Apparently, protecting women’s sports may require a couple of former NBA players to expose the absurdity of the left. Yes, men. For years, Democrats have pushed policies allowing biological males who identify as female into girls’ and women’s bathrooms, locker rooms and into girls’ and women’s sports. The result has been an increasingly heated debate over where inclusion ends and the rights, privacy and competitive opportunities of females begin.
Why Democrats have decided this was a political hill worth dying on is anyone’s guess. Votes? Ideology? Fear of challenging the activist wing of the party? Whatever the reason, the debate has produced situations that would have sounded like satire not that long ago. And now, apparently, it has taken two men to call their bluff.
Former NBA player and current Republican U.S. Senate candidate Royce White says he plans to declare for the 2027 WNBA Draft, adding to a similar announcement from former NBA player Enes Kanter Freedom.
“I’m transgender. I’m a woman,” White said during an interview [1] with OutKick/Fox News Digital, adding that he “sometimes” identifies as a woman “for purposes of basketball, professional basketball.”
White’s announcement is plainly intended as a challenge to the WNBA over transgender eligibility in women’s basketball – and he says there’s one fairly simple way the league can make him reconsider.
White told OutKick/Fox News Digital that the WNBA could essentially end his protest by issuing a definitive policy on biological males competing in the league. Or, as White put it much less delicately, the WNBA could make a definitive statement about whether “guys with a pair of balls” can play in the women’s association.
Until then?
“I’m declaring,” White said. “I don’t want to be discriminated against.” If he’s not chosen or the WNBA blocks him from competing, there will be a lawsuit.
The WNBA’s current collective bargaining agreement [2] says only players who are women are eligible to play, but according to OutKick/Fox News Digital, the agreement does not further define “women” or establish a public transgender eligibility policy.
And that ambiguity is precisely the opening White and Freedom appear determined to exploit.
White is also going to exploit his physical advantages like many transgender athletes have while playing on girls and women’s sports teams. He said, “I think I’d be unstoppable.” He is 6-foot-8 and roughly 260 pounds. He told the interviewer that WNBA players should “have nightmares” about facing him, noting his size, enormous hands and ability to palm a men’s basketball. He predicted the smaller women’s basketball would be even easier to control and said he expects to be “dominant.”
White isn’t exactly some guy who wandered over from the YMCA, either. The Houston Rockets selected him 16th overall in the 2012 NBA Draft after he led Iowa State in all five major statistical categories during his lone season there.
White is also prepared to follow the implications of his declaration beyond the basketball court. Asked whether he would use the women’s locker room if he made a WNBA roster, White didn’t hesitate.
“Of course,” he replied, again saying he didn’t want to be discriminated against. So the WNBA may soon have a decision to make.
It can clearly define eligibility for women’s professional basketball – or potentially watch a 6-foot+ male player show up and ask where the women’s locker room is.
For now, we’re hearing the normal leftist B.S. out of the Women’s National Basketball Players Association where on Friday they said: “We embrace justice, equity, diversity, and inclusion.” Of course they do. At the expense of any documented protection and justice for the females in their league apparently.
There’s a lesson here. When politicians and institutions refuse to draw obvious lines, their critics need to be more creative about forcing the issue. White and Freedom aren’t merely complaining about rules they believe are absurd – they’re volunteering to test those rules by taking them to their logical extreme.
And perhaps that’s what it will take elsewhere, too: push the boundaries, expose the contradictions and make the people defending these policies explain exactly where the limits are. Absurdity is easiest to see when someone actually makes the rule makers live by it – unconditionally.