All Things Sports

Hello guys, welcome back to All Things Sports. Did I forget to write over summer? Maybe. But who cares? As we enter August, the WNBA season is starting to get serious with the business end of the season quickly approaching. This season has set records for the league, with Yahoo Sports highlighting continued growth in viewership and ratings. Outkick News published data showing that viewership rose 21% compared to last year, even with superstar Caitlin Clark being injured.  However, as the competition has ramped up, the most bizarre phenomenon has swept across the WNBA. The WNBA is under attack from…..dildos???? 

Yes. You read that right, According to USA Today “fans” attending WNBA games have been throwing sex toys, most commonly bright-colored dildos, onto the courts in the middle of the game.  Now the WNBA is all over the case, with investigations being conducted and arrests being made for people that are throwing the toys onto the courts. The issue is that it does not seem to be one person responsible or even one group conducting these gross attacks. The first group that claims to have started the trend is the “Green Dildo Coin” group. They are crypto enthusiasts that launched the meme coin and intended for the coin to be a joke. However, they have begun throwing dildos on the court to protest a “‘toxic” environment in the crypto world. They are mad that influencers and scammers have begun to outcompete them in their world. So, OBVIOUSLY, the answer is to…. throw dildos on the court at WNBA games? Oh but don’t worry, a spokesman said that they didn’t do it because they hated women’s sports or to disrespect. Problem solved!!! The only part that MAY make A SLIGHT BIT of sense is the fact that they used dildos since they’re a dildo coin. But…. what? Now normally, I would give a scathing rant and opinion on why this is CLEARLY messed up and stupid, but I think Nancy Armour said it best in a USA Today Opinion article: “Immature crypto bros can’t understand throwing sex toys at WNBA players isn’t harmless fun”. She also called them man-babies and I think that is appropriate as well. As far as forms of protest go, calling it terrible would be a severe understatement. 

You see what these “bros” couldn’t understand while crying from their basements is that when you do something like this to try and go viral, and you do go viral, other people are going to recreate it in search of that virality. And low and behold, the last two people arrested in the first USA Today article mentioned are not affiliated with the group. It has become a trend. By the way, Kaden Lopez, one man arrested for throwing a toy during the game had his 9 YEAR OLD NIECE WITH HIM. Not relevant to the next bit of analysis, but I felt like I should mention that. 

Okay, so dildos are getting thrown on courts because some men got sad that their meme coins are getting outcompeted by influencers and now it’s a viral trend. But those men said that their coin was just a joke. Uh yeah, okay this bizarre situation just leaves us with misogyny and blatant discrimination. It does not take in-depth analysis to know that buying a ticket to a professional basketball game just to throw dildos at women is misogynistic. Moreover, the fact that people excuse the behavior under the guise of it being a prank is ridiculous. And now I feel obligated to mention that this is not the first time these toys have been thrown on the area of play in sports events. There are actually numerous cases where this happened including when Buffalo Bills fans would throw it at the New England Patriots after losing to them. However, this is the first instance where it has been thrown at a women’s game and you may be thinking that if it was a harmless joke at a men’s game, then it is the same at a women’s game. And I can see why someone would think that. However, I am going to argue why that is not the case, and this situation with the WNBA is both different and worse due to the context of the circumstances. 

First, let’s look at other instances of when it has occurred. USA Today found 3 such instances. The first is when Buffalo Bills fans threw the toys to try to distract the New England Patriots players because their team could not seem to stop Tom Brady. They did this to the Patriots only 2 more times and it has since stopped. While it was not necessarily right, there is no sign of repeated instances, and the reasoning behind it was that fans were mad Tom Brady is the GOAT (I can relate to their anger). Second was a one-off occurrence in an EPL soccer game in 2018. There is no explanation available, but it seems to be that a fan thought it was funny. However, there is no report of it happening since then. Finally Swedish Hockey fans for the team AIK Hockey did it to a rival player to taunt him in 2008 after a sex tape of his got leaked on the internet. While this isn’t right in any sense (and it is really brutal), this is not the same as what is going on in the WNBA. The same goes for the other 2 instances. They were not right, but they were isolated incidents and it never became a trend. 

However, it HAS become a trend so we have to understand why it is so much worse than before. And for now, let’s just throw aside the fact that this is down there with the worst protest ideas of all time. First of all throwing dildos, which are toy…. things, at women is a sign that their athletic performance is not as important as their sex according to Cosmopolitan magazine. Additionally we have to consider the context that the WNBA and its players have long faced ridicule and misogynistic for daring to make professional Women’s Basketball popular. The only thing Tom Brady faces ridicule for is cheating his way to 7 super bowls. The Hockey player had a sex tape leaked, and the premier league was honestly just some drunk fan probably. However, when it is time to throw these toys at female basketball players, it is apparently more popular and trendy, partly because it is mocking women. The trend has gotten so big that the most popular betting lines for the WNBA are on whether a dildo will be thrown at the game or not right now (YES THIS IS A REAL BETTING LINE). The reason pranks are funny is because they mock, and this prank mocks these players by demeaning them and showing that their work isn’t as valuable as their sexuality. While the other one-off instances didn’t mock the sexuality of players, this one does because the context is different between men and women. They are constantly told that they are inferior and this is just another, graphic way of showing that. While most pranks are harmless, this attacks the dignity of people who have been fighting to make their sport mainstream and popular. That crosses a line. 

So what can we do? Aside from having the WNBA check people for dildos (we live in crazy times), there’s not much we can do beyond raising awareness on why this “protest” has become a prank made in bad taste and with malicious intent. We can also buy the meme coin to stop the bros from crying even more in their moms’ basements, but I am not here to give financial advice. However, I do highly recommend that, starting September 14th, we all begin to tune in to the WNBA playoffs, so that we can support the WNBA, watch basketball that is becoming more entertaining every single day, and hopefully not see dildos on the court. 

P.S. Go follow the USA Today articles, they are my main source for this story and you can read more in depth material there.