It’s price noting that Sarah Ashlee Barker will not be a Caitlin Clark-level participant. She was a rookie throughout the 2025 season, coming off the bench for the Los Angeles Sparks, averaging 3.1 factors per sport. Nonetheless, it’s unsurprising to us rational thinkers {that a} skilled was capable of beat a man who appeared to don’t have any basketball abilities in any way.
This phenomenon of males who play sports activities recreationally and suppose they’re higher than professionals will not be unique to feminine athletes. NBA participant Brian Scalabrine, who some contemplate to be one of many worst NBA gamers of all time, took up a few of his haters on the problem of taking part in him one-on-one again in 2013. He completely dominated them. He was 35, well beyond his bodily prime, and the blokes he performed had been no chumps. They had been younger former Division 1 faculty basketball gamers, and he proved simply how massive the disparity between the professionals and faculty basketball is.
Many viewers of the Sarah Ashlee Barker video argued that this matchup was not even shut. He didn’t even seem like a YMCA hooper. He was just a few random man speaking down about WNBA gamers on-line. Commenters argued that if she performed towards a Division I male faculty basketball participant, and even a complicated rec league participant, he would’ve gained. These sorts of hypotheticals are consistently swirling round conversations about feminine athletes. Even when they beat a person in an actual matchup, dudes at all times ponder the query of who would beat her in a hypothetical matchup that was barely completely different.
This type of debate goes again to essentially the most well-known “Battle of the Sexes” in 1973. A 29-year-old tennis participant, Billie Jean King, was challenged by a 55-year-old tennis participant named Bobby Riggs. He proposed that feminine tennis gamers had been inferior and that even at his superior age (for an athlete), he may beat any of the highest feminine gamers. He misplaced. Some argue that what Billie Jean King did wasn’t as outstanding as the general public response to it could lead you to consider, as a result of she was at her prime bodily prime, and Riggs clearly was not. That argument fails to think about that King was not the one feminine participant that Riggs performed in 1973. Just a few months earlier than taking part in King, Riggs beat Margaret Court docket, the world’s primary feminine tennis participant on the time.
The explanation we don’t see many prime feminine athletes taking part in in matchups like “Battle of the Sexes” is as a result of hypotheticals like, “Might a highschool boys basketball crew beat a WNBA crew?” are hardly ever requested in good religion. When video games between skilled girls and novice males happen, followers use them as alternatives to degrade feminine athletes and undervalue their abilities. Take, for instance, when a crew of boys underneath 15 beat the US Ladies’s Nationwide Staff in a pleasant scrimmage in 2017. The ladies had been making ready for a global competitors and weren’t giving it their all. Misogynistic followers take that as proof that teenage boys are far superior to those girls, leaving out the context that this sport was pleasant and these girls had been simply attempting to have some healthful enjoyable.
Perhaps it’s true {that a} Division 1 male faculty basketball participant may beat A’ja Wilson in a one-on-one. The explanation prime WNBA gamers like her don’t put this hypothetical to the take a look at will not be that they’re insecure about their very own skillsets or are afraid of wholesome competitors. They simply know that video games like this are hardly ever interpreted by so-called “followers” in good religion. They know that in the event that they lose or win, it doesn’t matter; their accomplishments and victories will probably be discredited in a roundabout way. They know individuals who wax poetic about WNBA gamers’ hypothetical matchups towards males don’t care in the event that they’ve gained MVP 4 occasions or have gained three WNBA championships in 4 years. They wouldn’t be obsessive about these hypotheticals if they really revered the athletes within the WNBA.
These gamers know that in the event that they lose to even one dude in an exhibition sport that has no bearing on their skilled athletic profession in any way, it makes circumstances for skilled feminine athletes even worse. Each on-line dialog about WNBA gamers negotiating for higher working circumstances and better pay will probably be suffering from responses about how they misplaced to XYZ male gamers, and due to this fact don’t need to make good cash for placing their our bodies on the road for the leisure of thousands and thousands.
Skilled feminine athletes must also be capable of casually play the sport they love for enjoyable with out worrying about whether or not they win or lose. It’s unfair that they’ve to hold the burden of getting society disvalue their athletic ability and labor just because they misplaced a foolish, goofy, non-professional sport. We reside in a world the place far too many individuals see feminine athletes as both delicate creatures who’re far too weak to ever compete towards any man in any context or figures that solely serve the aim of inspiring their daughters to play sports activities at college. Whereas it’s simple to chortle at YMCA guys who suppose they’re higher than skilled feminine athletes, it’s necessary to look at the YMCA man inside us all.
