A bizarre and decidedly crude string of incidents has eclipsed the action on the court in the WNBA this week and top figures in the league are calling out the disrespect they’re feeling as a result.
What began as a seemingly isolated incident of a fan throwing a sex toy onto the court during a game on July 29 has spawned a series of copycat incidents, drawing outrage from players, coaches and commentators alike. The reported story behind how it all began has opened a strange window into the Gen Z meme culture, the desire to “go viral”, the bro culture surrounding cryptocurrency and the continued sexism and misogyny that still surrounds women’s sports.
Two men, one 23-year-old, according to Reuters and another 18, per CNN affiliate KPNX, have been arrested over the alleged incidents and a group of cryptocurrency meme coin creators say they’re behind it. The charges associated with the acts include disorderly conduct, public indecency/indecent exposure, and criminal trespass.
The incidents have been the subject of jokes from some right-wing commentators, notably Donald Trump Jr., but those closest to the incidents don’t find them funny.
“This has been going on for centuries, the sexualization of women,” Minnesota Lynx head coach Cheryl Reeve told reporters on Thursday. “This is the latest version of that. And it’s not funny and it should not be the butt of jokes on radio shows, or in print or any comments.”
“The sexualization of women is what’s used to hold women down and this is no different. This is its latest form, and we should write about it in that way. These people that are doing this should be held accountable and we’re not the butt of the joke. They’re the problem.”
On Friday, a WNBA spokesperson said the league was working with law enforcement agencies to pursue “anyone engaged in this conduct or otherwise involved in sponsoring this reckless and unacceptable behavior” so that they will be arrested and charged with relevant felony charges.
Why does this keep happening?
The WNBA is no stranger to being the target of sexism and racism. While the league is synonymous with inclusivity, especially for Black and queer women, it has found itself caught up in the larger American culture war in recent years as its popularity has skyrocketed. Some see this trend of throwing sex toys into the middle of games as the latest manifestation of that.
Mariel Barnes, an assistant professor at the University of Wisconsin-Madison who works with the university’s Sexual Violence Research Initiative, told CNN she believes the incidents amount to sexual harassment.
“They’re trying to do their job, which is to play basketball, and by throwing these … objects on the court, I think the people who are doing it are trying to make a point about women, and a point about women’s sport in particular, and essentially it’s harassing people at work,” she said.
“These kinds of incidents reveal more generally how misogynistic and hateful society still is towards women and toward women who are successful … it’s just indicative of a broader backlash that’s happening against women in modern day society,” she added.
The story took another bizarre turn on Thursday when a group of cryptocurrency meme coin creators claimed responsibility for some of the incidents, which they confirmed to CNN on Friday.
A spokesperson for the group told USA Today that members had started throwing the green items to coincide with the launch of a new meme coin, the name of which is a play on a type of sex toy.
Just before the first incident on July 29, people in the group’s Telegram chat were sending each other memes, asking at which WNBA game the stunt would happen and talking about exactly how viral they were going.
When the sex toy hit the court during a game, the Golden State’s Valkyries’ 77-75 victory over the Atlanta Dream, they could barely contain their glee.
In the time since, three more sex toys have reached the court during WNBA games while at least another two were thrown but didn’t reach the court, according to social media posts seen by the Associated Press.
Police have arrested two people in connection with the incidents, but it isn’t clear whether they are both part of the crypto group. The group told CNN they were in touch with one of the men arrested who is part of their community and that the other man arrested was a “copycat.”
The repeated incidents are inspiring action in another online space beloved among young men: Sports gambling
On the online betting site Polymarket, people bet more than $460,000 on whether another sex toy would be thrown at a WNBA game by Friday. Another site took bets on the color of the next sex toy thrown.
One user, whose X handle matches the one ESPN and USA Today named as the spokesperson for the crypto group, posted a screenshot of winning $20,000 on a bet related to the incidents.
The spokesperson said the new coin was in protest of the current state of the crypto market and the group said they were “viral stunts” to gain attention for the coin. The spokesperson rejected the idea that the incidents were disrespectful toward female athletes.
“It isn’t a movement against women, it is targeted to bring awareness to meme culture and the crypto space,” the group told CNN.
When asked if they had targeted any male sports leagues for similar incidents, the group told CNN that it had also shown a sex toy on camera at a Major League Baseball game and hinted more are coming.
“We are only 10 days into pranks we picked the WNBA first as it was already experiencing some controversy in the media and we more or less targeted the hot topic,” the group told CNN.
For Christine Brennan, a longtime sports columnist for USA Today and a CNN contributor, the notion that the perpetrators “mean nothing” is “ridiculous.”
“They’re targeting these incredible women,” she told CNN. “At this moment for the WNBA, when there are more eyeballs than ever before, it makes a lot of sense if you want to cause trouble and be awful towards women … to do something like this to get fame. … It’s absolutely the worst possible thing for a league that’s just exploding in interest.”
What effect is this having on the WNBA?
For all the talk of the WNBA enjoying record-breaking viewing figures and reaching a new moment in which women’s sports have ascended to a new level of popularity, this trend highlights the sexism still directed towards the players and the league, even if it is latent rather than explicit for the group claiming responsibility for it.
Among the players, there was confusion at first – after all, a bright green sex toy flying onto a basketball court was not a common sight a week ago – and some of them even joked about the situation.
Fever guard Sydney Colson appeared on her podcast dressed in green and sat for a deadpan interview as the “inanimate object,” a stunt that prompted Angel Reese to tease her after the second incident.
“Hey (Sydney),” she joked. “Who do you keep throwing your mean green in different arenas… it’s getting weird.”
But even last week, when some players were trying to make light of the situation, others were expressing a sense of exasperation at having to deal with it all.
“It’s super disrespectful,” Sky center Elizabeth Williams told reporters last Friday. “I don’t really get the point of it. It’s really immature. Whoever’s doing it just needs to grow up.”
And as the incidents have become more and more common, players have raised safety concerns about fans throwing things from the stands.
WNBA commissioner Cathy Engelbert called the trend “totally unacceptable.”
“Hopefully, it just ends with the fact that, if you want a felony conviction on your record, go ahead and do it,” she told Sportico Sports Business before the latest incident on Thursday. “But obviously it can be very dangerous to throw anything, let alone what they are throwing.”