Megan Rapinoe went after Enes Kanter Freedom on her podcast Why Are You Like This? this week. He answered Thursday on Fox News @ Night with a $5 million 1-on-1 soccer challenge. They were not on the same show. She talked. He answered later.
The stunt by Kanter works for one reason. Voices like Rapinoe spent years telling the country that sex in sport is optional. Once that door is open, a former NBA center can walk through it, call it protest, and dare her to prove the gap does not exist.
That is not a sideshow. That is the bill coming due. Womenâs categories exist because male advantage is not a feeling. It is strength, speed, and bone. Pretend otherwise and you do not get harmony. You get men writing the rules and women absorbing the cost.
Kanter is getting airtime because the people who lectured everyone about inclusion refuse to say the obvious sentence: men do not belong in womenâs sports. Mock him all you want. The publicity is the product of that refusal.
If the argument is honest, she can take the match or she can say no men in the womenâs game. Anything else is branding.