The anti-WNBA right is here. The culture war has begun.
I’m surprised it took this long, but the most online White House has finally spoken out about the online league itself. On Monday, President Donald Trump gave his two cents on the scandal between Alyssa Thomas and Caitlin Clark, saying he believed Clark was “treated pretty rudely” in what he called a “bad event.” On Wednesday, the Republican Study Committee sent a letter to WNBA commissioner Cathy Engelbert demanding that the league take responsibility for the “unnecessary physical hostility and violence” toward Clark.
The letter, signed by 11 Republican members of Congress, mentioned using the influence of the Justice Department, the Labor Department and the Equal Employment Opportunity Commission to attack the WNBA.
Sigh. It’s official. The anti-WNBA right is here. The GOP has officially entered the WNBA’s culture war, straight to the commissioner’s inbox.
If you’re not too jaded, feel free to imitate Sophie Cunningham by pointing and tap the “WNBA passed 0 days” sign without being overly dramatic.
None of this happened overnight. As I wrote just two weeks (two weeks!!!) ago, the WNBA’s failure to deal with Clark’s arrival created this opportunity, allowing right-wing grifters to hijack the story that the WNBA failed to grasp and essentially allowing the league to become a political punching bag.
There’s a reason the WNBA is such fertile ground for shenanigans like this. The league’s popularity soared as the country became embroiled in cultural, political and legal struggles over the role of women in society. During this time, the WNBA moved from the fringe to the mainstream, along with a predominantly black, openly gay, politically outspoken and increasingly wealthy workforce. They represent the exact opposite of the message that the modern conservative project wants women—or anyone else—to see, because it is built on values that they insist cannot coexist with excellence and achievement. Their only recourse against the growing influence of the WNBA is to use the perception of Clarke’s treatment to separate her from her peers and humiliate her. Over the past three years, the league has not done enough to quell this misconception or offer solutions to the root causes of the fights Clark finds himself in.
The right cares about the WNBA for many of the same reasons they care about who plays Disney princesses: they understand the power of a good story.
Watching a woman coach of color thrive is a reminder that expanding opportunity for historically marginalized groups doesn’t have to come at the expense of excellence.
If you go into the game and find the family of your choice, you may feel less inclined to fit into a role in a nuclear family that doesn’t suit you.
For the league to pay attention to women like Diricka Hamby, who is openly advocating for her rights as a mother rather than against the rights of mothers, it challenges the narrow view of the choices that the right wants women to believe they have.
The right’s worst nightmare is not Caitlin Clarke’s injury.
Their worst nightmare is that more people find out about the Golden State Valkyries, where Game 7 energy meets gay pride and the revival is anything but broken.
This is the joie de vivre of the StudBudz, who are the antithesis of the humorless slurs that the conservative movement would like to portray the league’s black masculine lesbians with.
This is Chelsea Gray kissing her wife and hugging her son after winning the WNBA Finals.
This is the core of the WNBA, parts 1 and 2.
This is a league in which athletes, whether white or black, straight or gay, are the protagonists of a story that does not villainize, evoke pity, evoke feelings of superiority or anger, but offers dimension, complexity and courage.
This is the league for what it really is, but you’ll have to dig through endless layers of rage-bait and controversy to find out.
This is a league that can organically, simply by existing, remind America that the lifestyle its stars lead does not lead to despair and dysfunction.
What the WNBA represents stands in stark contrast to the conservative movement’s fixation on limiting the power of women. In January, the Heritage Foundation, the country’s most influential conservative think tank, released a report called “Saving America by Saving the Family: A Fund for the Next 250 Years,” which lays out a plan to encourage early marriage and childbearing while criticizing no-fault divorce, contraception and IVF outside of heterosexual marriages and arguing that federal funding for higher education subsidies delays marriage. In their fantasy world, Clark, who rose to fame as a college basketball folk hero, may not have even gone to college.
Every convincing lie is built on a grain of truth. The truth is that there are separates Clark and some from her peers. She just finished 11th among defensemen in All-Star voting. But the failure to resolve those differences—or, worse, the attempt to force fans to pretend they didn’t exist—has allowed the league’s enemies to portray the situational differences between Clark and several players as an unbridgeable gulf between the entire league and its biggest star. By failing to address issues related to player safety, officiating and online discourse, the league has allowed unscrupulous actors to use these issues as a Trojan horse to tell a story about the WNBA as a league in which liberal institutional failures are running amok.
It also portrays Clarke, who has repeatedly spoken out about the persecution her peers face, including recently, as an ally of the right. In part to refute this notion, Fever released a statement saying that neither Clark nor any other member of the organization interacted with the Congressional group, and that they were unaware of the letter.
Right now, it’s a battle that the WNBA’s enemies are winning because they understand the league’s power as a symbolic vehicle better than the WNBA itself. Commissioner Engelbert showed up again and again at this stabbing with an empty task force and a rote statement. Its regime rests its laurels on television rights, sponsorships and expansion fees while ignoring its greatest asset: its history. The longer it takes the league to figure out how to say this, the longer it will take other people to do it.
Sirat Sokhi
Seerat Sohi covers the NBA, WNBA and women’s college basketball for The Ringer. Some of her former favorite spots include Yahoo Sports, SB Nation and basements throughout Edmonton.