Caitlyn Jenner, a transgender woman and an Olympic gold medalist, earlier this week joked that as an actual trans person, she should try out for the WNBA. Jenner was referring to an earlier conversation she had with former NBA player and full-time troll Enes Kanter Freedom, who previously announced that he would try to enter the WNBA draft in a transphobic stunt over the league’s lack of a trans-inclusion policy.
“Enes and I have talked on the phone quite a few times, and I even told him one time — this is a couple of weeks ago — ‘Enes, I’m, like, a real trans person. Maybe I should sign up for the 2027 WNBA draft,’” Jenner joked during an interview on “Planet Tyrus,” the Fox News radio podcast with former wrestler and commentator George “Tyrus” Murdoch.
Does Jenner really think so little of female athletes that she assumes she can compete, jokingly or not, with 20-year-old female athletes at the peak of their conditioning?
The issue of trans participation in women’s sports has catapulted the basketball league to the center of the political culture wars after Indiana Fever bench player Sophie Cunningham came out against trans athletes in the league with a comment: “I got a lot of negative feedback about me hating trans. And I’m like, ‘I never once said that,’” she said in an interview with ESPN in late July. “I think that I am here to extend love. But I also think with that love is truth, being honest. 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.”
This is all despite the fact that there are not now nor have there ever been any trans players in the league. Trans women also aren’t allowed to play in NCAA women’s basketball, the primary feeder system for the pro league, so there’s virtually no risk of any trans players coming to the league anytime soon.
In other words, this is an irrelevant, manufactured issue, and the grifters, like Freedom and Jenner, are circling, seemingly eager to cash in on the attention.
There’s much to be said about the utter irrelevance of the trans athlete issue, and I’m not just saying this as a trans woman myself. Studies have shown that trans women generally have little if any advantage in athletics after a consistent hormone replacement therapy regimen, and trans athletes are essentially already banned in most sports in most states in this country, save a small handful of scholastic sports associations in Democratic-led states.
But I want to focus on the inherent misogyny in the anti-trans arguments of Jenner, specifically. Former Olympian or not, she’s 76 years old now. She’s more likely to break a hip trying out than to make a WNBA roster.
Does Jenner really think so little of female athletes that she assumes she can compete, jokingly or not, with 20-year-old female athletes at the peak of their conditioning? This may be beside her intended point, but it’s pure hubris on her part to even joke about it.
To qualify for the WNBA, you need to be highly skilled, have an ability to read the game and anticipate what high-level players are going to do, and be able to fool high-level defenders who are reading your actions. These things take years of practice, and even athletic ability alone cannot paper over the experience needed to compete for a WNBA roster spot.
Even someone like Freedom, an aging athlete who was a middling NBA talent in his own right, might struggle to make an impact if he were actually serious and took estrogen and testosterone suppressants for an extended time.
That’s what really rankles me about the argument against trans athletes: It always sells the cisgender female athletes short. As if being born with a penis automatically means you will physically dominate any cis woman at sports.
That’s just not how hormones, or sports, work.
Statistically, cis men only have about a measurable 10% athletic advantage over cis women, so unless you are already in the top 10% of all male athletes in a given sport, you are not going to compete with elite female athletes, and that’s before any hormones are involved. If you were not already a very high-level basketball player, as is true for Jenner, who never played basketball at any serious level, you would have no shot at all.
I’m getting a little tired of this assumption that any man can just waltz onto a WNBA court or into any high-level women’s sport environment and dominate. That’s your misogyny talking, sweetie. Yes, even for you, Caitlyn.
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