Thank you, as always, for being here. Paid subscriptions allow me to dedicate more time to this newsletter. It’s not just the time I spend writing, but the time I spend planning, researching, and reporting that is supported by upgrading. You also get access to our (very active) subscriber Discord server, as well as events. You’ll also help me continue to provide coverage that is by us, for us. We deserve trans voices covering the issues that impact us, and I’ve been doing it for nearly a decade.
I’m also excited to announce that we will be doing a virtual author event with Julie Kliegman about their new book, FINDING RENEE RICHARDS. It will be Thursday, September 24 at 8 PM ET/5 PM PT. It will be open for All-Access VIP and Biggest Fan tier subscribers, so stay tuned for a registration link soon.
ICYMI, I’ve published a decent amount of work recently!
I wrote the cover story for the latest issue of Autostraddle’s print magazine, about the Texas Elite Spartans, the best women’s football team in the word
For Xtra, I wrote about the trans organizers who brought joy to the Liberty-Fever game outside Barclays
For Xtra, I wrote about how the Women’s Professional Baseball League’s partnership with Olivia Travel harkens back to queer history
For Defector, Jen Ramos Eisen and I looked into player treatment in the WPBL
I was interviewed by NPR for this article on right-wing extremism and the WNBA
haterade: everything's coming up transphobia
It’s been a while since I’ve published a good ol’ fashioned rant and a bunch of really shitty things happened this weekend so here you go. Please enjoy, and remember that I love you.
XX-XY Athletics showed up to two different NWSL games this weekend—one in Portland, OR and one in Denver, CO. At the former, they were asked to leave. The Sports Bra in Portland also kicked them out. And while they’ve turned this into an entire news cycle around discrimination, it’s worth pointing out why I think this is the only way to deal with these groups.
When I spoke to the organizers of the pro trans actions at the New York Liberty game, they all stressed how important it is not to engage with the talking points of the opposition, because that’s what they want. And that’s still very good advice. But when it comes to how a league or establishment should handle them, I think a zero tolerance policy is the right move.
These groups use the argument that being asked to leave because they hold “differing viewpoints” goes against the “inclusive values” that women’s sports leagues claim to promote. But that’s just using social justice language to hide behind what their “differing views” actually are: they want trans people to die.
No, that’s not hyperbole. They’re never going to come out and say that. But those shirts, with the XX-XY on them? Those are dog whistles. The branding tells us everything we need to know about their views. If we saw someone with a swastika on their shirt we would assume they hated Jews and it wouldn’t be a stretch to make that assumption. “Protect Girls Sports” and “XX-XY” say the same thing about trans people.
I’ll say it again: they want us to die.
Showing up to a sports game or a bar in those shirts isn’t about having a different view. Asking them to leave is done for the safety of the trans fans and customers—they shouldn’t have to share space with people wearing open bigotry on their chests.
Shut it down. Give it no room to breathe. Smother it. The WNBA is proof that once you let it in the door it will poison everything around it.
At Mother Jones, Madison Pauly wrote a great piece on Jennifer Sey’s tactics. It’s worth a read, especially as it includes insight from her son:
Sey’s son Warren, himself a WNBA fan, takes a cynical view of his mom’s political and business activities. “I think on a lot of issues, she’s a pretty middle of the road liberal,” he says. “I think she goes hard into trying to build a fan base that’s almost exclusively on the right-wing. This coincides with her promoting her products more and more.”
“At the end of all this, she does want notoriety, she does want to be a celebrity,” he added. “I question whether people actually care about the league, [who] are talking about these things. I know my mom isn’t that invested. But, when it can be used for whatever your cause is, I guess the vultures will circle.”
And speaking of anti-trans grifters, Riley Gaines went on Fox News this weekend and said that all the people at the WNBA game she attended in Minnesota were a bunch of “disgruntled lesbians.” Putting aside the fact that this is actually incredible marketing and I would be honored to be called a disgruntled lesbian by the notable fifth-place swimmer, this is actually a really significant comment because it moves the anti-trans agenda forward in pivoting to targeting gay people.
Anyone who knows anything about these groups always knew that they were coming for the gays next, but now they’re starting to say it. This was never about fairness in sport and was always about policing acceptable womanhood. It was never about protecting women’s sports but about destroying them.
The WNBA—both on and off the court—has always been by and for queer women, gender non-conforming women, Black and brown women. Women who don’t adhere to normative ideas about womanhood. It’s why the WNBA was the perfect target for the anti-trans grifters—the players and fans of the league are all the kinds of women that the right-wing views as a threat to their traditional values.
When Enes Kanter Freedom and Royce White show up to games and threaten players, it’s not about protecting women and girls. It’s about destroying a league that has found mainstream success without needing or appealing to men. When the WNBA was seen as a fringe league that no one watched, it wasn’t a threat to the status quo. It could be diminished as something no one cared about. In some ways, the racism, misogyny, and homophobia that the league was a victim of protected it from the most toxic aspects of mainstream culture.
But now that it has become successful, and it has done so without needing men at its center, it must be dismantled. Those “disgruntled lesbians” were the ones who filled the stands and built the league before anyone else was here,. They were the ones growing the game and investing in women, and now the right wants to push them out of the space that they helped create.
I do wonder how lesbian TERFs like Martina Navratilova will feel now that they realize the people they’ve aligned themselves with are coming for them next. Bet they didn’t think the leopards would eat their face.
Speaking of the queer history of the WNBA, my friend Maya Goldberg-Safir produced this podcast on the incredible hidden queer history of the Sacramento Monarchs. It’s worth a listen.
The Golden State Valkyries are known for embracing their queer fandom. But the WNBA wasn’t always so accepting. It took years of pushing for change to get where we are today, both from the outside by fans, and from people within the teams.
One pivotal moment came out of the Valkyries’ Northern California predecessors, the Sacramento Monarchs. When a lesbian group still faced homophobia at the hands of the franchise, they decided to do something about it — and made history.
The Associated Press Sports Editors (APSE) have added a new awards category this year: Excellence in Transgender Sports Coverage. I’m very excited to find out which cis writer wins the award!
And finally, Christine Brennan has done something I thought was impossible: she’s written a column that actually makes me wish she would go back to spending all her time writing about how Caitlin Clark is the savior of all things women’s basketball and how no one would watch a minute of the WNBA if Clark hadn’t shown up on the scene.
“The greatest women’s basketball players in the world have gathered in Berlin for the FIBA Women’s World Cup, the biggest international women’s basketball tournament of the year,” she writes. “It’s an event that is being played under a policy that reflects Cunningham’s stance by not allowing transgender women to play — and so far, no one in the women’s basketball community is uttering one word of complaint.”
Truly incredible stuff here. Color me shocked that the lady who has spent three years writing incredibly racist WNBA content has now taken up the transphobic talking points.
Get wrecked, Christine.
