Kasey Thomason and her 17-year-old daughter Annie, Georgia residents, bought tickets two rows back from courtside at State Farm Arena in Atlanta for Sunday night’s Indiana Fever vs. Atlanta Dream game. Kasey wore an XX-XY Athletics shirt with the letters in stars and stripes. Annie wore a Riley Gaines collaborative piece with “XX” on it. Both shirts are sold by XX-XY Athletics, an organization that advocates against transgender women competing in women’s sports and that has become specifically associated with Indiana Fever guard Sophie Cunningham, who has been outspoken in her support of biological women’s sports. During overtime in a game the Fever would win 95-91, a WNBA security guard approached the Thomasons and told them to cover the shirts or change into Atlanta Dream T-shirts. If they refused, they would be ejected.
The WNBA released a statement on Monday that did not require elaboration: “The WNBA is aware of interactions at last night’s game in Atlanta in which fans were asked by league security to cover their shirts. This should not have happened.” The Atlanta Dream also responded, distancing the organization from the decision with specificity: “The Atlanta Dream believes in creating a safe and inclusive environment for everyone. Unfortunately, at last night’s game, WNBA security took actions that fell short of that standard. At no point was Dream personnel involved in the decisions made by WNBA security.” The league security did something wrong. The team security did not order it. Both statements acknowledge the same event.
Kasey Thomason appeared on Fox News Channel’s “The Ingraham Angle” on Monday evening with Annie and described the interaction. “I was flabbergasted,” she said. She noted that the security guard himself seemed uncertain why he was being told to ask them to remove the shirts. “He wasn’t even sure why he was being told to ask them to remove the shirts,” she said, which is the description of a security guard executing an order from someone above him without a clear rationale for the directive that he could articulate to the fans he was enforcing it against. The Thomasons had not been threatening anyone. They were wearing shirts that express a view. The security guard told them to cover those views or leave the game they had paid to attend.
This is the second major XX-XY shirt incident in three weeks, and the pattern across the two incidents reveals something about where the WNBA’s organizational decision-making has been operating on this question. Three weeks ago, Seattle Storm co-owner Celeste Keaton was suspended for five games after she confronted two teenage girls wearing XX-XY Athletics gear courtside at a Storm game, allegedly calling them “f—ing insane.” The Storm released an apology. The WNBA suspended Keaton. The league’s position, as expressed through those actions, was that a co-owner confronting fans for their clothing was wrong. Now a security guard threatening fans with ejection for the same clothing has also been found wrong. The league’s security culture and its ownership culture have both, in the span of three weeks, produced incidents involving XX-XY shirts that the league subsequently acknowledged should not have happened. The incidents are separate. The pattern is not.
The XX-XY Athletics shirts have become the most visible single garment in the WNBA’s ongoing conflict over transgender athlete policy, a conflict that the league has not resolved and that its most prominent current storyline, Caitlin Clark’s record-breaking season, has made impossible to sidestep. Clark has not publicly stated a position on transgender athlete policy. Sophie Cunningham has. Cunningham’s advocacy produced fans wearing her number and XX-XY shirts to games across the country. The league’s response to those fans, across two incidents, has been to have its security personnel confront them in ways the league subsequently acknowledges were wrong.
The WNBA’s “stick to basketball” announcement, which it made earlier this year after several seasons of explicitly political engagement, has not resolved the political dimension of its current environment. The league cannot simply decide to be apolitical when the most politically charged question in American sports involves whether transgender women can compete in women’s basketball. The WNBA is a women’s basketball league. The answer to that question directly involves whether the people playing in the league are the people who should be playing in it, by whatever standards the policy settles on. The XX-XY shirts express a position on that question. The WNBA’s security has now twice tried to suppress the expression of that position at WNBA games, and the league has twice acknowledged the suppression was wrong.
What the league has not done, across either incident, is explain what its policy actually is, why the security personnel keep getting it wrong in the same direction, and what the league’s actual position is on XX-XY shirts as permitted or prohibited expression at its games. The statement “this should not have happened” explains what the outcome should have been. It does not explain what the security personnel were instructed to do, who gave the instruction, or why the instruction resulted in a confrontation with a Georgia mother and her teenage daughter who wore shirts to support Sophie Cunningham during overtime in a playoff-caliber game between two of the league’s best teams.
The Fever won 95-91. Kasey and Annie were asked to cover their shirts in overtime. The league said it should not have happened.
When a professional sports league’s security forces fans to cover shirts the league’s own policy permits, and this happens twice in three weeks, what exactly is the policy communicating?
Sources
Fox News OutKick: WNBA admits security in Atlanta was wrong to make fans cover shirts at Dream-Fever game
Fox News OutKick: WNBA fans recall ejection threat over XX-XY Athletics shirt at Fever-Dream game
Fox News OutKick: Mom and daughter told to cover up XX-XY T-shirts, threatened with ejection at Fever-Dream game
