I didn’t know this, but it turns out the WNBA has already allowed a man to play on one of its teams. At least by trans activists’ definition.
In fact, they did so for several seasons, and the WNBA celebrated the accomplishment and expressed great pride in having an out trans player on one of its teams.
The @wnba has a major legal problem. They already allowed a player who identified as a man to play in the league for years. They celebrated it publicly. So how can they keep @EnesFreedom & @Highway_30 out now. Read & share this: https://t.co/snCpxHxhvp
— Clay Travis (@ClayTravis) August 27, 2026
The player in question is Layshia Clarendon, who underwent top surgery and perhaps hormone therapy (this is unclear, but Layshia specifically referred to a future mustache that should grow in). Layshia revealed the transition in 2021 and continued playing until retirement in 2024.
The WNBA, unlike other sports leagues, is remarkably vague about what makes a person eligible to play. All its rules say is that a player must be a woman, which Layshia most certainly declared “themselves” not to be, which was the whole point of the transition.
WNBA commissioner Cathy Engelbert stated publicly at this time of Clarendon’s surgery: “We are so proud that Layshia is part of the WNBA and we know that their (Layshia uses they/them pronouns) voice and continued advocacy will not only support and help honor and uplift many other non-binary and trans people, but also encourage empathy and understanding for the community across all levels of sport.” The owner of the New York Liberty, Clarendon’s team at the time, Joseph Tsai, also said Layshia is “a proud embodiment of our belief that our strength lies in our truth and no one should live constrained by societal boundaries.”
Layshia has written, “Existing outside the binary for me is freedom. I’ve learned that my gender doesn’t fit into these molds that keep trying to hold it down and box it in. I know that my gender will keep evolving because we change and grow and shape shift and expand. I know that as Andrea Gibson says, my pronouns haven’t even been invented yet. I know that we all have masculinity and femininity inside of us and mine show up equally and wholly and fully.”
She says that her WNBA teammates helped her draw a mustache on her face so she would look more like a man. “One of my teammates, before I had my little mustache, she helped me fill it in one day for media day with her eyebrow pen. She was like, ‘Oh, try this!’ So that was such a sweet, tender moment of a teammate just seeing you and affirming you in the same way someone will be filling in their eyebrows or mascara on their eyelashes.”
Clarendon says she eventually grew a mustache raising an intriguing question: Was she receiving testosterone treatments when this occurred? That seems likely. So in addition to allowing a woman who identified as a man to play basketball in the league, it appears likely the league permitted gender treatments, including testosterone, for a player. Elevated levels of testosterone are prohibited in most leagues, male and female, because they are considered performance enhancing.
It’s fascinating to me that none of this has come up in all the discussion about the WNBA’s fight over the eligibility of Royce White and Enes Freedom, although it does likely explain why the commissioner and her team of advisors were stymied when they tried to define the word “woman” in order to exclude these two former men from eligibility to play.
By its own standards, they have already allowed a man to play, and by their own standards the issue does not appear to be testosterone levels. And if the definition of male or female is simply self-identification, their claim that these two beautiful females are not women is based entirely on mind-reading, since they both claim to identify as women.
Enes Kanter Freedom responds to reports that he’s ineligible to play in the WNBA:
“I am a woman. I should be allowed to play.”
“Article 13 Section 1 says if you identify as a woman, then you are allowed to play. I identify as a woman, so yes I can play” pic.twitter.com/cR6v7l3SXk
— BrickCenter (@BrickCenter_) August 24, 2026
Now, of course, one could scoff and say something like, “Oh, come on! These are obviously MEN!,” as some are doing. But unless there is a standard other than self-identification, I don’t see how one can know that without a magic mind-reading ability.
Did they hire a soothsayer?
After all, states put rapists in female prisons based on nothing more than self-identification, and courts have backed them up for doing so.
So, apparently, the “Oh, Come On!” standard doesn’t seem to apply in the world of alphabet ideology.
After all, this standard refers to common sense, which we all know is irrelevant in this topsy-turvy world.
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