The F**k Around and Find Out legacy of the WNBA
By Joe Schaller
Guest Columnist
Oh, the drama!
The Women’s National Basketball Association chose to be political advocates from the moment of its inception in 1997. Because they were founded as a league for women—and have always been predominantly made up of Black and lesbian athletes—its players have historically viewed their platform as inseparable from fights for civil rights, gender equality, and LGBTQ+ visibility. They chose an identity political path and operated under a very specific model of activism, leaning overwhelmingly Democrat while acting as a collective unit (no individualism allowed).
They were the first sports league to dedicate games to pro-abortion activism.
In 2016 they embraced a “police targeting Blacks” stance after players made shakedown threats on the league, staging a “media blackout.” They refused to answer any questions about basketball, telling reporters they would only talk about social justice and Black Lives Matter.
In 2020 they supported the Black Lives Matter summer of protests/riots and political candidates as well.
That same year, the WNBA officially established a Social Justice Council to formally integrate political education and voting drives into the league’s operations.
Since 2020, the WNBA has institutionalized its activism by centering its efforts around abortion rights, gun control, and Lesbian-Gay-Bisexual-Transgender advocacy—setting up the inevitable house of cards.
Woe-men Is We: To nobody’s surprise, the league is currently facing severe frustration and exhaustion over being treated as a culture-war battleground. Their focus has shifted away from basketball and into hyper-politicized internet debates. Both the league’s administration and its players are actively pushing back against feeling trapped in a “political circus” of their own making.
While reaffirming their support for inclusion (not of viewpoint though) they explicitly declared, “We will not be used as political pawns.” “White privilege” was even invoked by a Black player after she was ejected for a vicious play on the white Sophie Cunningham.
WNBA Commissioner Cathy Engelbert has openly slammed outside critics. She denounced what she called “haters” who are using the WNBA as a “political football” to sow divisiveness.
Yet those seeds of divisiveness were sown 30 years ago by the league.
Today, they still refuse to define what a woman is and thus are reaping the woke confusion and chaos of collectivist identity political F**k Around and Find Out, aka cancel culture.
In the 1960s we called it karma—cosmic justice. Bad karma is negative spiritual energy and that aptly describes the unhinged left nowadays.
Sophie Cunningham is the courageous Indiana Fever individualist disrupting the establishment groupthink by wielding the same common sense shared by 75% of Americans. In an ESPN profile specifically asking her what political issues she felt qualified to speak on, she stated that she wanted to “protect young girls in a locker room, or young girls in sport who shouldn’t have to go against biological men.”
At least three of every four Americans say “DUH!,” yet the woke left claimed her comments sparked an intense, ongoing media firestorm and cultural rift across the league, deeply polarizing the basketball community.
For 30 years the WNBA has been dishing out their bigoted brand of social justice and now cry personal foul when exposed of their own anti-white anti-heterosexual intolerance and the ultimate irony of misogyny. It’s understandable that 40% of major businesses are scaling back their public Pride displays.
If you f**k around with a social justice council in a professional sports league, you will find out. That’s FAFO. Don’t blame Sophie.
