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Enes Kanter Freedom’s Bigoted Stunts Have Nothing to Do With Protecting Women

The trans women in sports panic is nothing but a stalking horse for permitting violence against trans people—and we should celebrate players like Natasha Cloud who say so.

Enes Kanter was a mediocre NBA player who, in 2020, attracted more attention than he ever received on the court by decrying the Black Lives Matter movement and pushing to “get politics out of sports.” A year later, to celebrate becoming a US citizen, he legally changed his name to “Enes Kanter Freedom.”

But when it came to the performance art of being a right-wing talking head, Kanter had no game. Kanter’s off-court microphone skills, it seemed, were about as good as his on-court defense, and he was quickly cycled off of the Fox News gravy train. In 2024, he tried on a new persona of “former NBA player who supports the Israeli genocide on Gaza.” When the hype around that hot take waned, he became once again an ex-player without a team or any prospects of relevance.

But Kanter finally found a way to satisfy both his personal pathologies and attention-dopamine addiction—by claiming (with a smirk) that he is now a trans woman and demanding a roster spot in the WNBA.

This past Sunday, Kanter pushed it even further, making a spectacle of himself at a WNBA game between the Chicago Sky and Indiana Fever by wearing a shirt that read “WOMAN: Noun, adult human female.” The stunt prompted Sky vet Natasha Cloud to confront him from the court. When he rose from his seat and approached her with his arms outstretched, escalating the conflict, he was removed. As he was ushered out, he put his arms behind his back, as though he was being handcuffed. Later, he said, again with a proud smirk, he was removed from a WNBA game for “supporting women.”

After the game, Natasha Cloud posted on Threads: “To every trans kid/person, you are apart of MY community & tribe. You belong. You’re loved. You’re seen. You’re perfect as you are. & you will always be protected by me.”

Cloud has shown more courage and backbone than the WNBA executives that have let their league become an avatar for anti-trans bigots. Not coincidentally, Cloud has also been a consistent voice for the Palestinian people and for Black lives. She also can actually articulate why she holds those beliefs. In other words, she is the opposite of a talentless, attention-seeking hack.

The less said about Kanter and the........

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