The left needed the women to be furious.
That was the argument once the WTA announced that players would have to undergo sex testing to compete in WTA tournaments and meet eligibility requirements tied to the 2028 Los Angeles Olympics.
US WOMEN OLYMPIANS REACT TO HISTORIC SUPREME COURT RULING ON THE PROTECTION OF WOMEN’S SPORTS
This was supposed to be invasive and humiliating. It was supposed to prove, once again, that conservatives and women’s sports advocates were using female athletes as props in a culture war.
Then the top women’s tennis players in the world started talking.
Whoops.
Aryna Sabalenka, the WTA’s current top-ranked singles player, supports the policy. That isn’t surprising to anyone paying attention. She’s been clear on this issue for a while.
World No. 4 Coco Gauff didn’t oppose it, which created a much bigger problem for the activists. Gauff is exactly the type of athlete they expect to have on their side.
The top-ranked American woman, Jessica Pegula, said she doesn’t oppose it and, probably worse for the left-wing activists, said she hasn’t heard other players complaining about it, either. Pegula, the No. 3 women’s player in the world and a member of the WTA Players’ Council, is especially interesting because she typically shies away from talking about anything that isn’t actually tennis.
So the argument from the left is clear: sex testing in women’s sports is an attack on women.
Fine. Then where are the women?
The WTA’s updated policy requires players to complete a one-time screening for the SRY gene, which is typically found on the Y chromosome and involved in male sex development. The test can be done by cheek swab, blood test or saliva sample.
Players who test negative are eligible unless there is reason to believe the result is wrong. A positive test means the player cannot compete while further medical review is conducted. The WTA says the policy is designed to protect equal opportunities and fair competition in women’s tennis.
It’s a pretty straightforward policy and doesn’t include any of the “invasive genital exams” that the left has tried to fearmonger about.
Now, there are reasonable concerns worth raising.
Players deserve to know that the results will stay private and that the process won’t turn into a public spectacle. That’s medical information, and the WTA needs to protect it appropriately.
But those are hypothetical issues about the process. They are not arguments that women’s tennis can’t define who is eligible to compete in the women’s category.
That’s where the players come in.
Sabalenka has been one of the most prominent female athletes to speak out on protecting women’s sports. She said it’s important to keep fairness in the tour and that men are biologically stronger than women, which would make it unfair for women to compete against biological men. That’s been her position dating back years.
Pretty radical stuff, we know.
Men and women are different. Women’s tennis, like all women’s sports, exists because those differences matter. That’s not a right-wing theory. It’s the entire reason there’s a WTA separate from the ATP.
Of course Sabalenka understands it. Her sport is built on power, movement, speed, endurance and recovery.
Biology matters.
Gauff is the more revealing example.
Gauff has publicly embraced left-wing racial narratives, so she’s not someone activists can easily dismiss as hostile to their worldview. So if the left was going to get one of the biggest names in women’s tennis to denounce the WTA’s sex-testing policy, Gauff was probably the best bet.
It just didn’t happen.
Sure, Gauff trotted out multiple concessions to show that she’s still very much in the left-wing camp on gender ideology. She said she supports the trans community, added that the conversation is nuanced and claimed some people use protecting women’s sports as a way to “attack the trans community.”
Still, after all the qualifiers, Gauff didn’t oppose the policy.
She said she “kind of” agrees with protecting fairness in women’s sports and acknowledged the biological differences between men and women.
That’s the problem for the activists. Gauff gave them the tone they wanted. She didn’t give them the conclusion they needed.
Then there’s Pegula, who might be the most useful of the three because she’s not trying to become a symbol of anything here.
Sabalenka is the pro-woman example. Gauff is the progressive-athlete example. Pegula is the tennis player’s example. That’s not meant as an insult. It’s the point.
In January, a reporter tried to trap Pegula into criticizing President Donald Trump. She didn’t take the bait.
“I don’t like to kind of dabble too much into politics, just because it’s just not the space that I really want to say that much on,” she said at the time.
Pegula generally avoids political discussions and prefers to talk only about tennis. That’s what made her answer on the sex-testing policy interesting. Because, as much as the left tries to position protecting women’s sports as a political issue, it isn’t. It’s a common-sense, biological-reality issue. Even the mostly apolitical Pegula didn’t have a problem with the WTA policy.
So, if the locker room were secretly melting down over this policy, she’d probably know about it.
But Pegula said she doesn’t really have pushback and, more importantly, players haven’t really mentioned or said anything about it to her. She left open the possibility that more feedback could come once testing starts, which is exactly the responsible answer.
So far, though? No major complaints from the women who are supposedly going to be “humiliated” by a sex-testing policy.
That’s a problem for the people who keep insisting female athletes are being harmed by rules designed to protect women’s competitions. The women were supposed to be up in arms, talking about how these tests “violate” their rights and “invade” their privacy.
Instead, the most prominent public reactions from women’s tennis have been support, qualified support and basic acceptance.
That could change, but right now, the outrage is a lot louder outside the locker room than inside it.
Funny how often that happens when the women are allowed to speak for themselves.
