The WNBA, Transgender Athletes, and the Lost Art of Minding Your Own Business

Somewhere along the way, we lost the ability to mind our own business. Not because we stopped having private lives, but because we stopped believing anyone else was entitled to one.

Nearly every peaceful human choice is now treated as raw material for public adjudication. What you believe, whom you hire, what organizations you join, what rules those organizations adopt, what other adults choose to call themselves, and whom you want to associate with can all become everybody else’s political concern.

The fashionable explanation is that “everything is political.” Perhaps. But follow that proposition where it leads and the destination isn’t difficult to see: If everything is political, nothing is private. Freedom of choice and association become nonsense.

You cannot be free to associate unless you are free to refuse association. A church that must accept members regardless of its beliefs isn’t fully free to associate. Neither is a club that cannot establish membership requirements, a business that cannot choose its partners, or an individual who must justify private relationships before the tribunal of public opinion. Freedom that protects only the choices other people approve is not freedom at all.

The transgender controversy surrounding the WNBA is a nearly perfect illustration of how badly confused we have become. People are protesting over whether the league might eventually permit transgender women to compete. Former NBA players have announced plans to test its eligibility rules. Politicians have joined the festivities. Everyone has an answer to what the WNBA should do. Almost nobody seems interested in asking why it is their business in the first place.

The league’s collective bargaining agreement says players who are “women” are eligible without publicly resolving what that means for transgender athletes, and the league and players’ union are now discussing the issue. So there isn’t even an actual transgender WNBA player whose participation has created a competitive dispute. We are having a vitriolic national political fight over a private league considering what its own membership rules should be.

You may think allowing biological males who identify as women to compete would make a mockery of women’s basketball. Fine. Don’t watch. Don’t buy tickets. Don’t advertise. Don’t invest. If you’re a player, bargain against the rule or refuse to participate under it. Organize a boycott. Stand outside the arena with a sign. Tell everyone who will listen that the league has lost its mind.

But somewhere in that process, remember something we once understood: Your right to criticize somebody else’s decision is not ownership of the decision itself.

The same principle applies in the other direction. If the WNBA decides to restrict its league to biological females, people who consider that rule cruel or discriminatory are entitled to protest, boycott and withdraw their support. What they are not entitled to do is convert their disagreement into jurisdiction over a voluntary association.

This shouldn’t be difficult, but it has become so because modern political culture has trained us to believe that every disagreement requires a winner whose preference can somehow be imposed upon everybody else. We have forgotten that sometimes the proper resolution of disagreement is separation. You do your thing over there. I’ll do mine over here. Neither of us needs permission from the other.

There is, however, a fly in this libertarian ointment, and professional sports owners have nobody to blame but themselves.

The WNBA is privately owned, but parts of its physical infrastructure aren’t purely private. Some teams play in publicly owned or publicly subsidized arenas. Professional sports owners have spent decades perfecting the art of arriving at city hall as capitalists and leaving as corporatists with taxpayers as faux business partners. They want private control, private upside, and public assistance when somebody needs to pay for the building.

Then comes the inevitable surprise: The public starts behaving like a partner.

Well, what did you expect?

Once businesses take taxpayer money, taxpayers have every right to ask what happened to it. If government owns your arena, finances its renovation, guarantees its debt, or gives you favorable access to public property, the arrangement is political because you made it political. Whether taxpayers should finance the building, what rent you pay, who assumes the losses, and what conditions accompany the deal are no longer simply private questions.

This is one reason public-private partnerships deserve more suspicion than they usually receive. Their vice isn’t merely that they can privatize profits while socializing losses. They also politicize what would otherwise be private business decisions. Government and business crawl into bed together, and eventually nobody knows where either begins or ends.

But even here we need to recover our ability to draw a line.

If taxpayers helped finance the arena, the arena is their business. That doesn’t automatically make the starting lineup their business. Public financing may justify public stipulations concerning the publicly financed asset. It does not magically deputize every taxpayer as assistant general manager, league commissioner or membership committee.

The distinction is embarrassingly simple: What did the public actually pay for? If taxpayers paid for the building, debate the building. If they guaranteed the bonds, debate the guarantee. If politicians gave away public land, debate the land. Better yet, stop handing private sports enterprises taxpayer money and let owners build their own arenas.

Of course, this problem reaches far beyond basketball. We have spent decades not only mixing government with private enterprise but also politicizing nearly every aspect of ordinary human life. The result is a society filled with people who cannot encounter somebody else’s peaceful choice without wondering how to obtain jurisdiction over it.

You are allowed to think other people are wrong. You are allowed to think their associations are ridiculous, their rules unfair, their priorities backward and their decisions stupid. You can refuse to participate. You can persuade others to join you. You can build something better.

What you are not entitled to do is turn every disagreement into a public referendum over how others must live, organize, or conduct business.

A free society requires private domains in which people can make choices you would not make. That is the whole point. If freedom extends only to choices that survive public approval, we haven’t preserved freedom. We have merely democratized permission.

So argue about the WNBA if you like. Argue about transgender athletes. Argue about fairness, biology, inclusion and the meaning of women’s sports.

Just remember to ask the question our permanently politicized culture seems increasingly incapable of asking: Is this really any of your damn business?