Despite the conspicuous difference in size, speed, and strength between the sexes, a debate is now raging in women’s professional basketball in the United States whether to let men compete alongside the ladies.
Nobody would ever confuse Royce White, 35, with a woman. The man with stands 6 feet 8 inches tall, weighs 260 pounds (118 kg), sports a bushy beard, and is bald. He has an ex-wife and two children. In other words, not exactly somebody you would expect to find in the glossy pages of Playboy magazine. But what would never sell at the newsstands may eventually sell at professional women’s basketball games.
Coming out of college, White was selected by the Houston Rockets in the first round of the 2012 draft, although he never played for the team due to a severe fear of flying. But apparently he has recovered from that condition because now he has said he would welcome the chance to play in the Women’s National Basketball Association (WNBA).
White, who was a Republican candidate in Minnesota’s Senate primary, admitted to Fox News that he’s transgender and identifies as a woman “sometimes … for [the] purpose of basketball, professional basketball.”
“I think I’d be unstoppable,” White candidly admitted with no apparent shame. “I’ll do whatever the coach needs me to do. I’ll do whatever the girls need me to do… I think it’s only fair.”
Yes, you heard that right. White thinks it’s “only fair” that he be allowed to play in a professional female league where the average height of the players is just 6 feet 0.8 inches (184.9 cm), whereas the average height for male players is 6 feet 7 inches (200 cm).
While much of the WNBA has been strangely silent over White’s career ambitions, Indiana Fever superstar Sophie Cunningham was a rare brave voice in an age of fear and intimidation.
In a lengthy ESPN piece on the WNBA superstar, Cunningham said: “I got a lot of negative feedback about me hating trans. And I’m like, ‘I never once said that,’” she says. “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.”
The comment reverberated through the world of sport like a category 8 earthquake. After all, with over 3 million followers on TikTok, Cunningham carries a lot of clout. When she talks, people listen.
Regrettably, however, Cunningham’s comment has turned a regular evening of basketball into a political circus, with half the audience condemning the woman while the other half declaring its support. A popular T-shirt for Sophie supporters is emblazoned with XX-XY, referring to the female and male chromosome pairs and pointing to the inescapable biological differences between men and women. On the other side of the debate, Minnesota Lynx head coach Cheryl Reeve wore a shirt that carried the caption “Trans Kids belong,” when the conversation involves grown men, not children.
The furor was so loud that the White House even remarked on it. White House Press Secretary Karoline Leavitt defended Cunningham during a press briefing.
“The backlash she is receiving from Democrats and left-wing figures across the country is astonishing. They are clearly very out of touch with the American public on this issue, which again, is an 80/20 issue. It’s common sense,” she said.
Clearly, this is a conversation that America needs to have, regardless of the emotions it stirs up. After all, let’s fast forward ten years and pretend that biological males were given a free pass to play on any women’s sport team they desired. It’s not difficult to imagine biological men, who perhaps weren’t good enough to play alongside other males, dominating the women’s league. This has all the power to make female contenders endangered species in their own sport.
Some progress has been made. The US Supreme Court has ruled that states can lawfully ban transgender women and girls from competing in female school and college sports teams. In the 6-3 decision, the court upheld restrictive laws from Idaho and West Virginia, concluding that separate teams based on biological sex do not violate the Constitution or Title IX, the law against sex-based discrimination in education.
Meanwhile, transgender women have been barred from competing in the female categories of the Olympic Games. The International Olympic Committee (IOC) announced an eligibility policy restricting the female category to biological females, verified via a one-time gene screening, starting with the 2028 Los Angeles Olympics.
The US world of professional sport may wish to take a cue from the National Collegiate Athletic Association, which recently updated its guidelines to restrict participation in women’s sports categories strictly to athletes assigned female at birth. Athletes assigned male at birth may practice with women’s teams or play in the transgender category, but they cannot compete in women’s collegiate events.
It’s time for women to speak up and show solidarity with their fellow athletes in the realm of professional sport, lest the entire feminist movement has been for nothing.
The statements, views and opinions expressed in this column are solely those of the author and do not necessarily represent those of RT.