kanter is not a real transwoman. He is an opportunistic misogynist who is champing at the bit pretending to be a transwomen because his ultimate endgame is to inflict physical harm upon the female athletes. There are a lot of males who would fake a transgender identity for the purposes of harming both women and members of the trans community. They are bitter, angry little men who absolutely loathe the very the idea of women having their own spaces that don’t include men. To deny this is to stick your head in the sand like an ostrich.
Good comment.
Not a “real transwoman”? How does that even work? I thought we weren’t supposed to question how others identify, but here we are.
Maybe we could just return to biology & DNA?
Oh, where’s the fun in that?
Thank you Mrs. Hess.
🙂
Yes. He is not a real transwoman. As in he is not in therapy. He is not taking steps to medically transition. He has not changed his name. He still uses he/him pronouns. Are you being purposfully dense here? It’s pretty easy to figure out what the MO of a person like Enes Kantor truly is. He is NOT transitioning.
Lots of factphobia on display here. Better take it up with Planned Parenthood:
I thought you were better than pretending to be obtuse on purpose.
1. You hate transpeople.
2. You hate planned Parenthood.
Carl, your post is really not the “gotcha” you think it is. All you are doing is showing your reluctance to engage in critical thinking. You’re not using the words of the “woke” against the “woke” in the way you believe you are. 🤭
Your passive-aggressive, nonsensical troll act is tiring and not worth my time. Goodbye.
The Planned Parenthood quote is irrelevant because nobody argued that a trans woman must medically transition. The question is whether Enes Kanter is a trans woman at all. Planned Parenthood saying some trans people don’t medically transition doesn’t magically make every man who claims he could identify as a woman into a trans woman. Enes Kanter continues to identify publicly as a man and uses he/him pronouns. You still haven’t provided evidence that he’s transgender. 🤭
I think the evidence would be his male DNA & his wish to identify otherwise.
So you, nicole, set the terms by which anyone determines his sexual identity? What vacuous hypocrisy! You’re a fraud, along with your feminist imbecile compatriots.
Carl may not have proved that Enes is a trans-women, but you have not provided evidence based that he (she??) is not. Do you know him (her)? Do you know for a fact if s/he is in therapy or not?
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I’m guessing you do not know those things anymore than anyone else here knows them, or not. So we have to go with what s/he says and apply the criteria for trans that we have. And according to what information we do have, Enes Kantor appears to be a trans-woman.
Yup, horses don’t discriminate – they’ll throw or kick anybody they please!
Or we could just the dictum of Shania Twain’s 1997 hit. “Man! I Feel Like a Woman!”
I’ll state this for the purposes of clarification. A public forum is not the appropriate place for a person to publish and process her psychological and spiritual issues. You obviously have deep and unresolved issues with men, given the overall content and tone of your post, and there is a considerable degree of projection in what you have written. We’ve all seen this before from your various other posts. These issues are best addressed with medication and long term counseling.
I’m waiting to read Pitchfork Rebel’s reply to your words.
But this was too much to keep me silent: “Enes Kanter is not a real transwoman. He is an opportunistic misogynist who is champing at the bit pretending to be a transwomen because his ultimate endgame is to inflict physical harm upon the female athletes.”
If minimum wage is up for discussion, so is midwit.
The fact that you thought, ‘If minimum wage is up for discussion, so is midwit’ was a devastating mic drop is honestly the funniest part of your comment. 🤭
“If minimum wage is up for discussion”.
It’s not. It’s catnip for the economically illiterate, who don’t understand relative pricing, substitution effects or elasticity of demand.
Sometimes, “her” (I don’t want to assume the poster’s gender) comments are so unhinged, I can’t stop laughing long enough to respond. I hope she’s feeding the cats, and rinsing wine boxes before putting them on the curb.
“He is an opportunistic misogynist who is champing at the bit pretending to be a transwomen”.
So many questions: (Just a few:)
What’s a “real transwomen”.
What are the objective criteria of authenticity?
Who is the arbiter of the authenticity?
Is there a credential or other indicia
“inflict physical harm upon the female athletes”
Is it OK for females (be careful using that word, one of your fellow travelers expended every effort to say that using “female” was a diminutive or pejorative a few weeks back, probably “Gerard”) to inflict physical harm on other athletes of the same sex?
Kanter is making a joke! Transitioning by self-identification is an accepted principle among those who support such nonsense. It’s even legally recognized in the UK which allows biologically male murders and rapists to get into women’s prisons. Condemning this is one reason JK Rowling has attracted ferocious international hatred. Remember those two high school boys who scooped up lots of track prizes and scholarships a few years ago? Anybody checking to see if they still pretend to be women? Or Lia Thomas, the mediocre–very much intact–male college swimmer who joined the women’s team and set NCAA records no actual female will ever break.
That is also the case in some US states. I’ve heard of such cellmates being assigned to women specifically in order to break them.
Who says torture is strictly a third world thing?
“women having their own spaces that don’t include men.”
When they can run a league without NBA subsidization, it’ll be “their own space”.
To deny this is to stick your head in the sand like an ostrich.
Speaking of their own space, I used to clean the ladies room after the restaurant closed in the early AM after the bars closed. Oh boy, they were a mess!
Several decades ago, I used to occasionally attend Mass with a then girlfriend, who broke up with me exiting Mass. (long run, did me a huge favor after I took her to see Rudy” and after she described me as a “nice guy”, I told a friend “I’m toast in three weeks”-it was-to the day).
A couple months later, my then employer’s custodian remarked “I don’t see you and your wife at Church anymore” and I explained that relationship wasn’t marital and had ended. He apologized for his imagined insult and we ended up speaking a lot. He shared some fascinating insights into why “sugar and spice and everything nice” was CIA/KGB level propaganda. (Even if you were never exposed to Nicolean misandry)
He was frequently exasperated about finding sinks with puddles. Of course the best was the women’s hygiene products on the floor or causing blockages despite the “do not flush” signs and the presence of dedicated dispensers with foot pedal actuated lids.
Men might be pigs, but women have their own porcine tendencies.
Yupppppppppp, (as Dave Hester used to chant on Storage Wars) to all your friend’s lamentation examples of so called feminine hygiene (no offense intended to the fairer sex but the truth will set a lot of garbage free)
I’ve watched Rudy several times and other the true football story the steel industry being one of the backbones of the country then is well portrayed, along with this Catholic family.
I used to clean both the boys and girls restrooms at the Catholic school my children attended. I think the mess was pretty much equal on either side.
🙂
Retired U.S. National Women’s Soccer Team player, Megan Rapinoe has also weighed in, claiming that protecting women’s sports is bigotry. Rapinoe has nonsensically claimed that excluding men from women’s sports would eliminate women’s sports. (Yes, she really said that.)
Worth noting Rapinoe’s team lost a scrimmage to a U17 boys team and essentially forfeited one to a U15 team (they were losing badly and suspended the game).
Speaking of the sport itself, a family friend who recently graduated played on the practice squad for a women’s D1 basketball team at a state university. He mentioned that every so often, his team was allowed to play at full strength. “We’d quickly go up by twenty points.
“they were losing badly and suspended the game”
Once when I was a terrible high school wrestler, I was getting “rag dolled” by the starter (since we were heavyweights, one could be substantially outweighed-which I was at the time-about 30 pounds). I got disgusted and just let him pin me to end my futility.
The coach knew I quit and let me have it for quitting, telling me I fight on, I might avoid avoid getting pinned or maybe get lucky and pin my opponent. Years later Lehigh University wrestler Rob Rohn proved the value of not quitting in the NCAA tournament.
Megan needs coach T, but I’m pretty sure he’d never tolerate quitting or her nonsense.
The citizens of woke-atopia strive every day by pretending that reality isn’t happening.
It’s “their struggle” (cue film of Nuremberg Rallies).
Given the demonstrable absurdity of this whole issue, permit me to enter a quote from the late P. G. Wodehouse into the fray:
“All work and no play makes Jack a Peh Bah Pom Bahoo.”
A very wise young lady once said:
“It’s common sense to limit women’s sports to, well, women.”
Duhh