WNBA Coach Lectures Media Over Sex Toy Incidents, Says 'It's Not Funny'

If you haven't heard by now, the WNBA has a sex toy problem. And not in the way that you might initially expect. On three separate occasions, a fan has thrown a bright green sex toy onto the court (and now a forth dildo, but purple this time, since this was originally published). While many people find the practice amusing, Minnesota Lynx head coach Cheryl Reeve is not one of them. 

Not only was Reeve angry about the acts themselves, but she took aim at the media for the way the stories are being covered. 

"This has been going on for centuries: the sexualization of women. This is the latest version of that," Reeve began. "It's not funny, it should not be the butt of jokes on radio shows, or in print or in any comments. The sexualization of women is what's used to hold women down…. and we should write about it in that way." 

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When Reeve says "we," it’s unclear who she means. Is she now a part-time editor for ESPN? What she really means is YOU should write about this the way that the WNBA wants you to write about it. Sound familiar? It should, because that's something OutKick has been reporting on for over a year. 

The WNBA and its leaders – which includes Reeve, who is also the coach of the U.S. Women's National Team – desperately want to control narratives at all times. That's why they attempted to blackball OutKick from attending games before we shined a light on their practices and they backed down. 

WNBA coach Cheryl Reeve criticized media coverage of fans throwing sex toys at games, called it sexualization of women and demanded different reporting approaches. 

(Jesse Johnson/Imagn Images)

So, that takes us to Reeve's latest comments. Look, she's free to have her opinion. It's obviously not funny to her, and I understand why. It's funny to me, but she has no interest in finding out why I find it funny. Instead, she'd rather just label those people as "bigots" and "misogynists" than have an open conversation. 

Make no mistake: this was not Reeve's attempt to open a dialogue about the subject. She wanted to pontificate about the "sexualization of women" before issuing a strict directive to reporters about how they should do their jobs. In fairness to Reeve, the majority of the WNBA media will happily run with her comments and back her up. Most of the WNBA media simply operates as an added PR arm for the league. Thus, now that they have their marching orders, they're likely to be good little soldiers and do their jobs. 

Take Awful Announcing, for example. That's a radical-left-wing media outlet that immediately took Reeve's comments and did what they were told. In fact, they even added an extra wrinkle about the large number of lesbians in the league. 

"Many fans watching videos of these incidents online are clearly drawing a line between the dildos and the prominence of queer women in the WNBA. That is why Reeve called on the media to cover it as bigotry and for the league to put a stop to it as quickly as possible," they wrote. 

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Dang, Reeve didn't even bring sexual preferences into the discussion; but AA saw an opportunity to layer the victimhood, and they took it. See, this is what I mean. The majority of the media is going to cover it exactly as Reeve instructed. We're not in the majority. 

However, Reeve also said that the people throwing the objects should be caught and held accountable. I agree with that. Throwing objects at athletes is unacceptable behavior. This object happens to be funnier than most, but it still needs to stop. The joke landed, the clips went viral, and now it's time to move on — not because of some overwrought lecture about "sexualization," but because throwing any objects at athletes crosses a line.

That being said, it doesn't need to stop because of some ridiculous notion of "sexualization of women." It's about the safety of the athletes and the fans in attendance. By the way, dildos have been thrown during men's sporting events, too. There was no discussion about the "sexualization of male athletes" when it happened. People laughed, and then moved on. 

Once again, WNBA leaders are eager to turn an incident into a broader narrative of victimhood — and many in the media are all too happy to help. But hey, if the WNBA wants to control the narrative, maybe they should start by controlling what’s being tossed onto the court.