Our girls theater: how the right claims to protect women's sports while attacking them

“Under the Trump administration, we will defend the proud tradition of female athletes, and we will not allow men to beat up, injure, and cheat our women and our girls.”

– Donald Trump during the signing of his Keeping Men Out of Women’s Sports executive order, 5 February 2025

“Our girls”. The line lands like parody. Grotesque and striking. A president whose policies have regularly harmed women, positioning himself as guardian of “our girls”.

That’s the absurd theater of American politics in 2025: women’s sports as shield and sword in a fight that has little to do with athletics. What’s become clear is that the Maga movement doesn’t love women’s sports; it loves them as a proxy. It’s a stage where old fears about gender and power can be reenacted, shorthand in a culture war that has nothing to do with the quality of the hoops being played.

And the WNBA – whose finals start on Friday as the Las Vegas Aces face the Phoenix Mercury – keeps getting dragged into the trenches. Players are sick of it. A’ja Wilson said it bluntly: “People love to use us as an example, as a punchline, but they don’t actually watch us play.” Debates over trans athletes, Caitlin Clark getting fouled or “protecting” women’s sports rarely include the voices of the women actually playing.

When those voices are ignored, the vacuum fills with nonsense. And rather than protecting women’s sports – or even helping by increasing funding in high schools or social teams – much of the right seems to want to rip it down. Take, for example, rightwing voices such as Clay Travis and Tomi Lahren, who have both backed the Keeping Men Out of Women’s Sports bill. They believe women should be protected in sports, yet laughed when sex toys were thrown on to courts during WNBA games this season. (The players did not find it amusing, nor presumably did the 12-year-old girl who was hit by one of the toys.)

https://www.theguardian.com/sport/2025/oct/02/wnba-finals-basketball

This article pissed me off, and I agree with every word!