Sunday night at State Farm Arena in Atlanta, with two minutes left in overtime and the Indiana Fever locked in a nail-biter against the Atlanta Dream, a mother and her daughter were ordered to cover up.
Kasey Thomason and her daughter Annie came to support Sophie Cunningham, the Fever guard who recently said it’s common sense for girls’ sports to be for girls only. The mom-daughter pair sat close to the court to cheer for the Indiana Fever, with Kasey wearing a red, white, and blue XX-XY Athletics logo tee. Everything was fine until those final minutes of the game when a woman two rows ahead wearing a “Protect Trans Kids” shirt pointed at them, while speaking to security.
Then, the security guard pointed at Kasey and her daughter.
In a matter of minutes, they went from fans enjoying the game to problems that had to be dealt with.
Kasey and Annie were offered free “Wellness Night” tees sponsored by Emory Healthcare and asked to cover their shirts, or they would be escorted out.
They put the stadium shirts on. They wanted to see the end of the game. As soon as the official stadium tees went on, in an act of pure snitchy vindictiveness, the woman who had found their original tees offensive mouthed, “I like your shirt” in their direction.
The Fever won that night, but free expression lost.
This is not an isolated incident. It is a pattern.
It started in Seattle on July 28. Sixteen-year-old Ahnaleigh Wilson and a friend sat courtside wearing XX-XY tees and holding a simple sign thanking Sophie for speaking up for girls. Celeste Keaton, co-owner of the Seattle Storm, confronted the girls, called them “effing insane,” and left them in tears. The league later suspended Keaton for five games.
Days later in Minneapolis, Riley Gaines and I sat courtside in the same XX-XY tees from the company that I founded and lead. Riley held a small sign: “Sophie, thank you — a girl mom.” At halftime, arena security told Riley to put the sign down because, she was told, it had a player’s name on it. Meanwhile, those supporting different players and wearing shirts that read “Trans Kids Belong”—including one worn by Minneapolis Lynx Coach Cheryl Reeve—faced no such restriction.
We stayed and made the sign less visible. After the incident, people in our row bought us drinks as a show of support for our work to protect girls’ sports.
The WNBA, the team leadership, the stadium brass – they want everyone to believe that the message at the games is anti-Sophie, pro-trans and that anyone who supports Cunningham is just a bigot. But in fact, the pro-woman, protect-women’s-sports message is everywhere on the ground at these games, no matter how hard the league tries to suppress it.
Atlanta was next. A mother and daughter supporting the same basic principle — women’s sports and spaces are for women — were forced to cover clothing that simply acknowledges biological reality. Interestingly, the gifted shirts came from stadium sponsor Emory Healthcare, which operates a transgender clinic. Though Georgia law currently restricts pharmaceutical and surgical interventions for minors, the institutional alignment is clear enough.
Sophie Cunningham did not set out to become a cultural flashpoint. In July, she told ESPN that she wants to protect young girls and keep their sports and locker rooms girls-only. She wasn’t making a big political pronouncement; she simply answered a question honestly. She said what she said and moved on, but notably, has not walked it back one inch, despite pressure to do so.
The response from the institutional Left has been predictable.
Celebrations in support of Cunningham have drawn moms and daughters who simply want sex-based categories and biological reality preserved. We bring balloons and cookies. Counter-protesters are aggressive and mean-spirited. They bring megaphones to try to drown us out, while calling us the worst names you can imagine.
League and arena officials treat expressions of support for fairness as the problem while treating the erasure of those categories as settled morality. Messages and t-shirts that affirm biological sex are policed by stadium security. Messages that deny it are celebrated, put on the jumbotron, and featured in the TV broadcast.
But the more they try to suppress the message, the faster it spreads. Ordinary people are no longer afraid to speak up for common sense rules. Fans who never thought of themselves as activists show up to take a stand for fair competition.
But the WNBA seems intent on manufacturing a consensus that does not exist. They have an agenda, and it isn’t women’s basketball.
The WNBA, the arenas, the broadcasters, and the corporate sponsors can keep trying to manage the narrative. They can enforce dress codes selectively and hope the controversy fades.
But it will not. Truth has a way of asserting itself. Biological reality does not care about branding partnerships or “Wellness Night.”
And the censors are never the good guys.
Our movement is not driven by hate. It is driven by the obvious: males and females are different, those differences matter in sports and private spaces, and girls deserve categories that protect their opportunities, safety, and achievements. The crazy part is that it was ever controversial to say so.
Kasey and Annie put on their stadium shirts to stay and watch the end of a close game. Then they spoke out, refusing to stay silent no matter how intense the coercion. Game on.
Women’s sports belong to women. The more they pretend otherwise, the clearer the stakes and who the good guys are. The powers that be cannot suppress this forever.
***
Jennifer Sey is the CEO of XX-XY Athletics. She is an author, filmmaker, and retired national champion gymnast.
.png)
.png)
