Martina Navratilova Pushes Conspiracy Theory That WNBA Has A Secret Trans Player

Getting into the WNBA’s business and being transphobic? In tennis, that’s called a double fault. On Sunday, tennis icon Martina Navratilova — whose descent into the anti-trans movement has rapidly escalated since she first publicly opposed trans women in sports in 2019 — helped spread the rumor that the WNBA is purposefully harboring and hiding a transgender player. That conspiracy theory appears to have been introduced into the increasingly toxic discourse around the WNBA by Yankees minority owner Patrick Bet-David. Navratilova quoted a social media post on X on Sunday night from New York-based comedian MJ Murphy, who wrote, “We cannot and do not know if the WNBA has any biological males playing.” In response to the original post, Navratilova wrote, “Exactly. And that’s on purpose, most likely…” In subsequent posts, Navratilova responded to someone who said that there is “one per rumor” — meaning, a trans woman playing in the WNBA. “Point is nobody knows,” Navratilova responded to the baseless theory. Rumors that the WNBA is hiding the identity of a transgender player have started circulating in earnest after two former NBA players — Royce White and Enes Kanter Freedom — falsely claimed to be women for the purposes of declaring for the WNBA draft. Both players announced their intent to apply for the WNBA draft on Friday, August 7 and the league declared them ineligible on August 13. Both players had hoped to exploit a loophole in the WNBA eligibility guidelines that simply says that “only players who are women” are eligible to play in the women’s league — a statute they felt was vague in its definition.Navratilova has long espoused transphobic beliefs in regards to trans people in professional athletics. In 2019, she wrote an op-ed in the Times of London that said allowing trans women to compete with cisgender women was “insane” and “cheating.” In 2021, she was one of six female athletes who formed the Women’s Spo