One of the WNBA’s most prevalent debates appears far from over after an eventful weekend both on and off the court.
BROOKLYN—Before the Indiana Fever and New York Liberty took part in one of the most anticipated showdowns left on the 30th WNBA calendar at Barclays Center on Saturday night, another one was waged at the arena’s doorstep. This one, however, has no apparent clock attached to it.
The debate around transgender women potentially partaking in WNBA play has hit a vocal peak amidst recent developments on and off the floor. Brooklyn was one of the latest sites of rallies espousing different approaches to the discussion: one has framed the movement for transgender rights as a push for inclusion of such athletes while the other seeks to maintain the game’s exclusivity for biological women.
Demonstrations for each point of view were staged in separate but nearby areas on Barclays Center’s threshold. Ballislife spoke with representatives of both sides prior to Saturday’s tip-off.
The conversations offered lines, concerns, and talking points in the ongoing verbal battle that has overshadowed the league’s landmark season otherwise peppered with on-court brilliance.
“Trans people are not a threat to anyone in society,” Abby Stein, a Brooklyn-based rabbi and transgender woman, said of the message her group of demonstrators carried. “I will tell you a secret: we’re not even a threat to religion. We’re not even a threat to your way of life. No one here is trying to turn anyone trans. We’re trying to make sure that trans people survive. That’s the goal and I hope that you can find in your heart to see that, to see the love and to see the compassion.”
“The WNBA is to celebrate our female basketball players. The world and our country and young girls deserve to be able to see female athletes celebrated on a national scale in professional sports this way, a female exclusive category,” countered Kim Jones, the co-founder of Independent Council of Women’s Sports (ICONS). “We’re going to be unapologetically standing up for the rights of women and girls until they are granted the right to fair and safe competition and not to be compared to male standards.”
Huge crowd outside of the Barclays Center standing up for women’s sports and Sophie Cunningham. pic.twitter.com/LEBvHuLybZ
— kevin smith (@kevin_smith45) August 22, 2026
The Cunningham Comment
Most of these rallies have followed the Fever after depth star Sophie Cunningham stated an intent to “protect young girls in a locker room, or young girls in sport who shouldn’t have to go against biological men” in a July ESPN feature penned by Hallie Grossman.
“I got a lot of negative feedback about me hating trans and I’m like, ‘I never once said that,'” Cunningham said in the preface to that comment, per Grossman. “I think that I am here to extend love. But I also think with that love is truth, being honest.”
Recent Indiana road games have featured rallies in support of Cunningham and have been met with equal resistance. Many on the side seeking continued exclusivity were drawn to Brooklyn by her words, including 16-year-old Briley Lechner, a Monroe (MI) High School volleyball player whose father Sean filed a Title IX lawsuit in 2025 as a result of her team not informed they would be facing and sharing a locker room with a transgender opponent.
“Sophie Cunningham’s comments have meant so much to me,” Lechner said. “Having a celebrity speak out about it and continue to speak out about it is just so inspiring and encourages me to continue to push my word out there.”
“Sophie is the first professional women’s basketball player to step up and say ‘I want to protect girls and women in the locker rooms in sports, we deserve fair play, and it’s just common sense,'” Dawn Harkness, a volunteer attorney who has taken on several gay and lesbian equality cases, added. “Saying that isn’t transphobic. We are women’s rights supporters. We are not transphobic. We definitely support trans rights to the degree that we all have human rights. But they can’t supplant women’s rights. That’s the most important thing, as far as I’m concerned.”
For her part, Cunningham has stated she’s fine with both gatherings, lauding freedom of speech in action before she scored 10 points on 4-of-6 shooting off the bench in Saturday’s game. The 30-year-old and eight-season WNBA veteran said she pleased to see new fans descend upon Fever games and that she remains “100% okay and happy and at peace with who [she is].”
“I think I said what I said … it’s nothing new,” Cunningham said prior to Friday’s tip-off. “It’s cool that people are using their freedom of speech and doing what they want to do. But that’s them, and I’m in my two feet. I’m where I’m at, and so I’m just focused on New York.”
“People are like, hey, you guys have a huge platform, use it. Well, once you use it, [it’s like] hey, stick to basketball,” Cunningham continued. “You’re an athlete, and it’s like you can’t satisfy anyone, so you might as well just be yourself and beat to your own drum, and that’s what I do.”
On and Off the Floor
While the issue has been at the forefront of the domestic culture war thanks to happenings at the high school and collegiate levels, an openly transgender woman has yet to partake in a WNBA game. Those pushing the message of trans inclusion forward have made the current lack of any such athlete a pillar of their talking points.
“It’s kind of hard to answer because I have to answer in the context of what’s actually going on,” trans activist Anabel Ruggiero said when addressing the question of who should partake in a WNBA game. “At the heart of this controversy, there are no trans people. There are no trans people, I’m aware of, who are in the WNBA. There’s no trans people I’m aware of who are like agitating to be in the WNBA. This is a controversy that is purely manufactured.”
One counterprotestor who asked to remain anonymous, stated that transgender athletes are being used as a fall party to overshadow larger issues in women’s sports, particularly with the current lack of participants who identify as such.
“There’s a difference between heckling and discrimination and bullying. I think that there should be there should be a line drawn somewhere,” the counterprotestor said. “The Liberty has been through so much historically, just in terms of women having the underhand and women not being like boosted by like the resources that are available … I think that rather than focusing on like a scapegoat fear tactic, I think that we should be focusing on increasing women’s wages, on strengthening Title IX so that it protects all women, including trans women.”
Prior to the rise of this debate, Layshia Clarendon, a retired All-Star and first-round pick, played three seasons after becoming the first active WNBA player to under top surgery in 2021. Clarendon identifies as both trans and non-binary, as well as by interchangeable pronouns. Amy Sousa, a women’s right activist and one of the top organizers of the pro-Cunningham rally, invoked Clarendon’s name when countering the idea that her side does not have the best interest of women’s sports in mind.
“This is not an identity issue. I think the people who would be saying that to me think this is about different identities. But for us, it’s a very classic Ruth Bader Ginsburg type of position on the basis of our sex,” Sousa said. “We remember things that the other side seems to forget. We have a celebrated woman, Layshia Clarendon, who was the first WNBA player to have a trans identity. She is a female. She was on the women’s team.”
“We are all for that, so we understand, on our side that there are going to be female human beings who claim trans identities who are going to always be in the women’s team. For us, this is not an issue of segregation on the basis of identity. It is for the privacy, safety, and fairness of girls and women on the basis of sex.”
Compatriots on Sousa’s side included several non-partisan advocates such as Jennifer Sey, a former artistic gymnast. She has also been at the forefront of the movement backing Cunningham and runs XX-XY Athletics, named after the biological sex chromosomes of female and males, respectively.
The brand name previously made headlines when two fans were forced to cover up their XX-XY apparel while taking in the Fever’s Aug. 17 game against the Atlanta Dream. The hosting Dream has since apologized for the incident. Saturday was the third game Sey has taken in-person and that she and XX-XY reps have informed team corporate offices when they’re showing up to games.
Sey, who wishes to see every professional women’s sports league create a sex test similar to what the International Olympic Committee is set to implement for the 2028 Los Angeles Games, further argued that sports have been long-defined by separation whether it’s via gender, weight class, or skill level.
“I reject the whole notion that sports, especially at a competitive level, are supposed to be inclusive,” said Sey, the 1986 victor at the USA Gymnastics National Championships. “Sports, at a very competitive level and certainly at a professional level, are exclusive. Not everyone makes the team. Less than one percent of college players make the WNBA. So I reject that argument on its face, that inclusiveness is the goal.”
“I care deeply about sports. I was an elite gymnast as a child, on the national team seven times in a row. I want other girls and women to have the same opportunities I had. I don’t care what you do. Dress however you want. I think everybody should get to wear whatever shirt they want in the stadium. No one’s shirt should be banned or covered. But women deserve fair competition and safe competition. Let’s be clear.”
Opponents of such an approach, however, believe that pushing for exclusion in sports will lead only to the scale-back of rights and acceptance in areas beyond the playing surface and beyond the trans community.
“This is about sports, but it’s also not just about sports,” said Stein, who has been involved in “trans inclusion work” for just over a decade by her own admission. “It’s not the same, but it’s a very similar concept to the Jim Crow South when they were targeting bathrooms, fountains, or the front of the bus or sitting at a lunch counter. It was never about the lunch counters. It was never about the water fountains. It was never about the bathrooms … Now, it’s not about sports.”
“It has never been just about trans people. It always ends up [being] about the entire LGBTQ community,” Stein continued. “Some people claim ‘I have no issue with gay people, only with trans people.’ But the reality is, as a movement, it always comes back, and it ultimately comes back to a very narrow definition of what it is to be a human, what it is to be a man, what it is to be a woman, and there are people in this country who very clearly want to control the way people behave and the way people control across the board. Trans people are what gay people were in the 90s or what people of color were and still are during the Civil Rights Movement, and so on. It’s the latest attack on people that are different, part of a bigger attempt to create a very narrow definition of who is accepted in society, and that’s what we need to fight against.”
“Get up, get down. We love trans people in this town.”
The pro-trans rally is growing outside Barclays Center before the Liberty host the Fever. pic.twitter.com/lEk0asZOP4
— New York Post Sports (@nypostsports) August 22, 2026
Kanter Chaos
While the Brooklyn affair got a bit heated the closer the clocked ticked toward game time, the contest itself was staged without incident beyond polarizing crowd responses every time Cunningham touched the ball. The same couldn’t be said when the Fever immediately returned to action in Chicago less than 24 hours after enduring a 109-102 defeat in New York.
The Chicago activities featured the participation of Enes Kanter Freedom, one of two NBA veterans that declared for the 2027 WNBA Draft as an act of protest against the league’s lack of definition of participation policies, the other being Royce White. Kanter Freedom was confronted by several counter protesters before the entry into Wintrust Arena and took a photo near the entrance of a women’s restroom during halftime.
Clad in a shirt that read “WOMAN noun. adult human female,” Kanter Freedom was confronted by Chicago Sky guard Natasha Cloud during second half action. The former, having stepped toward the game floor as the ex-New Yorker Cloud approached him, was ejected from Wintrust Arena immediately after the incident, which overshadowed a 113-90 win for Indiana.
It’s safe to say that Kanter Freedom would face an equally icy reception from the pro-participation commentors if the 11-year NBA interior vet tried a similar stunt in Brooklyn.
“They’re f***ing cis people,” Ruggiero said of Kanter Freedom and White. “Let’s be honest. Let’s be honest.”
What’s the Buzzer Beater?
Everything that has transpired in Brooklyn and beyond has led to fair questions of the eventual endgame of the ongoing situation. Both sides have voiced their desired climaxes and show no signs of backing down.
“I think to me the endgame of the debate is that it should not be a debate,” a counterprotestor who asked to be identified only by her first name Rachel firmly declared. “I don’t think it’s a debate to say should trans people exist, that trans people should have access to all of the things that all people should have access to. I think the day where it’s no longer framed as a debate is the day where there’s been a success that trans people can just thrive and have joy.”
Current WNBA rules established under the newly-signed collective bargaining agreement state that “only players who are women are eligible to participate” on game day. Some would like to see that definition adjusted as the argument becomes more prevalent.
“We want them to define what woman means in the context of the WNBA, making that very clear in terms of what that means for girls and women in sports being able to implement Title IX,” Jasmin Faulk, executive director of the Women’s Liberation Front said. “We want to make sure that it is a clear law that is implemented based on a woman’s definition and part of that is also being able to talk about it without fear of retaliation or cancelation or demonization.”
The antics of Kanter Freedom and White appear to have at least somewhat forced the WNBA’s hand in clarifying its participation rules, as neither will reportedly be made eligible to partake despite their announced objectives. Time will tell what steps the league further takes as the debate presses on.
Geoff Magliocchetti is on X @GeoffJMags
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