With just under seven minutes remaining in a historic Game 1 of the WNBA Finals, a shower of boos rained down from one section of upset fans. While the Golden State Valkyries were struggling offensively and failing to surpass the opposing Atlanta Dream, this wasn’t a reaction to anything that was happening on the court. At that moment, arena security had started to escort a Valks fan from their seat after the fan had confronted a group of anti-transgender protesters.
The fan in question was Ryan, whom SFGATE agreed to identify by first name only in accordance with Hearst’s ethics policy. Ryan, who uses they/them pronouns, walked toward the five protesters, who were wearing black shirts from XX-XY Athletics, a sportswear company that refers to the identity of transgender people as a “lie.” The protesters had been taunting the trans person Ryan was seated with, flashing the logos on their shirts and smiling. Ryan pulled out their phone to film the protesters’ faces, and as the group flipped them off, Ryan responded in kind with a “F-k all of y’all.”
“I knew what the right thing to do was,” Ryan told SFGATE in a phone interview on Monday, hours before Game 2. “I was concerned that the person that I’m sitting next to is visibly trans, and I’m not visibly trans, and so I wanted to take the opportunity to make a poignant statement. Given that I have the privilege that I have of looking, and being perceived, the way that I look, I wanted to make a statement to them that was direct and confrontational.”
Ryan getting up out of their seat was enough for arena security to come down and investigate what had caused the conflict. When Ryan saw security begin to head down the aisle, Ryan and the person they were with quickly used markers to write “Trans Lives Matter” on the signs the two of them had brought. As security walked up the stairs, Ryan lifted up the sign, turning the boos into cheers.
For allthestoriesthathavebeenwrittenaboutthequeerpopulationwithinthefanbase – and the overwhelmingsupport of the broader Valkyries community – the team has not been spared from the broader anti-trans movement that has tried to use the WNBA as its culture war battleground. The fight over transgender inclusion truly entered the league after the publication of an ESPN profile of Sophie Cunningham in July. The Indiana Fever role player blew the anti-trans dog whistle of wanting “to protect young girls” from playing sports “against biological men,” a rhetorical sleight-of-hand implying that children are being forced to compete against grown adults.
Enter XX-XY founder Jennifer Sey, one of the five protesters at the Valkyries’ 68-64 win on Saturday. Sey has spent the past few months glomming onto Cunningham as a way to advance her startup, which actively donates to anti-trans organizations and created a fund for athletes who are vocally against trans people in sports. Her company’s shirts have been a staple of related protests at WNBA games around the country, including in Atlanta, where Game 3 and Game 4 of the WNBA Finals will take place; in Seattle, where Storm owner Celeste Keaton was suspended by the WNBA for confronting fans wearing the shirts; and even in San Francisco back in August before a Golden State game.
This seemed to be another case where the response to the people objecting to the shirts would be stronger than the response to the exclusionary messaging of the shirts themselves. However, Ryan eventually came back to their seat after a quick conversation with security, who Ryan says were otherwise polite and just doing due diligence in talking with both sides of the conflict. When security pulled the anti-trans protesters aside to talk, the crowd celebrated. Videos from Ryan’s seat show a mix of cheers in response to the group leaving, boos at what their shirts stood for and fans waving goodbye to the protesters. Sey would later post on social media that her crew received death threats, but a video she posted showed mostly sarcastic waves and one fan who flipped them off and said they should kill themselves. That fan was several rows above Ryan’s seat. All they heard was the support, which blew them away.
“It made me realize that we weren’t alone,” Ryan said. “We weren’t sitting there by ourselves, feeling this kind of intensity from these folks just directed at us, but that we had a whole stadium full of people that supported us, and that was really exciting. And I think Valkyries fans know that that’s who we are. But I witnessed it firsthand. I saw that that’s who we are. And my hope, my desire, is that these folks understand how unwelcoming of an environment it is for them, and that they stay away.”
SFGATE reached out to XX-XY with a list of questions about what happened at Saturday’s game, but the organization did not respond before publication.
This would not be the first time that anti-trans protesters wearing these shirts would be shouted down by the Valkyries community. They appeared outside Chase Center ahead of a Golden State game against the Minnesota Lynx on Aug. 19 to demand the WNBA make a statement that allows them to wear the XX/XY shirts without being kicked out or being told to cover their shirts up. (Three days prior, security at an Atlanta Dream game against the Indiana Fever told two women wearing the shirts, as well as someone wearing a shirt supporting trans people, that they needed to cover their shirts up. The next day, the WNBA said security had been in the wrong.)
Coincidentally, Arne Johnson, a volunteer for Trans Kids Belong, wanted to organize an impromptu rally outside Chase Center at that same August game to thank Golden State head coach Natalie Nakase and star Gabby Williams for their recent vocal support of the trans community. The plan was to show up and hopefully convince a few people to rally together as a show of gratitude. But that plan was quickly thwarted when he saw that the sea of Valkyries fans outside the game were already on his side.
“We got there, and within like 12 seconds, we were like, ‘Oh s-t! The rally’s already here, we don’t have anything to add to this!'” he told SFGATE in a phone call on Monday.
They scrapped the rally to instead simply hand out posters, which organizers had quickly printed, and let people do whatever they’d like with them.
“We don’t have to rally these people,” he recalled thinking. “Like this is already maybe the largest queer rally outside of Pride that I’ve ever seen.”
It wasn’t a surprise to Johnson that the posters were popular in general given the trans-inclusive environment outside the arena, but it was a bit of a shock that the 1,000 posters they had printed out vanished within 40 minutes. He said he wasn’t aware of the anti-trans protesters at first, citing their limited size and the fact that he says Chase Center security moved his group handing out posters away from the plaza toward the sidewalk. As it turned out, people were using those posters thanking Williams and Nakase to counterprotest.
“There was a phalanx of people holding our posters at the block, so people didn’t have to look at these ugly signs that they had,” Johnson said, holding back tears. “What we had thought was, ‘We don’t have to rally anybody. We just give people stuff, and then they’ll express themselves.’ This is like an incredibly expressive community, and so they did. They took the posters and used them to wall these people off …
“I think that’s the uniqueness of the WNBA relationship between the fans and the players, that there is that dynamic of great love and great feeling, but it’s also grounded in social awareness and justice.”
To Johnson, the validation he saw that day in August, as well as what he saw later on social media on Monday, means so much. As the parent of a trans kid, he knows that this level of bigotry spreads beyond WNBA games – for example, to school board meetings where entire groups of adults fight against the existence of his child, fights he sometimes has to undertake alone.
“I know people in the WNBA feel this degradation by this energy coming in,” he said. “But, as a person who’s a parent of a trans kid who’s for the last two years been fighting many times alone in the darkness … I am in some ways grateful that the rest of the world sees how awful these people are. Because we’ve tried to persuade folks, we’ve tried to tell journalists and politicians. These people are really mean, they’re really awful, and they often don’t understand or believe us. And now the world understands.”
For many of the supporters of transgender people, the sports argument is just the tip of the iceberg of something larger. A Mother Jones story published in July noted that just one week after the Supreme Court allowed states to ban trans girls from playing in girls sports, the Heritage Foundation, a huge supporter of the decision, released a report calling for the rollback of Title IX, the federal law that bans sex discrimination in education. Both Ryan and Johnson highlighted some form of this connection in their interviews.
This struggle is set to continue throughout this series. Sey has already said she is planning to attend Game 4 of the Finals in Atlanta on Saturday, and former NBA player Enes Kanter Freedom, an anti-trans activist who has for months claimed to be a woman in an attempt to subvert what he calls unclear rules on who can play in the WNBA, has promised to be at Game 3 on Wednesday. Earlier this season, he wore a shirt reading, “Woman,” followed by “Noun. Adult human female,” while sitting near the court during a Chicago Sky-Indiana Fever game. During the game, Chicago guard Natasha Cloud got into an argument with the ex-pro, and the 34-year-old was ejected from the stands. For all the victories that Valkyries fans have had over anti-trans activists in the Bay Area, it’s not clear that those wins will guarantee any change elsewhere.
“I’m concerned for other arenas around the country,” Ryan said. “In Atlanta, I don’t know if they’re going to get the same kind of welcome or vitriol from the fans there. I want those folks to feel like they’re not welcome anywhere because what they’re doing is hate speech, and it hurts trans people, and it hurts women, and it hurts children.”
According to a report from the Athletic, the Dream and the WNBA declined comment about Kanter Freedom’s expected attendance.
Eventually, the anti-trans protesters at Saturday’s game were led back to their seats. The two sides of the original conflict were told not to interact with one another anymore. The protesters continued to claim they were just at Chase Center to enjoy the game. But in the sold-out crowd, they were the largest group of “fans” who weren’t wearing shirts representing either team on the floor, including the game’s giveaway shirt, which turned the crowd into a sea of violet. Perhaps they could still enjoy the outcome. After the protesters’ brief departure, the Valks went on a 9-2 run as Golden State secured its first Finals victory in franchise history.
More Valkyries
– See the raucous ‘Ballhalla’ crowd of Valkyries fans at Game 2 of WNBA Finals
– Conservative media can’t stop complaining about Valkyries, Dream skipping anthem
– Kaitlyn Chen is the Valkyries’ ‘goofy’ secret weapon
– The Valkyries tripled down on a hotly-debated hoops strategy. It worked.
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This article originally published at Anti-trans protesters showed up at the WNBA Finals. Valkyries fans shut them down..
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