WNBA Forced to Issue Another Humiliating Response After Mom, Daughter Made to Cover Pro-Girl Shirts Opposing Trans Players in Women’s Sports
A recent controversy involving the WNBA centered on security actions at an Atlanta game, where fans wearing shirts supporting traditional biological gender distinctions-such as “XX” and “XY”-were asked to cover up or leave, sparking criticism. The league issued a statement acknowledging the mishandling of the situation. The incident gained further attention after a supporter of women’s sports and biological sex distinctions was ejected for wearing shirts emphasizing that women and men are different biologically. The league’s response was seen as overreach, especially amid broader debates over trans rights and gender influence in sports. Critics argue that the league’s leftist political stance conflicts with its mission to promote women’s sports and that its policies have led to multiple public embarrassments, including attacks on players and supporters with traditional views on gender. The controversy highlights ongoing tensions between cultural and ideological conflicts within sports organizations committed to women’s athletics.
Another day, another PR disaster for the WNBA.
Faced with a storm of criticism over a mother-daughter duo who were forced to cover up shirts supporting keeping women’s sports reserved for women, the league that can’t shoot straight was forced to issue a blunt statement admitting the situation was badly handled.
It had to be humiliating.
“The WNBA is aware of interactions at (Sunday) night’s game in Atlanta in which fans were asked by league security to cover their shirts,” the statement said, according to the Associated Press. “This should not have happened.”
JUST IN: The WNBA is entering PANIC MODE after admitting to a mom and daughter being threatened with ejection from their $1K seats because they wore shirts that said “XX” and “XY” — Women and men, BASIC BIOLOGY
Security said: COVER IT UP, or you’re out
WNBA: “This should… pic.twitter.com/DBXqB3r32K
— Eric Daugherty (@EricLDaugh) August 18, 2026
The game in question, as the outlet reported, involved the Indiana Fever playing the Atlanta Dream in Atlanta’s State Farm Arena.
The Associated Press being the bastion of liberal bias it has become in the 21st century, it framed the question to include another fan who wore a shirt proclaiming “protect trans rights,” who was also asked to cover up her garment.
The outlet did not mention that the fan had been featured on the State Farm Arena’s Jumbotron earlier in the game — about as clear an indication of approval as a sports venue can offer.
The Associated Press also doesn’t mention that it was likely the trans rights advocate who complained about mother and daughter Kasey and Annie Thomason and their “XX-XY Athletics” and “For the Girls” shirts.
In interviews after the game, the Thomasons said they attended to show their support for Indiana Fever player Sophie Cunningham, who has become a flashpoint in the culture wars for her public insistence that women’s sports should be exclusively for women — not permitting competition from men who claim “transgender” status because they dress in skirts.
That’s not a radical position by any means — roughly 80 percent of the American public agrees — but it’s apparently too toxic for the WNBA’s powers-that-be.
(One of those powers, Seattle Storm co-owner Celeste Keaton, had to be fined and suspended by the league for verbally attacking two teenage girls who supported Cunningham at a game in Seattle in July.)
The league is in the position of its leftist sympathies conflicting directly with its business model.
The “W” in WNBA, after all, stands for “Women’s.” That should be a clue right there about the sex of its players.
The league’s collective bargaining agreement declares definitively that “Only players who are women are eligible to play in the WNBA.” Again, that doesn’t leave much room for argument in the minds of sane people.
(While the league — like leftist Supreme Court Justice Ketanji Brown Jackson — is apparently unable to define “woman,” former NBA players Enes Kanter Freedom and Royce White have put it on notice that it’s going to have to come up with something soon.)
Its players — as far as is publicly known — are all women in the only sense that’s real. They were born as infant girls, from girlhood they became young women, and as young women they got into basketball and proved themselves good enough to play in a professional league dedicated to women.
And it’s as women playing basketball that the WNBA exists as an alternative to the mighty NBA.
It’s not some second-tier version of the men’s league designed to provide paychecks for second-raters who magically identify as a gender they were never born into. It’s the country’s premier spot for its best women athletes — and thanks to the star power of generational talent Caitlin Clark, Cunningham’s teammate, it’s actually carving out a niche in the American sports world.
But the league’s leftist politics can’t simply let that happen.
It’s allowed a shocking amount of abuse to be heaped on Clark by envy-ridden and possibly racist opponents. It’s allowed itself to be pulled into the mire of controversy over Cunningham’s pro-women’s sports comments when she was simply stating a self-evident truth obvious to anyone honest enough to speak it.
And now it’s dealing with another national humiliation after apparently overzealous league security forced women’s sports supporters to silence themselves as the price for staying at a WNBA game.
And like most disasters when it comes to leftists, they brought it on themselves.
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