The Right Claims to Care About the WNBA, But They’re Busy Unraveling Title IX

Recent headlines and GOP-aligned spokespeople like Riley Gaines would have you believe women and girls in sports are under no greater threat than the one posed to them by transgender people. Indiana Fever guard and latest right-wing media darling Sophie Cunningham poured gasoline on the fight against trans athletes last month in an interview with ESPN where she tried to explain that she’s not a “MAGA Barbie” as she had been crowned, but rather is simply passionate about “protect[ing] women's sports” from trans players. Since then, the rhetoric around the WNBA — and arguably women’s sports as a whole — has been supercharged by conservative media, flooding the zone with coverage of bad-faith publicity stunts around women’s basketball.Yet while the moral panic around trans athletes continues without substantive proof that this is even an issue Americans even prioritize, the legislation that made sports more equal and accessible to young girls in the first place is under attack by the Trump administration and his allies. What a convenient misdirection that while the Republican party is pointing their daggers at Title IX protections, the only conversation happening around the issue of women in sports is one targeted at the trans community. Title IX was enacted as part of the Education Amendments of 1972 on the heels of other historic civil rights legislation like the Civil Rights Act of 1964. The law prohibits sex-based discrimination in public schools, meaning female students cannot be excluded from opportunities that are offered to male students and schools that receive government funding can’t deny admission on the basis of sex. A 1980 court ruling expanded the breadth of Title IX, crucially deeming sexual assault as sex discrimination under the law. This pushed schools to establish grievance procedures for survivors of sexual assault and harassment, and to create avenues for relief they didn’t have before. In short, Title IX changed the game for