Men are betting on the WNBA players' menstrual cycles, this is sick

But despite these powerhouse professional athletes breaking records left and right, there are still bets being made not based on their skills, not their performance on the court, but on what phase of their menstrual cycle they are in.

FadeMeBets claims to track a player’s stats over the course of a 24 to 38-day menstrual cycle looking for dips in their performance and then predicting that they must be in their late luteal phase (which is the second half of the menstrual cycle, from ovulation until menstruation starts).

In September, FadeMeBets shared his prediction that Breanna Stewart, the two-time WNBA Champion and three-time Olympic gold medalist, was going to perform poorly in an upcoming game because she was in her “late luteal phase,” claiming that she’d “be too tired to run down the court fast” and would have “less strength, less points.”

He also made a video about Aja Wilson being in her “late luteal phase” in August, where he predicted that she was going to get fewer rebounds because “her strength isn’t going to be there” and wrote in the comments, “Looked good in the first and now she’s heating up we need the cramps to kick in.”

“Not every woman is the same. Yes, there's the traditional 28-day cycle, but everyone's is different, and it varies person to person, month by month,” sports medicine physician Amy West told Wired. “Someone being able to predict that? Someone who's not very close to the menstruating person? It’s actually kind of silly.”

This prediction model seems to be gaining traction, with it being discussed openly on X, Reddit, gambling forums, and other influencers like Colin Myers, according to Wired. But West says that women having decreased strength and speed while menstruating isn’t a proven fact, and all women are affected by their cycle differently. There is also no way for these gamblers to know which players are on birth control or don’t get periods at all.

West also points out, “Some data actually shows that when women are menstruating, that low progesterone, low estrogen state may actually be a good, from a sports performance perspective.”

None of this should actually matter to men betting on women’s sports, regardless of their limited grasp on the science.

Beyond how invasive and misogynistic these betting practices are, they are also promoting the decades-long sexist trope that people who are menstruating are more “emotional.”

Nadya Okamoto, founder of the gender-inclusive menstrual product company August and author of Period Power, pointed out to Wired that this belief could impact pay. “One of the big issues in women's sports is pay equity, right?” Okamoto says. “If there's this narrative that 25 percent of the month, women are not gonna be competing at the same level, there are very dangerous repercussions to such a negative stigma."

This is invasive, disgusting, and disrespectful, even though it seems like only a few influencers and a gaggle of men on social media are gambling this way. Noticeably absent from the discourse? The voices of the players whose intimate health information is being used as fodder for social media content and for people to place gross bets.