Check into women’s sports news this week, and you’d think that trans women existing is the most threatening issue to the sanctity of the women’s game across leagues.

The commissioner of the National Women’s Soccer League is getting asked about it. Tennis star Coco Gauff is weighing in. And the WNBA has descended into a hotbed of discourse spurred by media comments from Indiana Fever player Sophie Cunningham.

Even the men’s sports reporters and commentators are getting involved, with The Athletic writer Steve Buckley pivoting from covering men’s baseball and basketball to draw comparisons between Cunningham’s comments and those of anti-vaxx NFL washed-up quarterback Aaron Rodgers. And media personality Steven A. Smith spoke out passionately on his YouTube show in defence of Cunningham and criticized Minnesota Lynx coach Cheryl Reeve for wearing a “Trans Kids Belong” shirt.

Surely there must be some pressing reason for this summertime feverish concern over trans athletes! New research findings around fairness in sports? A trans woman winning a pile of medals and stealing them away from cis athletes?

None of the above. To be clear: none of that is happening. This surge in discourse—like most other ongoing “debates” around trans people in politics and culture—is entirely manufactured, most recently sparked by Cunningham’s statements and egged on by a media ecosystem well versed in alienating trans people and stoking moral panic.

Let’s lay some facts out. There are currently no trans women athletes in any major women’s professional league or on track to enter the leagues any time soon. While research into human biology is always evolving, there is no “new” groundbreaking data that has broken open the conversation around hormones and physical advantage. And no, there is no trans woman dominating at professional—or any level, for that matter—women’s sports.

That’s all to say: There is no discernable reason for roughly half of the women’s sports stories on The Athletic to be related to trans people, as they were at one point last week, or for players, coaches, executives and owners to be expected to weigh in on how they feel about the prospect of a trans woman playing professional sports. And while some have met the moment with thoughtful shows of solidarity (see: Reeve’s shirt on the court) or clear statements of allyship (Valkyries player Gabby Williams, I see you), it’s frankly insulting to athletes and fans of all genders—trans and cis—that airtime continues to be devoted to this.

The specific conversation in recent weeks can largely be traced back to Cunningham’s comments in an ESPN profile, where she spoke about protecting girls from “biological men” in women’s sports. The profile dropped around the same time as new policies were introduced by the Women’s Tennis Association mandating genetic testing for female athletes. And for clarity, I’m not arguing that either is not worth covering or commenting on as news.

But we’re entering yet another week of this media cycle. And it’s important to note that both of these news items, while newsworthy when they dropped, do not exist in a vacuum. That Women’s Tennis Association policy only exists because of the policies introduced by the International Olympic Committee earlier this year. By extension, the latest iteration of the Olympic trans inclusion policy was escalated by executive orders around gender identity issued by the Trump administration last year. And those very executive orders stem from the larger project aiming to alienate trans people from public life being undertaken by the conservative right. Cunningham’s comments, like PWHL player Britta Curl-Salemme before her, come on the heels of famously fifth-place swimmer Riley Gaines’s pivot to full-time anti-trans crusader—and that was clear enough with Gaines’s visible show of support for Cunningham.

This is the recipe for moral panic, and we’ve seen it administered time and time again across all aspects of culture. Bad actors construct these hypotheticals to stoke fear: the gender-affirming care systems where kids are allegedly getting experimental surgeries, the inclusive schools that are supposedly trans-ing kids without their parents’ consent, the big bad trans woman who’s reportedly sneaking into women’s washrooms to assault women. None of these things are grounded in any reality, but they feel real because they tug at the heartstrings and invoke vulnerable kids and women as ripe for exploitation. They’re designed to invoke concern that spurs public support for restrictive action.

As Lauren Theisen wrote for Defector last week, “The hypothetical trans girl who’s supposedly causing all this trouble in the WNBA is the perfect tool for the conservative movement … Her monstrousness, the need to ‘protect young girls in a locker room’ from her, gives them permission to enact policies that in reality only harm the anonymous girls, cis and trans, who want to play sports without the invasive scrutiny of gender-obsessed adults.”

@xtramagazine

The U.S. Supreme Court just upheld laws in two states banning trans women and girls from competing in sports. The ruling sets a new precedent around existing and future legislation restricting the rights of trans people in sports and more broadly. And it’s likely to have a much wider impact as these bans have already been replicated in at least 25 other U.S. states. In 2020, Idaho became the first state in the U.S. to ban trans women and girls from women’s sports teams with the Fairness in Women’s Sports Act. Lindsay Hecox sued the state after she was barred from the varsity women’s track team at Boise State University, alleging that the law violated her right to equal protection under the U.S. Constitution. In the case of Becky Pepper-Jackson, the 16-year-old shot-putter challenged West Virginia’s law on the basis that since she had undergone gender-affirming treatment at a young age, she did not have an unfair advantage in intramural sports. At the heart of all of this is Title IX. The landmark 1972 law bans sex-based discrimination in education programs that are publicly funded. For student athletes, this means providing equal opportunity, treatment, scholarship funding and facilities regardless of gender. But today’s opinion, authored by Supreme Court justice Brett Kavanaugh, argued that because Title IX explicitly allows sports teams that are segregated by biological sex, states should be able to limit athletes by their assigned sex at birth. Those against trans women and girls competing in women’s sports want you to believe that it’s just about protecting young girls from unfairness—but that’s not the case. Study after study has not shown any competitive advantage for trans women and girls in sports. This ruling is just another example of enshrined rights being rolled back for political theatre—and all at the expense of trans women and girls in the U.S. who just want to play sports. #lgbtqnews #supremecourt #transrights #transathlete

♬ original sound – Xtra Magazine – Xtra Magazine

Over the past month, searches for “women’s sports” on Google have trended alongside Cunningham’s name and phrases “men in women’s sports” and “trans in women’s sports.” And it’s frankly a shame that that is the case. Women’s sports is booming, and there are plenty of other stories to cover that actually involve the athletes on the field rather than a hypothetical big bad imaginary trans woman. The WNBA is reaching new heights of visibility and A’ja Wilson is chasing her fifth MVP award. The upcoming PWHL season features a new class of generational superstar players like KK Harvey and Laila Edwards, along with four new teams. We have professional women’s baseball again! The Women’s World Cup is next summer! And that’s just the surface-level stuff—why aren’t we all talking more about how cool it is that Brittany Apgar is changing the game for disabled athletes in pro sports?

Yet instead, women’s sports media is largely in a transphobic death spiral, with press conferences full of reporters asking athletes to weigh in on this constructed “trans athlete debate.”

Trans sports reporters like Sydney Bauer and Frankie de la Cretaz (both Xtra contributors!) have worked tirelessly to point out this disparity on social media, alongside the fact that this coverage is largely led by and dedicated by cis editors and reporters who likely don’t see the problem with publishing Cunningham’s “biological men” comment devoid of the context around how harmful that phrase is. Beyond being boxed out of stories about us—I dare anyone to find any quotes from actual trans women in any of these mainstream outlets’ stories—trans journalists tend to be boxed out of these conversations at the coverage level as well. Meanwhile, even a second-tier French basketball player is getting pulled into the crossfire.

Obviously, all of this is horrific and insulting for trans athletes and fans who are alienated and excluded every minute this is allowed to continue. It sends a horrible message to trans fans of these leagues to see our existence litigated by the people we ostensibly want to cheer for. But it also does a great disservice to existing professional female athletes, coaches and executives. To spend this many questions at press conferences and words in stories asking female athletes, coaches and executives about a problem that—to be incredibly clear—does not exist, is insulting. And, frankly, it’s sexist too.

Transphobia is a brain poison that rots everything it touches. It’s not grounded in any reality, but rather a larger political project that sees trans people as a threat to those in power. After all, as I wrote for Trans Day of Visibility back in March, if you can change your gender, what else about your circumstances might you want to change? The threat of the trans woman athlete is an entirely constructed phenomenon, yet it’s been used to dictate policy both in and out of sports.

You know what is actually happening in real life though? In Washington state, spurred by this endless discourse cycle, a new policy is going to public vote that will subject children to invasive genital examinations if they want to play sports. Voters will head to the ballot box to weigh in on the policy this fall, and if it passes, kids from kindergarten to high school will be subjected to genetic screening, a testosterone-levels test or an examination of their reproductive anatomy at their yearly sports physical.

That is what happens when we as the media allow these moral panics to get out of control. Trans women in women’s sports is only an issue because it was made to be one. And anyone who keeps banging the drum is complicit in what comes next.