In unsurprising news, anti-trans attacks on WNBA were ‘pushed for clicks’ on X

This story originally appeared on Them.

Despite conservative pundits framing transgender inclusion in the WNBA as the latest flashpoint in a growing “culture war,” a new data analysis found that the actual opposition to trans athletes in the league has been largely exaggerated.

A new analysis by data analytics firm GUDEA, published exclusively with Rolling Stone, examined over 188,000 posts made about trans people in the WNBA across multiple social media platforms between July 20 and August 12 to assess how much the general population cared about the issue. The findings suggest that average people are generally unconcerned and ambivalent about trans athletes participating in the WNBA.

Data showed that 99% of the posts originated on the Elon Musk-owned platform X, which researchers point out is a platform that rewards controversy and “ragebait” in its algorithm. Furthermore, when the data analytics startup dug deeper, they found that while high-profile influencers and figureheads only made up 3.5% of all people posting about trans people in the W, they posted four times their share, accounting for 16.75% of all posts on the issue.

“If you take out the eight top posts, this [narrative] didn’t happen. Nobody would be talking about this,” Keith Presley, founder of GUDEA, told the publication. “When you look at what content was getting the highest inauthentic engagement, it’s more visceral, trying to get an emotional response. [This debate] was pushed for clicks.”

The vast majority of posts on X about trans inclusion in the WNBA were just reposts of news articles without any commentaries, not driving much engagement. GUDEA researchers say this is likely what led people to use increasingly more divisive and anti-trans language to drive engagement around the topic in order to monetize the moment.

Notably, there are no transgender women currently competing in the WNBA, and the league has only seen one openly trans athlete: the now-retired trans nonbinary player Layshia Clarendon.

GUDEA’s findings undercut the narrative that there is a meaningful culture war with equally weighted and supported sides concerning trans inclusion in the WNBA. While public polling shows that Americans are generally divided on the issue of trans athletes, this data suggests that the W may not be an authentically engaging area of focus within that broader debate.

The league’s policy of including “only players who are women” without any other qualifiers has been the subject of a firestorm of anti-trans animus, catalyzed by comments made by Indiana Fever guard Sophie Cunningham in a July ESPN profile.

The backlash to the comments — which invoked common anti-trans dogwhistles about protecting girls in sports from trans women, whom Cunningham called “biological men” — prompted right-wing influencers to rage online over the league’s policy on trans inclusion.

As other female professional athletes like soccer superstar Megan Rapinoe have observed, Cunningham’s sentiment in fact drives support for policies that could require genital inspections for all girls in sports, cisgender and transgender.

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