Sport3 min(s) read
The WNBA has admitted its own security wrongly forced a mother and her teenage daughter to cover their T-shirts during Sunday's game between the Indiana Fever and the Atlanta Dream.
Kasey Thomason and her 17-year-old daughter Annie were sitting courtside at State Farm Arena in Atlanta wearing shirts from XX-XY Athletics, a brand that has become a flashpoint in the debate over transgender athletes in women's sport.
The shirts reference the biological sex chromosomes and have become associated with Indiana Fever guard Sophie Cunningham's public stance on protecting female athletics.
They wore them for four quarters without a problem.
Then, in overtime, a fan complained and security told them to cover up with Atlanta Dream shirts or leave the building.
"The WNBA is aware of interactions at last night's game in Atlanta in which fans were asked by league security to cover their shirts," a spokesperson said on Monday.
"This should not have happened."
That was the full statement - five sentences with no explanation for why it happened, who authorised it, or what the league plans to do to prevent it happening again.
Atlanta Dream then released a statement of its own.
Kasey Thomason told OutKick that the confrontation came after a nearby fan wearing a 'Protect Trans Rights' shirt appeared to complain to security.
She could not confirm whether that fan was also told to cover up, though she said she later noticed the woman had zipped a jacket over her shirt.
When security told Kasey and Annie to cover their XX-XY shirts or face ejection, Kasey pushed back.
"Biology and science is offensive?" she recalled saying.
Security cited no specific arena policy.
State Farm Arena's dress code prohibits clothing with explicit language, profanity, or derogatory characterisations.
The NBA Fan Code of Conduct bans obscene or indecent messages.
The XX-XY shirts contain neither.
They display the letters XX and XY, which are the standard notations for female and male chromosomes.
Kasey and Annie put on the Dream shirts to watch the end of the game. Indiana won 95-91.
The XX-XY shirts became a talking point in the WNBA after Sophie Cunningham publicly voiced support for keeping biological males out of women's sport earlier this summer.
The brand has since been embraced by fans who share that view and worn to WNBA games across the country.
The WNBA formed an internal task force to discuss the issue among team executives.
In a statement at the time, the league criticised what it called 'bad-faith efforts' to use the transgender athlete debate to 'demean or marginalise others'.
Whether a T-shirt displaying biological sex chromosomes constitutes demeaning or marginalising anyone is the question that keeps dividing the league and its fanbase.
On August 3, Seattle Storm minority co-owner Celeste Keaton confronted two teenage girls wearing XX-XY gear and supporting Cunningham at a Fever-Storm game.
The Storm apologised. The WNBA fined Keaton an undisclosed amount and suspended her from attending five home games.
Three weeks later, a mother and her daughter wearing the same shirts at a different arena were told by league security to cover up or get thrown out.
The WNBA said it shouldn't have happened. Whether it will happen again is a different question, and the league's five-sentence statement did not answer it.
