BS BULLETIN:
- Political commentator Norman Ornstein says former NBA players Enes Kanter Freedom and Royce White should undergo hormone therapy and gender-reassignment surgery if they want their claims of being women taken seriously.
- Both men recently declared themselves women and announced plans to enter the WNBA draft, deliberately testing the league’s eligibility language amid the national debate over transgender athletes in women’s sports.
- Here’s the twist: the WNBA’s publicly available rules don’t require estrogen or surgery. The CBA simply says “only players who are women are eligible,” although league sources have said Kanter and White will not be permitted to play.
Well, this got anatomically specific rather quickly.
Political commentator Norman Ornstein has proposed a solution to the increasingly bizarre WNBA eligibility fight started by former NBA players Enes Kanter Freedom and Royce White.
If they really identify as women, Ornstein says, prove it.
And he has a checklist.
“I am going to keep saying this,” Ornstein wrote on X. “Let’s take Kanter and White seriously and call them on it.”
Then came the medical instructions.
“You identify as women then go ahead and become trans. Start the hormone therapy with massive doses of estrogen, then do the operations.”
And just in case anybody remained unclear about precisely which operations Ornstein had in mind, he spelled that out too.
Well then.
Kanter and White created this mess deliberately.
Both former NBA players announced this summer that they now identify as women and therefore consider themselves eligible for the WNBA.
They aren’t transitioning medically.
They aren’t taking hormones.
They’re making a political point.
The argument is essentially this: If gender identity rather than biological sex determines who is a woman, why shouldn’t two enormous former NBA players simply declare themselves women and start shooting hoops?
Kanter made his announcement first.
“I am officially declaring myself eligible for the WNBA Draft,” he wrote.
White followed with his own declaration and challenged the league to explain why he couldn’t play.
The WNBA was not amused.
“There are no immediate eligibility matters affecting the WNBA, and we strongly denounce the bad-faith efforts to use these topics to demean or marginalize others,” a league spokesperson said earlier this month.
There’s just one little problem.
The league’s written rule doesn’t provide much help.
The WNBA collective bargaining agreement says:
“Only players who are women are eligible to play in the WNBA.”
That’s it.
There is no publicly available WNBA policy establishing a testosterone limit.
No requirement for estrogen therapy.
No requirement for gender-reassignment surgery.
And certainly nothing specifying the continued presence or absence of the particular body parts Ornstein just mentioned.
ESPN nevertheless reported that sources around the WNBA say neither Kanter nor White will be eligible for next year’s draft and neither will be allowed into the league through some other route.
Which leaves the obvious question:
Why not?
That’s the loophole Kanter and White are trying to expose.
The league says only women can play.
Kanter and White say they’re women.
The league says no, you’re not.
But its publicly available rule doesn’t explain how it reached that conclusion.
Enter Ornstein.
He has now provided the definition the WNBA hasn’t.
Hormones.
Surgery.
Anatomy.
Which produced some immediate amusement online.
Science writer Benjamin Ryan pointed out that Ornstein’s proposed test isn’t actually the WNBA’s test.
“The WNBA does not have any explicit policies that demand that a player not have testicles or have a certain balance of testosterone vs estrogen to play,” Ryan wrote.
“So this argument by Mr. Ornstein has no teeth under WNBA policy.”
There’s another important fact amid all the shouting.
There has never been a transgender woman — meaning someone assigned male at birth who later transitioned — on a WNBA roster.
So the league isn’t currently dealing with an actual transgender player’s eligibility dispute.
It’s dealing with two former NBA players intentionally forcing everybody to answer a question they’d rather not answer.
WNBA Commissioner Cathy Engelbert has told teams the league intends to continue discussing transgender eligibility.
“We recognize that this is a complex and nuanced topic,” Engelbert wrote in a memo to team presidents and general managers.
The league has promised to approach those conversations “thoughtfully.”
Kanter and White have chosen a somewhat less subtle approach.
And now Ornstein has somehow managed to become even less subtle than they are.
MY QUICK TAKE
This is why Kanter and White pulled the stunt.
Not because either one seriously expects to suit up in the WNBA.
They wanted people who say gender identity determines whether somebody is a man or woman to suddenly start explaining why two biological men can’t simply identify their way onto a women’s basketball court.
And Norman Ornstein walked directly into it.
His answer is fascinating because it’s essentially: No, no, no. Being a woman requires physical changes.
Okay.
Which ones? How much estrogen? Which surgeries? For how long?
Congratulations.
We’re right back to defining “woman.”
And the WNBA still hasn’t publicly told us how it does that.
DBS WIRE SOURCES
- Twitchy — Transphobe Norman Ornstein Demands WNBA Prospects Take Estrogen and Have Surgery
- ESPN — Who is eligible to enter the WNBA draft? Rules to know
- Associated Press — WNBA denounces ‘bad-faith’ transgender debate; says league has no eligibility issues
- The Washington Post — WNBA denounces ‘bad-faith’ transgender debate and says league has no eligibility issues
- WIRED — There Are No Trans Women in the WNBA, so Right-Wingers Are Making Some Up
