r/offbeat • u/Silent-Resort-3076 • 8h ago
Martina Navratilova Pushes Conspiracy Theory That WNBA Has A Secret Trans Player
https://www.them.us/news/martina-navratilova-wnba-hidding-trans- Getting into the WNBA’s business and being transphobic? In tennis, that’s called a double fault.
- On Sunday, tennis icon Martina Navratilova — whose descent into the anti-trans movement has rapidly escalated since she first publicly opposed trans women in sports in 2019 — helped spread the rumor that the WNBA is purposefully harboring and hiding a transgender player. That conspiracy theory appears to have been introduced into the increasingly toxic discourse around the WNBA by Yankees minority owner Patrick Bet-David.
Navratilova quoted a social media post on X on Sunday night from New York-based comedian MJ Murphy, who wrote, “We cannot and do not know if the WNBA has any biological males playing.” In response to the original post, Navratilova wrote, “Exactly. And that’s on purpose, most likely…”
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u/talldean 7h ago
I mean, I heard Martina Navratilova was trans. No real way to prove that either for or against.
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u/DHooligan 6h ago
She absolutely would've been the number one target of transvestigators when she was playing.
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u/Useful-Finding-1685 5h ago
She passed a sex verification test when she was a tennis player
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u/creiss74 5h ago
How do we know that the inspector wasn’t trans? Did anyone inspect their genitals??
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u/Silent-Resort-3076 7h ago
She faced a lot of controversy over being gay, and because of her athletic build and strength, some accused her of using steroids during her career, which she denied. And, she is a supposed feminist.
But IS she trying to suggest that the Women's National Basketball Association can't be a success, like the men's teams, WITHOUT trans players. 🙄
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u/talldean 7h ago
I think the correct response here is something like "hey, the WNBA does test for doping and banned substances, and what you're concerned would either show up there or would not give any performance advantage; given that, what *is* the actual concern here?"
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u/booxterhooey 4h ago
Well, I might need correcting on the timeline, but there was a trans tennis player either during or before her time of play. See Renee Richards
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u/Silent-Resort-3076 4h ago edited 1h ago
Yes, and, besides the article I posted, she (Martina) called trans players cheaters, then apologized for saying that, but it seems Martina always spoke well of Renee Richards and was even coached by her a couple of times.
So, I think Martina is confused!
WHY is this being downvoted? My point isn't that she should NOT have spoken well of Renee Richards, my point is which is it: She was okay with Richards being a trans woman playing pro tennis against other women, YET it's not acceptable NOW??
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u/dabeeman 7h ago
the wnba is not a success. it’s never made a profit in the history of the league.
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u/Silent-Resort-3076 7h ago
I just did a VERY quick search and one reason could be:
For most of its history, the WNBA received minimal television revenue compared to major men's sports leagues.
Media deals are a primary profit driver for professional sports...
BUT, just this year:)
WNBA Finalizes Landmark $3.1 Billion Media Rights Deal
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u/erichf3893 3h ago
They are subsidized by the NBA, or at least until last year. Not every team is profitable, but they have turned a big corner for sure, especially the Fever due to Caitlin Clark
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u/talldean 7h ago
The owners will absolutely say that which lets them negotiate lower salaries for the players, but the owners don't seem to be itching to sell, which maybe says something.
Or, maybe related; the movie Return of the Jedi hasn't ever turned a profit on paper. I'm not sure Disney wants to sell the rights, though. ;-)
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u/dabeeman 7h ago
sources on those wild claims?
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u/talldean 6h ago
Even the fastest of Google searches turns that one up.
https://www.reddit.com/r/movies/comments/3dzq76/til_according_to_lucasfilm_return_of_the_jedi/
https://www.reddit.com/r/StarWars/comments/pq7fuz/til_despite_earning_450_million_return_of_the/
https://taxjustice.net/2023/05/11/how-hollywood-gaslights-wga-strikers-uncle-sam-and-darth-vader-about-its-profits/
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Z8mASW-7RvI
https://www.imdb.com/news/ni0734602/This comes up from time to time because most of the actors got screwed on this, and they talk about it in many, many interviews; they were supposed to get a cut of the profits in exchange for taking less salary, and the studio shuffled the accounting so no money became profit.
Accounting is weird.
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u/peacefinder 5h ago edited 4h ago
Who cares? League profit is irrelevant.
The big money is in team ownership.
Many sports leagues don’t make a profit. The goal is not for the league to make a profit, it’s for the teams to increase in value. The league serves the team owners, and the team owners are laughing all the way to the bank.
Check out the WNBA team valuation estimates in 2024: https://www.si.com/wnba/here-what-every-wnba-franchise-worth
Now look at 2026: https://www.nbcsportsbayarea.com/wnba/franchise-valuations-list-2026/1935989/
In two years the Las Vegas franchise value went from 140 million to 550 million.
The average WNBA team value is now over three times what the highest team value was just two years ago. (And the number of teams grew by 25%)
Women’s sports or men’s sports, basketball or soccer, at the top end team value growth is the real moneybag. WNBA, NWSL, and MLS all understand this.
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u/dabeeman 5h ago
you obviously aren’t old enough to remember the two versions of mls that failed and closed because they didn’t make a profit. inflated value is a game for the rich to play to hide assets, profitability can’t be faked long term and the wnba can’t survive without a profit.
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u/peacefinder 4h ago
I do know it, but we’re long past any serious danger of that for all the leagues I mentioned, barring some economy-wide catastrophe. It’s almost like sports executives learned something from previous failures!
Running a negative balance sheet for years while growing value is a regular strategy in the tech sector too. I don’t think any of the AI companies expect to get in the black before 2030
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u/Useful-Finding-1685 5h ago edited 5h ago
A cheek swab test or basic medical exam would prove this (and she's previously passed sex verification tests)
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u/windmill-tilting 7h ago
Don't look under "her" tennis skirt.
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u/thebruce 7h ago
I know what you're trying to do here, but let's not sink to shit like putting genders in quotations.
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u/erichf3893 6h ago
I mean it’s an easy way to prove it lol
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u/thebruce 6h ago
It's not though.
Again, I get that you guys aren't intentionally using offensive language towards trans people, but both of these comments easily could be said by transphobic people attempting to be trolls.
What someone has between their legs at your time of checking tells you nothing about whether or not they are trans. Trans people exist at both pre and post-op stages, and there are also people with ambiguous genitalia or other issues.
The whole point is that our side is supposed to take a sober, compassionate stance on trans people. Not using slur-adjacent language just because it's on people we dislike.
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u/erichf3893 6h ago edited 5h ago
Yeah so that’s one easy way to have a good idea, as is drug testing
Obviously people who consider themselves transgender but have not gone through with anything would be ok in their biological sex under these rules
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u/TrashPandaHobbit 5h ago
"...who consider themselves..."
Who are. People who are transgender.
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u/erichf3893 5h ago
You know what I meant no need to troll
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u/TrashPandaHobbit 4h ago
No one is trolling. Just correcting. Maybe listen to trans people before talking about us.
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u/TrashPandaHobbit 5h ago
No, it's not. Not all trans people (trans men or women) have surgery. Secondly due to modern medicine, sone trans people look no dofferent down there than cis people. It is transphobic to suggest that looking at someone's genitals would prove something or nothing.
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u/erichf3893 5h ago
It would prove if they had surgery
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u/TrashPandaHobbit 4h ago
People can be transgender and not have surgery. It's transphobic to say that a trans person must have surgery to be the gender they are.
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u/ZestycloseAd5918 2h ago
Well Enes Kanter says he is a woman so why aren’t you believing him? As you said, medicalization (surgery/hormones) is not necessary to be trans.
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u/erichf3893 4h ago edited 3h ago
Are you being intentionally thick or just missing the point?
ETA: confirmed intentionally thick. Thanks for the cute deleted reply/block lol
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u/thebruce 4h ago
You're the one being intentionally thick here.
Saying "lol just check between their legs" is an immature, hurtful, and completely inaccurate way to phrase the situation.
Again, I know you weren't being an intentional troll. I get you were just speaking off the cuff. But, these are the types of "automatic" ways of thinking that we need to guard against.
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u/erichf3893 3h ago edited 3h ago
It’s literally one way to tell if one could be allowed to participate. I never said it was the only, nor did I say you need to have surgery to identify as trans. But if you have male genitalia you belong in men’s sports.
They just wanted to put words in my mouth and were absolutely being intentionally thick by doing so. Also making completely unnecessary corrections.
If it just mattered what one said opposed to hormone, surgery, etc then Enes Kanter would be in the upcoming draft. Yes we all know he was being disingenuous just like the troll who was replying to me
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u/Silent-Resort-3076 8h ago
Another snippet - more in the article:
Rumors that the WNBA is hiding the identity of a transgender player have started circulating in earnest after two former NBA players — Royce White and Enes Kanter Freedom — falsely claimed to be women for the purposes of declaring for the WNBA draft. Both players announced their intent to apply for the WNBA draft on Friday, August 7 and the league declared them ineligible on August 13. Both players had hoped to exploit a loophole in the WNBA eligibility guidelines that simply says that “only players who are women” are eligible to play in the women’s league — a statute they felt was vague in its definition.
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u/ZestycloseAd5918 2h ago
Why are Kanter and Royce’s claims deemed false? On what grounds?
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u/Silent-Resort-3076 2h ago
Is that supposed to be a joke?
Because I fear you are being serious!
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u/ZestycloseAd5918 2h ago
I am serious. If being trans doesn’t require hormones or medicalization, and is simply a deeply held belief that one declares, why aren’t we using that standard when it comes to Kanter and Royce.
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u/Nice-Register7287 2h ago
If you were actually serious you would not have clowned yourself by acting like these trolls have a "deeply held belief" about being women
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u/ZestycloseAd5918 1h ago
Who and how is it decided who has sincere deeply held beliefs?
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u/Nice-Register7287 1h ago
In this case, this isn't complicated at all, anyone with a brain and working knowledge of right-wing trolling knows that their beliefs are not sincere. It's certainly possible you are lacking one or both of those things
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u/iceoldtea 1h ago
They’re right wing grifters who’ve turned to identity politics to make money now that they’ve washed out of the NBA... they don’t “deeply believe” they’re women.
The WNBA just needs to put more context around a vague bylaw next negotiation cycle
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u/ZestycloseAd5918 1h ago
Who and how is it decided who has sincere deeply held beliefs?
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u/iceoldtea 1h ago
Great question that I’ll let the league answer in due time, but it’s clearly not the guy who played in the NBA until 2023 and three months ago was selling testosterone supplements / not identifying as a woman
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u/PeregrineFaulkner 3h ago
That statute has existed for 30 years without issue until Sophie Cunningham wanted some attention.
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u/raptorjaws 8h ago
if there was a secret trans woman playing in the wnba, then it is obviously not an issue at all and all this uproar is over nothing.
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u/rockland19120 7h ago
Stop using your brain and making sense.
Wouldn’t their argument ONLY WORK there was one player averaging like 50 points a game or it was clearly one of the top 2 or 3 players in the game???
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u/JordanPetterPans 6h ago
" increasingly toxic discourse around the WNBA by Yankees minority owner Patrick Bet-David."
Holy fuck
He is a less than 1% of the Yankees he investedike 7 mil out of several billion.
Of a the titles they could have given him..
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u/MathBallThunder 7h ago
What's the political issue you care most about right now?
"Keeping our girls safe and men out of the WNBA?"
Oh so are there any men in the WNBA?
"No"
But at least you care about the WNBA and watch games?
"Also no, but what if!"
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u/alvysaurus 7h ago
They're so desperate for trans women to be as athletic and predatory as they say that they've resorted to 'secret trans, hiding in plain sight'. But of course, they can always tell.
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u/JobeGilchrist 7h ago edited 6h ago
There are probably secretly or not-so-secretly intersex players in the WNBA, that's just a natural result of all the categories in question. Clearly nobody is utterly dominating in any way that seems, for lack of a better term, gender-suspicious (think East German swim team), so it seems pointless to care about.
There will always be category definition issues where you have the lesser of two categories and there's some fuzziness between the two. All we can do is try to handle them with fairness and humanity toward all involved.
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u/PeanutCheeseBar 4h ago
Well, I’m sure Candace and Toni from Portlandia would have a field day with this.
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u/Silly-Elderberry-411 1h ago
Poor jiri menzel no longer being around to see this excellent display of his Czech surrealist humor played straight. I have closely watched trains flashbacks
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u/Level_Macaroon2533 7h ago
I bet if its Caitlin Clark, MAGA becomes the most outspoken trans athlete supporters of all time
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u/Overthehill410 6h ago
Got to love people on Reddit (and bots) crapping on someone who literally did more for womans sports movement and the gay movement than everyone who has ever posted on here combined.
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u/Saiing 6h ago
Can I just inject a note of rationality:
- She said "No one knows". I'm not sure how this translates into "Martina Navratilova Pushes Conspiracy Theory That WNBA Has A Secret Trans Player". She literally said it's unknown. "Yes, they do", would be a bit closer to the headline here, but she didn't say anything like that.
- Her response to the original tweet "Exactly. And that’s on purpose, most likely…" could equally be read as "yes, because if they reveal themselves all hell will break loose".
I mean I don't know her intentions here, but it seems like reddit is always so keen to place the worst possible reading on something which on the surface is fairly ambiguous.
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u/Glittering_Hope1114 5h ago
She is well known transphobe saying more anti trans stuff about a made hysteria campaign about trans people its hardly news.
Im guessing they are trying to cause harassment and abuse towards players so eventually they get so tired of it they institute a ban.
Unpopular opinion but I am convinced that is reason for the Olympic changes. Its not that trans people were dominating its that people were more intrested calling everyone secretly trans then giving them relentless abuse. No one was even watching the sports only talking about trans people. This couldn't carry on so they instituted a ban but the problem was in order to do this and make it reliably testable intersex people had to go. Meaning ironically in practice in terms of numbers of people actully effected it mostly intersex people that lost out. But im absolutely convinced the non stop obsession, hatred and harassment people were getting was the reason for the change rather then actually something actually being any different from the last several decades.
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u/Saiing 5h ago
I'm still struggling to see how "No one knows" equates to "push[ing] a conspiracy theory".
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u/Glittering_Hope1114 5h ago
I've already seen plenty of them acusing players in the wnba of being trans. Besides what else is it meant to mean exactly? Absolutely the logical conclusion of what she is saying is that a possible secret trans person person is playing. Frankly its just desperation because it sounds better pushing it that way then just admit its not a problem. Even then what exactly is the solution that everyone gets sent for testing? Why now after decades? What difference does is make? Its not like anyone is dominating or crushing. Besides its a private organisation with its own rules. Sorry but its not reasonable to expect people everyone to constantly question if everyone is a secret trans person just because people like this are obsessed with the topic. Frankly if they truly are so scared why dont they just not watch it?
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u/Silent-Resort-3076 4h ago
Once again:
Navratilova quoted a social media post on X on Sunday night from New York-based comedian MJ Murphy, who wrote, “We cannot and do not know if the WNBA has any biological males playing.”
In response to the original post, Navratilova wrote, “Exactly. And that’s on purpose, most likely…”
How is that NOT pushing a conspiracy theory about the WNBA having a "secret trans player"??
Later she tweeted "Point is nobody knows". And, that was to keep fueling the conspiracy!
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u/Saiing 4h ago
Do you know? Can you say with 100% certainty? Surely no one knows 100% for sure?
I get what you're saying, but pushing a conspiracy theory to me is "Yes, there are for sure trans players in the NBA". I don't see pushing something as the same as questioning it.
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u/Silent-Resort-3076 4h ago
🙄 Once again:
In response to the original post, Navratilova wrote, “Exactly. And that’s on purpose, most likely…”
As ridiculous AND dangerous (in my view) as the following is because it could plant a seed in the mind of those who read it and are not very bright and may also be someone who wouldn't think twice of becoming violent themselves (because, as we know, there ARE people who have attacked trans men and women) from thinking : "Oh, yeah, I wonder if so and so is trans?? Yeah, that's probably why she's so strong and muscular and plays so well!"🙄
New York-based comedian MJ Murphy, who wrote, “We cannot and do not know if the WNBA has any biological males playing.”
So, Martina writing "Exactly." further fuels this ridiculous statement. Now was the "comedian" just making a joke? Perhaps. But, Martina could have just NOT responded, RIGHT???
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u/Saiing 4h ago
I think you make fair points - I appreciate you putting forward your thoughts and I can definitely understand that point of view. I know it's not a common thing on reddit these days, but I feel persuaded by your arguments and I'm not afraid to admit it.
One thing I don't really get is what does she have to gain from alluding to the fact that there might be trans people in the WNBA? I mean if there aren't, then it doesn't really change anything. And even if there are, I can't see a tweet from a retired tennis player making all that much difference.
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u/Silent-Resort-3076 3h ago
And I really appreciate your response after my eye rolling start to mine!😋 And, my "tone" from my other comments to you.
One thing I don't really get is what does she have to gain
I can only guess because many people are opinionated and get political and want to share their views and be right. Look at Harry Potter author J.K. Rowling who chooses to tweet about her anti-trans stance, etc. And, there are LOTS and LOTS of other "famous people", from both sides, who show who they truly are via social media and interviews.
One last thing:
"No matter what people tell you, words and ideas can change the world," ~Robin Williams as John Keating in the film Dead Poets Society.
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u/Silly-Elderberry-411 1h ago
Why does it need to be spoonfed most players in the wnba are black and racists always call black feminity into question? Saying in the end nobody knows is just trying to make it ambiguous.
MAGA desperately needs a topic where they can be racist by claiming it's actually about protecting women. You know, that's why they fought to turn over roe v wade and made ivf harder to get , to protect women.
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u/BrosefDudeson 4h ago
When someone says "I'm just asking questions", do you automatically assume that's all they do?
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u/Silent-Resort-3076 4h ago
She said "No one knows".
Martina did not say that. Why not just include the entire "conversation" as it played out??
Navratilova quoted a social media post on X on Sunday night from New York-based comedian MJ Murphy, who wrote, “We cannot and do not know if the WNBA has any biological males playing.”
In response to the original post, Navratilova wrote, “Exactly. And that’s on purpose, most likely…”
How is that NOT pushing a conspiracy theory about the WNBA having a "secret trans player"??
Later she tweeted "Point is nobody knows". And, that was to keep fueling the conspiracy!
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u/Silly-Elderberry-411 1h ago
Cool story. She is one of the, if not the biggest defenders of jk rowling exactly due to transvestigation bullshit
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u/Excellent_Call304 5h ago
So wouldnt this kind of deflate her argument? Shouldn't it be obvious who the secret player is, wouldn't they be dominating?
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u/semi_random 7h ago
So what? None of these bigots has any business policing gender just because it’s a women’s league. What is the actual controversy? Who cares if a trans person plays basketball?
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u/WeirdcoolWilson 7h ago
And? Isn’t the point that people are trying to make that it shouldn’t matter?
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u/WTFHELP 8h ago
You can tell elections are close.