Recent incidents of fansthrowing sex toys on the court during WNBA games have spurred a wide range of reactions from sports lovers online. But one mental health expert has thoughts about what it really conveys to women.
The first reported incident occurred on July 29 during a game in College Park, Georgia, between the Atlanta Dream and Golden State Valkyries. Someone threw a neon green sex toy on the court — when the score was tied with less than a minute left in the game — forcing play to stop momentarily.
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Some people online laughed off the incident at the time, with several comparing it to when fans threw sex toys on the field at Buffalo Bills vs. New England Patriots NFL games in 2016 and 2017.
But the sex toy-throwing debacle did not end there. The same thing has occurred at two other WNBA games, on Aug. 1 and again on Tuesday.
When asked about the incident at the Aug. 1 game between host Chicago Sky and the Golden State Valkyries, Sky center Elizabeth Williams told reporters afterward that she thought it was “super disrespectful.”
“I don’t really get the point of it. It’s really immature. Whoever’s doing it just needs to grow up,” she said, CNN reported.
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“ARENA SECURITY?! Hello??!” New York Liberty forward Isabelle Harrison wrote on X, formerly Twitter, later that same night. “Please do better. It’s not funny. never was funny. Throwing ANYTHING on the court is so dangerous.”
And on Tuesday, someone threw a sex toy on the court that went toward Indiana Fever guard Sophie Cunningham during her team’s game against the host Los Angeles Sparks. While Cunningham has appeared to takethe incident in jest, other players and fans of the league on X have called the acts “creepy,” demeaning and misogynistic.
According to The Associated Press, the WNBA has said that spectators who throw objects onto the court will face a minimum one-year ban and be subject to arrest and prosecution. The AP also reported that sex toys were also thrown at games in New York and Phoenix last week, but that the sexually explicit items didn’t reach the court in those incidents.
At least two men have since been arrested after they were each accused of throwing sex toys in separate incidents at WNBA games.
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It’s important to consider what these repeated incidents are conveying, considering the target is a women’s sports league of predominantly Black players and a significant number of women representing the LGBTQ+ community. Not to mention, WNBA players have been advocating for better compensation and more respect for women’s sports for years.
Alexandra Cromer, a licensed professional counselor with Thriveworks, said that people throwing sex toys onto the floor of a women’s sports game is “inherently disrespectful, demeaning, and convey[s] a misogynistic message.”
Cromer, who was a college athlete herself, told HuffPost that she believes throwing “anything onto the court of active play of any sport” communicates “a disrespect for the players and the game at hand.”
“Utilizing a sex object as something to be thrown onto the court communicates a derogatory message to women; that they are not able to exist in an autonomous space without being reduced to a sexual being, an object, and something unable to be removed from a male perspective/view,” she later continued. “Particularly, including the high prevalence of players who are in the LGBTQ community, this further pushes misogynistic and heteronormative narratives and insults.”
The WNBA has said that anyone who throws objects onto the court will face a minimum one-year ban and will be subject to arrest and prosecution. via Associated Press
Some of the jokes about the incidents reflect a lack of respect for women, Cromer said.
“I do think that a lot of humor that is reported to be found in these incidents is due to the lack of respect for women, queer women, women of color, and the industry of women’s sports as a whole,” she said, adding, “Women work just as hard, if not harder, due to racial and gender bias, to progress towards professional sports levels. Yet, engaging in this behavior communicates that their accomplishments are not ‘serious.’”
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Cromer said that society in general tends to view men’s accomplishments and successes as something to be respected. And the fact that these repeated incidents haven’t occurred at NBA games “highlights the discrepancies in respect between male and female sports,” she said.
Cromer emphasized that it’s also important to consider that throwing a sex toy — particularly a dildo — on the court of a women’s sports game can potentially cause emotional harm.
“There could be players who have been sexually assaulted or abused, there could be players with undisclosed sexual and or physical traumas, and there simply exists the fact that using a dildo communicates degradation; that all of your hard work and successes are unable to be viewed outside of your gender as it relates to a sexual object,” she said.
Furthermore, Cromer pointed out, throwing an object onto the court has the potential to be dangerous and cause physical harm.
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“When you engage in this behavior, you communicate a blatant disregard for [a player’s] physical and emotional safety,” she added.
