It would be great if women who wanted to play basketball had a league of their own. They don’t, though. Instead, they have the WNBA, which is a political action committee doing layups and free throws.

The difference between a women’s basketball league and the WNBA is, well, difference. A women’s basketball league is for women, because women are different from men. The WNBA, by contrast, serves a fictional omni-equality paradigm, a political utopia, according to which there is no difference at all between men and women. When differences are respected, women thrive. When differences are ignored, women suffer. The WNBA consistently chooses the latter.

Many others disagree, thank goodness. Recently, men’s basketball standouts Enes Kanter Freedom and Royce White declared their intention to stand for the WNBA draft. These acts of comic heroism spring from a prior act of heroism, by a woman. Earlier this summer, Indiana Fever guard Sophie Cunningham spoke out against allowing men to play in the WNBA. This was an entirely reasonable thing to do, considering what the “W” in WNBA stands for. Cunningham was rightly concerned that men might be allowed to play in her league.

But Cunningham’s commonsense, pro-woman remarks are entirely out of place in the WNBA PAC. Golden State Valkyries coach Natalie Nakase and Minnesota Lynx coach Cheryl Reeve came out against Cunningham and in favor of men in the WNBA. WNBA commissioner Cathy Engelbert sent out a memo which did *not* say that men would not be on WNBA courts or in WNBA locker rooms anytime soon. When women’s sports defender Riley Gaines tried to show her support for Cunningham at a Lynx-Fever game, a stadium staffer tried to shut Gaines down (see here).

(By the way, in Norse mythology the valkyries are all female. Maybe Golden State would like to change its team name to something more inclusive?)

Let’s return to the original logic behind the WNBA to see why Cunningham is right. Women and men are different. Women cannot beat men in most sports. Women need separate leagues, otherwise they will just get trounced, and physically injured (and sexually assaulted), by men. When I was in high school I played soccer. My position? Left Bench. I was terrible. I loved practicing and going on team tournament trips, but my contribution to most games consisted of cheering from the sidelines. When we scrimmaged against the high school girls’ team, however, I transformed into Maradona. I could score at will. I was a soccer god. Why? Because the girls were even worse than I was. Their best player was my distant inferior. And I was really, really bad. Women have separate sports teams and separate leagues because women and men are different. (I can’t believe I have to explain this to some men — maybe they never played sports or met a woman?)

Transgenderism denies this difference, but the difference is there no matter how much people refuse to see it. The notion that men can become women is anti-scientific nonsense. Worse, it’s often a pretext for men to take advantage of women, assault them, terrorize them, harm them, violate them, ruin their lives. Nakase, Reeve, Engelbert, and others inside and outside the WNBA are not thinking about women when refusing to bar men from the league. They are thinking about politics. Period. And women and girls pay the price for it.

By sinking into the political mire, the WNBA — which might have been, you know, a women’s basketball league — became a stage for political performance. Instead of letting women shoot hoops, it makes women jump through them. You have to have certain political opinions, or else. You have to mouth platitudes about men being women, or else. The WNBA has devolved to the status of a transgender restroom. There are no transgenders. There are just people who have given their bodies and psyches over to politics. But if you have a transgender restroom in your building, then you have jumped through the right hoop. You’re one of the enlightened people. If you say that women can shoot hoops with men and everything will be hunky-dory, then you have jumped through the right hoop and ESPN will applaud you. Sure, you’re participating in misogynistic and frankly embarrassing groupthink. But at least you won’t get called out by the New York Times.

What Cunningham, and White, and Freedom, and others are doing is refusing to jump through hoops. They want women to be able to play hoops. I want women to be able to play hoops, too. The only way they can do that safely and enjoyably is to bar men. Everything else is politics.