The WNBA Sex Toy Incident Was Funny. But It’s Gone Too Far.

I expect to cover a lot of cultural madness in my line of work. But I never thought I’d ever find myself voluntarily writing about sex toys.

But over the past few weeks, spectators of WNBA games have taken to throwing rubber phalluses on the court during games.

And so, here we are.

I’m not going to pretend I’ve been a solemn moralist about this from the start. Like many of you, my group texts lit up with this story. The memes? Outstanding. Some of the best work the internet has produced in months. Humor has a way of finding you in moments of absurdity, and I laughed out loud.

But somewhere between a chuckle and a thousand retweets, we blew past a very obvious line.

There’s a difference between laughing about something and endorsing the thing itself. And this? This isn’t streaking, where the joke is on the guy who gets embarrassed, tackled, and escorted out. This is a targeted attempt to humiliate the athletes playing. It’s not about the clown in the stands — it’s about degrading the women on the court.

And one can all but guarantee it’s been men every single time. No woman is throwing this. We’ve all been to enough sporting events to know this is some guy in his late twenties, liquored up, in ripped jeans. Or, as new images have exposed the first person to be caught, a guy in a Beavis and Butthead shirt. This stuff writes itself.

Spoiler: this guy’s not a hero. He’s a creep.

He’s also not an athlete — his toss didn’t make it to the court, and instead struck a 12-year-old girl who proceeded to “freak out.”

As of this writing, we’ve had four of these incidents, not counting the one above. They’ve happened in Atlanta, Chicago, Los Angeles, and most recently in Seattle. You could almost imagine Vegas laying odds on it, and in fact, they have. According to Legal Sports Betting and SCCG Management, prop bets have included:

• Will the next dildo still be green? — Yes at –200, No at +150.
• Color odds: rainbow at +500, pink at +300, blue at +1400.
• Even wagers on how it gets removed—kicked off the court vs. picked up by hand, both around –120.

It’s the same energy as the “streaker” prop bet before the Super Bowl — except it makes an unwilling punchline out of the athletes on the court.

Here’s the awkward truth for WNBA fans: the stunt worked. It generated more buzz for the league than any actual highlight this season. I wouldn’t be surprised if Google search trends for “WNBA” spiked higher in those moments than they did for last year’s Finals. On one level, you could call it a marketing success story. On the other hand, you could call it what it is — a sad commentary on the state of sports attention spans.

The players themselves have been clear. Chicago Sky center Elizabeth Williams called it “super disrespectful,” and “really immature,” and said that “whoever is doing it needs to grow up.” Sophie Cunningham took to social media: “Stop throwing dildos on the court … you’re going to hurt one of us.” Cecilia Zandalasini, who had to keep playing through one of the incidents, said, “I’ve never seen anything like that … we stayed locked in.”

Imagine working your entire life to reach the top of your sport — grueling training, constant travel, the pressure of competing at the highest level — and now that you’ve made it, instead of talking about a game-winning three, you have to talk about people chucking sex toys at you.

The WNBA isn’t my go-to watch. But that’s irrelevant here. Respect is not conditional on entertainment value. I don’t have to love your sport to acknowledge your dignity as a professional athlete. And a woman!

This also isn’t happening in a vacuum. Kids go to these games. Parents bring their daughters to watch their heroes in action, to dream about someday playing on that same court. What does it say about our society if those kids have to watch security scramble to clean up a sex toy, or worse, duck out of the way as one flies through the air?

To the inevitable “lighten up, it’s just a joke” crowd — no. There’s a baseline of decency that keeps sports a place where everyone can enjoy themselves. We used to know this instinctively. But now we’re so addicted to viral moments that the only question is whether someone caught it on their phone.

Again, I’m no prude. I’ve laughed at this. I’ve probably laughed harder than I should have. But part of being an adult is knowing when the joke has gone too far. We live in a culture that already does enough to cheapen sex, mock boundaries, and chip away at basic respect. We don’t need to import that into women’s basketball.

The irony is impossible to ignore. For years, women’s sports advocates have been fighting to protect female athletes from unfair competition — most of it coming from men trying to insert themselves, literally, into the women’s category. Now, they’re being forced to dodge rubber reminders of that fight mid-game.

This whole situation has been fun, but it’s time to bring the national conversation back to things that matter. If we’re talking about women’s sports, we should be talking about removing male anatomy from women’s sports, not flinging rubber replicas onto the hardwood.

Because once the gag becomes more important than the game, we’re no longer sports fans. We’re just another symptom of the cultural rot we claim to be laughing at.

Gates Garcia is the host of the YouTube show and podcast “We The People.” Follow him on Instagram and X @GatesGarciaFL.

The views expressed in this piece are those of the author and do not necessarily represent those of The Daily Wire.