The first time a bright green sex toy was hurled onto a WNBA court last week in Atlanta, players mostly laughed it off and some posted social media jokes. When it happened a few days later and interrupted a game in Chicago, Sky center Elizabeth Williams called it “super disrespectful.” After a third incident during a Sparks-Fever game on Tuesday, L.A. guard Kelsey Plum kicked the object off the court.
It’s natural for players to wonder how they should react to these bizarre, brazen and potentially embarrassing and dangerous incidents. Whatever the purpose behind this trend — a coordinated effort or one-offs by attention-seekers — it’s not incumbent on the players to laugh along with this supposed joke. Because these are not just silly pranks.
MLB, MLS and preseason NFL games are ongoing. But this is only happening at WNBA games? … Interesting.
The WNBA has grown exponentially in the last two seasons — record attendance, climbing television viewership and massive financial investments. The league and its star players are now regarded as mainstream, included in the national sports conversation like never before.
But these women are still the subject of an occasional punchline. While players are negotiating for higher salaries, they’re still fighting for their reputations to be respected as elite professional athletes. They have now had to be graceful and coolly navigate being unfairly thrust into an obscene moment.
“Everyone’s trying to make sure the W is not a joke and it’s taken seriously, and then that happens,” Sophie Cunningham said on Tuesday’s episode of her “Show Me Something” podcast. “I’m like, how are we ever going to get taken seriously?”
ARENA SECURITY?! Hello??! Please do better. It’s not funny. never was funny. Throwing ANYTHING on the court is so dangerous.
— Isabelle Harrison (@OMG_itsizzyb) August 2, 2025
What compels someone to sneak a sex toy into a basketball game and throw it on the court at athletes is beyond my comprehension, but it’s telling that this is only happening right now at WNBA games.
Humiliation, often lewd or sexual, has long been used as an attempt to make women feel uncomfortable in sports or diminish their place in this space.
For centuries, athletics was a world for men only — a sanctum to prove their masculinity. Into the 20th century, women were widely discouraged from encroaching on this space as medical “experts” decried exercise as detrimental to childbearing and their fragile emotional state. Women, of course, increasingly proved those theories as nonsense, but as they displayed athletic prowess, their femininity and even their sex was questioned, most notably in Olympic and international competitions.
By the mid-1940s, international sports committee leaders required female athletes to have “femininity certificates.” Some were subjected to a “nude parade” in front of a panel of doctors (or asked on their backs to hold their knees to their chests for the doctors to take closer inspection) to prove they were female.
More messages — often overt — were sent to women through the years. Katherine Switzer was grabbed in an attempt to stop her from running the 1967 Boston Marathon. In the lead-up to losing to Billie Jean King in their 1973 tennis match, Bobby Riggs said, “Women belong in the bedroom and kitchen, in that order.”
Women in sports journalism have also been subjected to lewd gestures, unwanted advances and vulgar comments by male athletes. Lisa Olson said she was sexually harassed in the 1990 Patriots locker room while working for the Boston Herald, and Sacramento Bee reporter Susan Fornoff wrote about the intimidation she faced covering the Oakland A’s. They’re only the most prominent of cases among the many women who’ve experienced demeaning treatment in an effort to scare them off from covering men’s sports.
Most women who have played or been involved in sports have a story about being doubted or denigrated.
In these recent incidents, it’s a stretch to argue targeting the WNBA wasn’t strategic and intentional. Making a sex toy the focal point of games in a league that has perhaps the most openly gay and queer players doesn’t seem like an accident either.
The W has been lauded for its world-renowned athletes, but there’s no denying it’s also frequently used for bad-faith arguments about gender, race and sexuality.
Misogyny in women’s sports — like in society – is often subtle. However, in this instance, the message being sent by the people throwing these sex toys on the courts is loud and clear.
This is not just a prank or an opportunistic viral moment, but another attempt to demean women in sports.
(Photo: Erica Denhoff / Icon Sportswire via Getty Images)
