“Tell me what a woman is! We know you know!” an on-site rapper said to the crowd as she performed an original song. “Boys have a penis! Girls have a vagina,” she later said to those gathered, including apparel company XX-XY, which has been at multiple WNBA rallies.<\/p>\n
“I know truth. I live in truth, and the truth is men are stronger than women. And when they enter women’s sports, sports will change,” one person told USA TODAY Sports. “Women’s sports will definitely change by putting men in them. When they say there’s only 10, it starts out as 10 … So as someone who was an athlete and had a great time in all the camaraderie in women’s sports, I absolutely want to save them.”<\/p>\n
In 2024, NCAA president Charlie Baker testified to the Senate that he knows of fewer than 10 transgender students out of 510,000 college athletes.<\/p>\n
There has not been an openly transgender player in WNBA history.<\/p>\n
“Knowing that rallies are happening on both sides shows the platform that the W has and the stunts for attention are just continuing to try and ride the wave that we have,” Liberty superstar Breanna Stewart told a small group of reporters Saturday morning. “I want Liberty fans and even Indy fans that are going to come here tonight to be able to have this arena be a safe space.”<\/p>\n
<\/p>\n
Indiana Fever guard Sophie Cunningham shoots while being defended by New York Liberty guard Sabrina Ionescu during the second half of a Saturday, Aug. 22 game at Barclays Center in Brooklyn, N.Y.<\/p>\n
John Jones, Imagn Images<\/p>\n
The scene outside Barclays was relatively calm less than two hours before the 7 p.m. ET game, which boasted a sold-out crowd of 17,581 that watched the Liberty win 109-102.<\/p>\n
There were brief moments of tension, but not because the opposing groups addressed one another. Multiple unidentified people walked directly into where both groups stood and started shouting. This caused a brief stir, and one individual was escorted away from the premises shouting, “I wanna play in the WNBA! I wanna play in the WNBA!”<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"“Tell me what a woman is! We know you know!” an on-site rapper said to the crowd as…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":869031,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[629],"tags":[49,48,63266,82,630],"class_list":["post-869030","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-wnba","tag-ca","tag-canada","tag-lee-national","tag-sports","tag-wnba"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/869030","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=869030"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/869030\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/869031"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=869030"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=869030"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=869030"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}