This Week in Barrel Scraping (TWIBS) is Assigned Media’s longest running column! Every Friday, Aly Gibbs digs deep from the well of transphobia and finds the most obnoxious, goofy thing transphobes have said or obsessed over during the week and tears it to shreds.
Folks, you’re never gonna believe this! I was just thinking to myself, oh boy, it sure has been ages since I saw a man needlessly insert himself into other people’s business, chiefly so that he could demean and disrespect women… and then two men did it, back to back! Christmas came early for me, dear readers!
Last Friday, hoping to cash in on the current drama surrounding transgender players in the WNBA, washed up former NBA player Royce White declared that he’s transgender, saying, “I’m transgender… I identify as sometimes identifying [sic] as a woman, for purposes of professional basketball, so I’ll be declaring for the WNBA draft in 2027 as well.”
That’s funny! Good stuff. I would call White a has been, but you have to be at some point to become a has been, and it’s worth pointing out that after being drafted to the Houston Rockets in 2012, White spent almost no time playing ball for the NBA. That’s right, just three regular games during his entire short-lived career. Most of his time in the NBA was spent failing to show up for work, largely because of personal discomfort with flying… though it sounds like, even when the Rockets made accommodations for White, he simply refused to follow through. He later played in Canada’s professional basketball league, where he was suspended for most of a season and essentially fired, then signed with an Italian league and failed to show up for work.
You’ll have to forgive me, I’m no sportshead, but I do believe that being a basketball player typically involves a lot of playing basketball. If you’re unwilling to ball, I don’t think they let you be a baller. So when White says, in his WNBA draft announcement, “I think I’d be unstoppable… but I’m a team-first guy,” let’s just say I’m skeptical. Given sparse evidence of his talent as a basketballer, I’d wager he believes he’d be unstoppable in the WNBA primarily because he believes women in the league are simply inferior to him.
Surely not for misogynistic reasons.
Besides being a failed NBA player, White is also a failed politician! He hails from the Twin Cities, but please don’t let that color your opinion about all of us who live here. After George Floyd’s murder at the hands of Minneapolis Police Department officer Derek Chauvin, White led peaceful protests here in Minneapolis… but later denied being “apart [sic] of the Black Lives Matter organization.”
In 2022, White ran for the Republican nomination to try and unseat Ilhan Omar as the representative of Minnesota’s 5th Congressional District. He was supported by Steve Bannon and even appeared on Alex Jones’ show, but failed to secure the nomination, then blew the rest of his campaign funds on “strip clubs… and mysterious wire transfers.”
In 2024, White ran for a U.S. Senate seat representing Minnesota. His campaign highlights included sharing a map of drinking fountains that he believed to be a crime data map, declaring Republicans who court women’s votes to be cucks, and railed against the “Jewish elites” before defending hip-hop artist Kanye West’s praise for Adolf Hitler.
Believe it or not, White lost by nearly 16 points to Amy Klobuchar.
Now, who’s our second stinky allstar? None other than Turkish national Enes Kanter Freedom, who I have far less to say about. He is known as one of professional basketball’s vocal supporters of Israel, which is gross, and I think he looks a lot like that Soviet Bugs Bunny meme, but that’s just… a personal thing, I guess. Not super germane to his expressed desire to play in the WNBA.
Kanter sent WNBA Commissioner Cathy Engelbert a declaration of intent for the 2027 WNBA draft, writing, “Please accept this formal document as my official written notification to the Women’s National Basketball Association of my voluntary decision to enter the player pool for the 2027 WNBA Draft. Consistent with the current league collective bargaining agreement, I am submitting this notice to exercise my draft rights and to affirm that I am at least twenty-two years old and that I have no remaining intercollegiate eligibility, as required by Article XIII, Section 1(b).”
Kanter also posted a video on X where he’s shirtless, yoked, and pumping iron to the tune of I Am Woman by Jae Hall.
Cool.
These guys suck. I think that’s pretty clear. They aren’t champions for women’s sports. They don’t even care about women’s sports, or female athletes; they just want another shot at the spotlight, because they’re terrified of not being the center of attention for a single fucking second. They are both well known misogynists, and their overtures towards the WNBA are just as much a mockery of cisgender women as they are trans women.
Like everybody else who’s currently shitting their pants about trans women in women’s sports, they’re also creating a problem out of whole cloth for no other purpose than harming the trans community. In case you weren’t aware, the WNBA has never signed a single trans woman, and only two players have ever identified themselves as anything besides cis. They determine league eligibility as a part of their collective bargaining agreement, which is sick as hell, and their current agreement states that “only players who are women” are eligible to compete in the league… without being terribly clear about who can be considered a woman.
Last week, the Women’s National Basketball Players Association (the first labor union for professional women athletes, who represent all WNBA players) released a statement, saying, “We embrace justice, equity, diversity, and inclusion. Those are the values that unite this Union and allow it to protect women’s sports while creating transformational change. Hate, abuse, and demonization of any person or group of people, including transgender people, only fuel fear, division, and harm. We will continue to have hard conversations. But we will not be used as political pawns.”
I guess that settles the question of whether or not White and Kanter will be allowed to play in the WNBA next season!
Here’s the thing: I would love it if the WNBPA clarified their definition of women, if only to explicitly include trans women. I want to see trans women compete in the WNBA, and everywhere else, in sports and elsewhere in life. We have as much right as any cis person to go where we want, do what we will, and accomplish what we can.
Anybody who believes otherwise can fix their hearts or… well, you know the rest.
