Not just the transgender storm: the woke movement is on its way to destroying the WNBA

If you put Serena Williams in a league of her own, Martina Navratilova is one of the three greatest tennis players of all time. This is an indisputable fact. The style, the titles on all surfaces, the athleticism, the way she trained, the aggressiveness and the 'serve and volley' game, the epic rivalries with three tennis players (Steffi Graf, Hana Mandlikova and, of course, Chris Evert, the latter two at the height of the Cold War). Unlike others in the top three of all time, Navratilova had a social, gender and political X-factor. Serena took Althea Gibson's breakthrough to new heights. Navratilova came out of the closet immediately after Billie Jean King did (though the latter was 'forced' to come out due to a legal battle), and made brave concessions and rare personal sacrifices to live her truth: she left a home, a country, a family, a bloc, a worldview when she was only 18, and chose to live in and represent the competing bloc. This happened in 1975, after the Vietnam War, when the clashes between the USA and the Soviet Union, between capitalism and communism, moved the world. This was not a sporting statement — but a political one. Navratilova presented an almost perfect sporting-social-political ideal. She came from there, from behind the Iron Curtain, and represented everything America would like to think of itself: competitive, self-actualizing, groundbreaking, daring and brave, possessing democratic and liberal values. If she hadn't been a lesbian, if she had kept her mouth shut a little about gender and conservatism, America would have embraced her without hesitation. These were the early 80s. Sexual choices like hers were still on the margins of society. The mainstream didn't want to hear about it. She lost millions in advertising contracts and sponsors. Navratilova dealt with these issues even after retirement, and dealt with LGBT rights issues outside the world of sports as well, mainly in Colorado, the state where she lived for nearly 20 years. Only in recent years did it become clear to Navratilova that she was not lesbian enough, not liberal enough, not progressive enough. 40 years of activity, personal sacrifices and the willingness to put yourself at the forefront of the war against ugly conservatism went down the drain. Navratilova dared to step outside the lines drawn by the extreme woke cult. She was marked and disqualified. All because she dared, again with great courage, to express her opinion against the inclusion of transgender people in competitive women's sports. In a way, Navratilova is the victim of the beautiful baby she helped create. A baby whose offspring has become a monster that threatens women's rights in sports, and especially the public liberal discourse.

The Big Bang. Whether she likes it or not, the WNBA is a movement. A movement for empowerment and visibility for women. This is a progressive league in the positive sense of the word: here the players don't just play basketball — they fight for social justice, gender equality, human rights and minorities. In prime time, with ratings. After 30 years of operation, the league, with huge revenues from broadcast contracts, full arenas, soaring viewership percentages, and money from sponsors, is going step by step towards economic detachment from the father who supported it until now, the NBA. It doesn't hurt when you get Caitlin Clark into your bloodstream, a once-in-a-generation player. Within this structure, the whole LGBT issue is a shrug, a comma, for the league. A non-issue as much as a non-issue can be. According to estimates, 30-40 percent of the current players in the league belong to the community. The historical list includes some of the biggest names in women's basketball who revealed their sexual or gender preferences during their careers without giving it a second thought at all whether it could harm their image or their advertising contracts. When Seattle won the championship, television cameras caught Sue Bird, the team's star, kissing Megan Rapinoe, a star of the US women's soccer team and a huge icon of the community and the progressive way of thinking. The unofficial marketing of the league, the very fact that it is a bubble where you can live your sexual truth without 'punishment' from society, made it especially popular for the LGBT community. A meeting place and a place to meet. But everything turned into Hiroshima from the moment the issue of transgender participation in women's sports entered the league and began to become real.

Let's go back two years, to the Paris Olympics. There, due to a conflict between different confederations (with a political background), it was decided that no gender determination test would be held in boxing competitions. An Algerian boxer named Imane Khelif, who had failed a genetic test to determine her gender a year earlier and was disqualified from participating in the World Championship, entered the ring with women, destroyed them and received a gold medal for it. Since then, the decision has changed both in boxing and in other sports, and participants must undergo a laboratory test to determine their gender. In the WNBA, this does not exist. If you declare and recognize yourself as a woman, that is enough for you to be accepted into the league. This is a charged, divisive political issue. Each side has its arguments. US President Donald Trump carried out his threat not to fund educational institutions that rely on public funds if their teams allow the inclusion of transgender people in women's teams. Who is the privileged one? One of the beautiful things about sports is the fact that it builds roads and bridges and tunnels without the need for infrastructure, and then brings together people who otherwise would never have passed by each other in any other situation. Sophie Cunningham, an Indiana Fever player, and DiJonai Carrington, a Chicago Sky player, are an excellent example of this. Geographically, economically, racially, culturally, there is no situation where their paths would have crossed. Only basketball did it. Cunningham, who had to declare in the past that she was not a lesbian, declared not long ago that she was against the inclusion of transgender people in the league. She argued that the integrity of the game should be maintained and that women and girls should not be punished by including players who were born with a clear advantage over women in a sport that combines strength and speed. No woman who thinks and defines herself as a man would go to compete in the 100-meter dash against Usain Bolt, or declare herself a worthy choice for the roster of NBA teams. Anyone who did that would make themselves a laughingstock. It is clear that the reverse path gives the new entrant an inherent advantage. This is one of the reasons why it is a one-way street. Progressive-woke women like Rapinoe criticized Cunningham harshly. Her opinion went outside the boundaries fenced by the progressive movement. Very quickly, the nickname 'MAGA Barbie' was attached to her. Of course, there is no indication of the political identity of Cunningham, a very popular player with millions of followers, but as soon as she said something that didn't fit the cult, she was marked. Blonde Barbie, a symbol of stupidity and emptiness, and also a Trump Republican. Cunningham can be, of course, super progressive on every other issue, but that's it, now she is erased, marked. Carrington, who announced on a podcast in the past that she was not a lesbian, but had long relationships with other players in the league, is an avid fan of Rapinoe's doctrine and a known supporter of transgender rights, including participation in league games. A week ago in a game between them, Cunningham received the ball with a free path to the Chicago basket, with Carrington chasing her. It was a basketball move only in its physical context, in what could be seen. Under the surface, in the subtext, there were all the poisons that have been watering America for over a decade. Cunningham went up to the basket for easy points, she had no real ability to defend herself from the moment she was in the air, the same moment Carrington emerged from behind and hit Cunningham in the face and around the neck. Cunningham scored anyway, was thrown to the parquet and got up to confront Carrington. The referees decided, rightly, to eject Carrington. For Carrington, that wasn't enough. Now she had to go home, open the race drawer, the most flammable issue in American society, and light up the league and its 'uneducated Barbies' with it. She uploaded the words 'white privilege' to her social network and tagged Indiana, Cunningham's team. It was a distillation of ugliness in the vile use of the racism issue. The black Carrington violently hit the white Cunningham in the face, and then went to whine and claimed discrimination on racial grounds. It was much uglier considering the real privilege connotation: Cunningham was born on a farm, studied in public schools and her father lost most of his money in the 2008 economic crisis. Carrington is the daughter of a former football player, studied in an expensive private school and played basketball at Stanford University, one of the symbols of privilege and wokism in America. Carrington's actions and her words damaged the true value of conversations about discrimination and privilege in America.

And if all that wasn't enough, Stephanie White, the Indiana coach, arrived. White is a lesbian who manages a family with an ESPN sideline reporter. Her attitude towards transgender inclusion is ambivalent. On the one hand, she claimed that she was against rejecting or judging people sweepingly on any issue or profession, but also admitted that she did not have the scientific knowledge needed to bring an unequivocal opinion. It is clear that ideologically she is closer to Carrington than to her team's player. At the press conference after the game, White pretty much came to Carrington's defense and said that's how she plays, that she never gives easy baskets. It was an amazing event in the context of world sports: coaches will always, always stand by their player, will always give him or her the back. White's player was the victim of a violent foul. White went out to defend the attacker. It was clear that there was an ideological background to White's words. A few days later, and after a campaign calling for her dismissal, including from authorities in Indiana and boos from the local crowd, White arrived at another press conference. She claimed that she reacted without seeing the move (who reacts without seeing what they are reacting to? Besides the fact that the move happened in front of her eyes and was broadcast dozens of times on the screens in the hall), emphasized that she always stands by and behind her players, and that she coaches according to principles of kindness, love, compassion, and that these principles will win, and then, before she got up and finished the press conference abruptly, she announced aloud: 'And let everyone else go to hell'. It looked as if White, the league and the entire woke movement had decided to commit public suicide in installments. What is a woman? A few days earlier, two former professional basketball players declared themselves women and announced their intention to register for the upcoming WNBA draft, which certainly added flammable and toxic material to this bonfire. Let's first take one player out of the equation: Royce White. White has political interests. He is a Republican who wants to be elected to the Senate as a representative of Minnesota. Daryl Morey, who was the GM of Houston when he chose White in the first round, said about him that 'one can have a discussion about whether he is the worst choice in the history of the first round'. White has an interest. He jumped on the league and this charged issue as a hitchhiker. The second player is a bit more problematic for wokism. Enes Kanter Freedom is a liberal and a human rights fighter much more than he was a basketball player. He fought the Turkish dictator Recep Tayyip Erdogan and was persecuted by his people, he fought the Chinese regime and its treatment of minorities, mainly Muslims, he is a fighter for human rights, freedom, democracy, LGBT, equality. If he hadn't been a man, Freedom could have been the poster boy of the WNBA. Freedom is a justice fighter. It seems to him that the inclusion of men in women's sports is a catalyst for injustice. He took advantage of the open loophole in the league's agreement and decided that he would declare his intentions to play in it. This was not a statement of intent, it was a huge spotlight on the absurdity of illogical wokist thinking. Wokism went to the limit here: it needed a man to start a feminist war. The WNBA realized that Freedom's decision was going to expose its absurdity or its hypocrisy, in case his request was rejected. The league's management decided to convene a special team of women who would meet in a women's forum and make a female decision regarding the definition of what a woman is. They met this week and failed to reach an agreement. I'm willing to bet money that there were some women there who thought Martina Navratilova was not woman enough for them. She declared what she declared and since then she is out of bounds. The wokist virus, the one that large parts of it participate in pro-Hamas demonstrations and denies the rape of Jewish women at the Nova festival, is now raging within the world of sports and threatens one of the most beautiful symbols of women's sports.