And every ounce of that damage has been self-inflicted.Faced with visceral backlash from radical gender activists over Cunningham’s comment, league officials, team owners, and coaches have either sat back and watched the chaos engulf their league, too afraid to challenge the small but loud minority driving it, or kowtowed completely.They are treating Cunningham, her supporters, and anyone else who defends women’s spaces as heretics deserving of insults, threats, and public humiliation.CLICK HERE FOR MORE OUTKICK SPORTS COVERAGEIn doing so, the very people charged with protecting the integrity of women’s basketball have abandoned the women and girls whose opportunities their league exists to protect.
They have taken the torch passed to them by generations of women who fought for the rights they benefited from and promptly handed it to activists determined to burn those protections down.Predictably, a month of escalating absurdity has followed.Protests and counterprotests have erupted outside games, fans have been ordered to cover shirts acknowledging biological sex, a former NBA player wearing a shirt defining "woman" as "adult human female" was ejected from an arena, and two teenage girls holding a sign supporting Cunningham were berated by the co-owner of another WNBA team and told they were "f---ing insane." Sophie Cunningham of the Indiana Fever talks with head coach Stephanie White during the first half against the Chicago Sky at the United Center on July 27, 2025, in Chicago, Ill.
(Michael Reaves/Getty Images)League leaders have even devoted a "task force" to deciding who exactly qualifies as a woman under the league’s collective bargaining agreement, which states that "only players who are women" may compete.To this day, they have yet to emerge with a clear definition or eligibility policy, because determining whether men belong in a women’s league is apparently too "complex and nuanced" for the leaders of the Women’s National Basketball Associ...