Transgender Me: If I Identify as a Woman, Can I Play in the WNBA?

Why Are We Being Asked to Compromise Our Common Sense?

Every time I opened social media, the story was waiting for me.

First, I saw reports about Julie Tétart, a transgender center playing for Monaco in France’s second-tier women’s basketball league. During the 2025–26 season, Tétart reportedly averaged roughly 21 points and 20 rebounds per game while leading Ligue Féminine 2 in both categories.

Twenty rebounds a game.

Then came the memes. Former NBA players dressed as women. Images of men preparing to invade the WNBA. Enes Kanter Freedom and Royce White announcing plans to pursue entry into a future WNBA Draft—not as serious comebacks, but as deliberate challenges to the league’s undefined eligibility language.

Then I saw an AI-generated video of huge, muscular men throwing WNBA players around the court while pushing the transgender-inclusion argument to its most ridiculous conclusion.

That video pushed me over the edge.

I felt compelled to speak because I am an athlete, and protecting female sports should not be controversial.

I grew up playing basketball with women

Girls and women played in our summertime pickup games all the time. They wanted to test themselves against our size, speed, strength and physicality. They knew competing against men could sharpen their games.

I always respected it.

Women still train against men today. College and professional teams use male scout and practice players. The men imitate opponents, apply pressure and provide a different physical test.

That is good competition. It can make female players better.

But everyone understood where the line was drawn.

Pickup basketball was not an official women’s league. A summer run did not award a women’s roster spot, scholarship, record, championship or professional contract. When official competition began, the men returned to the men’s category and the women competed in theirs.

No man I grew up playing with would have considered entering an official women’s league. We would have been embarrassed even to suggest it.

Train together? Absolutely.

Play pickup and exhibitions together? Go compete.

But official women’s competition is for female athletes.

Why do you want to compete against females?

That is my direct question for transgender women who experienced male puberty and now want to compete officially against women.

Why?

Why do you want to enter the one category specifically created to protect female athletes from male physical advantages?

What is being proven by taking a body developed through male puberty into a protected women’s division and overpowering female athletes?

You have the right to live as a transgender person. You deserve dignity and protection from harassment. But that does not create a right to enter an official women’s league.

Dignity is not eligibility. Identity is not immunity from criticism.

Any federation—French, American or international—that permits this should have its rules questioned publicly.

Why is society asking us to abandon common sense?

I keep asking myself: what exactly does society want from us?

Why are ordinary people being pressured to compromise the reason men’s and women’s sports were separated in the first place?

Society is not one person secretly controlling the debate. It is a collection of activists, corporations, leagues, media organizations and institutions—many terrified of being labeled intolerant.

Instead of defending a clear boundary, they change the language, avoid defining the category and pressure everyone else to pretend the disagreement itself is immoral.

First, we are told that respecting someone’s identity requires treating that person with dignity. I agree.

Then we are told that respect requires accepting identity as the only qualification for entering a protected athletic category.

That is where the argument collapses.

My common sense tells me that male athletes should not compete officially against female athletes. No social campaign, engineered definition or accusation can make me unsee the physical differences I have witnessed throughout a lifetime in basketball.

If sex does not matter, why does the WNBA exist?

The female category was not created because women needed different uniforms or a separate marketing campaign. It exists because male and female bodies are not athletically interchangeable.

Male puberty affects height, skeletal structure, heart and lung capacity, muscle mass, strength, speed, power and leverage. Hormone treatment can reduce some performance measures, but it does not reverse puberty and rebuild the body from the beginning.

A 2021 systematic review found that hormone treatment reduced strength, lean body mass and muscle area in transgender women, but those measures generally remained above female levels after 36 months. The evidence continues to develop, but uncertainty is not a reason to gamble with the category created to protect women. (British Journal of Sports Medicine)

Bob Costas reduced the issue to six words: “Common sense is not transphobic.”

High-school champions do not compete for college championships. Sugar Ray Leonard did not fight Mike Tyson merely because both were great boxers; one was a welterweight and the other a heavyweight.

If Caitlin Clark proved capable of playing in the NBA, people would celebrate her. But if an NBA bench player entered the WNBA and averaged 40 points, everybody would recognize the absurdity. (Bob Costas interview coverage)

Categories do not insult athletes. Categories make fair competition possible.

Basketball’s institutions need to write the rule

OutKick founder Clay Travis challenged the defending WNBA champion Las Vegas Aces to play a boys’ high-school state championship team of his choice, with $10 million going to the winner. The Aces have not accepted. (Clay Travis’ announcement)

Travis separately floated purchasing a Nashville expansion franchise with an all-transgender roster and coaching staff. That was another publicity stunt—not a consequence if the Aces lost. The league may view the entire campaign as a political trap, so its silence does not prove what the score would be.

But the pressure campaign exposes a legitimate problem: the WNBA must define eligibility clearly.

If the league cannot explain why former NBA players are ineligible without becoming trapped in its own language, the policy has failed.

Does self-identification decide eligibility? Does hormone treatment? Does male puberty matter? Who decides?

Stop hiding behind slogans. Write the rule.

The line is not moving

Transgender people deserve dignity. Female athletes deserve protected competition. Those two positions can exist together.

Women fought for generations to obtain courts, scholarships, contracts, television coverage and professional leagues. They should not be ordered to surrender those opportunities to prove they are compassionate.

Men and women can train together, push each other and play exhibitions together.

But when the uniform represents an official women’s team, the category is female.

Society can change terminology. Institutions can release statements. Activists can shame everyone who refuses to repeat the approved language.

But they cannot engineer biological reality out of athletic competition.

My position is not changing because reality is not changing.

Men do not belong in women’s sports.

Common sense is not something I am prepared to negotiate because common sense is not transphobic.