Two washed-up NBA players are using trans people as punchlines in a pathetic political stunt

Two failed NBA players have found a new way to make a mockery of transgender people, and they’re using women’s professional basketball to do it. And just like every other attempt to delegitimize trans human beings, it will fail.

Two narcissistic, selfish, and thoughtless jerks, Enes Kanter Freedom and Royce White, have announced their “intention” to enter the 2027 WNBA Draft, claiming they now identify as women for the purposes of professional basketball.

Narcissistic because they’re only thinking about their pathetic selves, and selfish and thoughtless because they have absolutely no idea how their sick prank adversely affects the lives of the trans community.

Related: Two ex-NBA players turn transgender identity into a stunt. The WNBA is responding

The loud-mouthed White sickeningly admitted on Fox News that he “sometimes identifies as a woman for purposes of professional basketball.” There is toxic masculinity, and then there is lethal masculinity, which applies to Freedom and White.

Two men who built their careers on an elite male professional sport are now trying on a transgender identity like it’s a perverted Halloween costume.

This has nothing to do with protest or with proving a point. Freedom and White don’t belong anywhere near the WNBA. It is mockery, pure and simple. And because they only thought about themselves and thought — wrongly, by the way — that they were being clever, they are scorching people who have spent their entire lives fighting simply to be believed about who they really are.

And underneath all the anger at this stunt is something simpler and harder to shake: transgender people are human beings. They pay rent. They worry about their families. They have good days and terrible days, just like the rest of us. They do not deserve to be reduced to a punchline by men chasing relevance.

This stupid stunt follows Indiana Fever guard Sophie Cunningham's comments arguing that women's sports should be restricted to biological females, and it exploits an ambiguity in the WNBA's Collective Bargaining Agreement, which says only women are eligible but never spells out what that means.

Freedom and White didn't dribble into this controversy by accident. They saw a sinister opening, a moment when the culture war around trans athletes was already being pounced on by opportunistic GOP political candidates who have no record to run on, so they singled out trans people as the enemy.

Related: Anti-trans rally flops as Seattle Storm player wears ‘trans rights are human rights’ shirt

And Freedom and White eagerly poured gasoline on that fire for attention.

Here is what many of us already know. This "crisis" they are pretending to solve doesn't exist. The number of transgender athletes competing at an elite level is vanishingly small. This is not widespread. At all. It is not some kind of out-of-control epidemic. It is a small handful of people trying to play the sport they love, often under some of the most rigorous hormone and eligibility rules in all of athletics, and rules that already exist, by the way.

But not to lawmakers and the conservative right and religious extremists who conveniently ignore the facts because they don't generate outrage among the narrow-minded base. A needless war in Iran? Inflation? High gas prices? They have no answers to these questions, exacerbated on their watch, so they target the trans community.

They have discovered that targeting trans people, a small, vulnerable minority already facing disproportionate poverty, violence, and rejection from their own families, is an easy way to divide an electorate and distract from the economic problems actually keeping people up at night.

So they pass strict bans, deny medical care, and pass bathroom bills. All of these stunts create diversion. It is easier to drum up panic about who's allowed on a basketball court than to talk honestly about war, wages, grocery bills, housing, or health care.

The right-wing media then provides the bullhorn. That’s what happened with Freedom and White. Last Friday, the digital New York Post ran a screaming headline at the top of the page about Freedom. The next day they did the same thing with White.

And off they go, joining the GOP extremists’ campaign of deceit and destruction.

Well, here’s what they get in return. Their petty actions give cover to bullies to torment trans kids. It gives adults reason to prohibit trans kids from playing with their peers. It fuels more legislation to deny trans kids and adults gender-affirming care.

It gives Donald Trump another chance to scream "transgender for everybody" as a literal punchline at a rally, or from the Oval Office. It gives the ultimate transphobe Pete Hegseth another opportunity to kick a trans soldier out of the military. Freedom and White unleashed hell on the trans community.

I have talked to so many transgender people over the years, and if there is one thing I want people to understand, it's this: the pain of not being able to live as who you truly are is not something anyone would choose. Ever. It is intense, and when it’s not dealt with, the repercussions can be fatal. Equally, when it’s maligned, ridiculed and dismissed.

For Freedom and White to carelessly play with people’s lives is not just morally offensive. It is a brutal betrayal of every person who has ever had to fight, sometimes at the cost of family, safety, or their own life, simply to be seen.

So don’t be confused. This is not some sort of defense of women's sports. It is two washed-up hacks so desperate for relevance and a second act that they are willing to humiliate a community that has done nothing to them.

The “joke” here is not what they’re doing. It’s what their pathetic careers have come to. And if they think this stunt will do lasting damage to trans people's fight for dignity, they are mistaken. It will fail, as every act of this kind eventually does, because transgender people are human beings, deserving of the same respect, safety, and chance to simply live as everyone else.

And every decent, empathetic, caring, and accepting person in this country — which obviously excludes Freedom and White — understands that.

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