Speaking ahead of the apparently upcoming 2023 WNBA season, women’s basketball star Brittney Griner described separating athletes based on their biological sex as a “ crime .”

Well, she would know, I guess.

Fresh from being on the embarrassing end of perhaps the worst prisoner swap in world history — having been released by Russian authorities following her detention for marijuana charges in exchange for the "Merchant of Death,” Viktor Bout — Griner responded to an ESPN reporter on the topic of transgender athletes.

“That ranks high on the list of things I’ll be fighting for and speaking up against,” Griner said . “Everyone deserves the right to play. Everyone deserves the right to come here, sit in these seats, and feel safe and not feel like there’s the threat or they can’t be who they are or like it’s just all eyes on them.”

“I think it’s a crime honestly to separate someone for any reason. So, I definitely will be speaking up against that legislation and those laws that are trying to be passed, for sure,” Griner added.

This is the same Griner who voluntarily played in Russia — a country with an open disregard for both basic human rights and so-called LGBT rights.

It’s laughable to suggest that people in Russia “feel safe” ... but I’m sure Griner’s $1 million per year salary helped grease her woke wheels a little.

The real issue here, however, beyond the ridiculous ideological hypocrisy of athletes simultaneously lecturing Americans on human rights while happily dancing for Russian dollars across the world, is that Griner’s position is not built on compassion but sheer arrogance.

She is routinely ranked among the best female basketball players in the world, and with prominence comes some level of perceived security. And it’s this security that breeds the lack of humility required to argue for the destruction of her own sport.

Griner assumes that her roster spot isn’t under threat, meaning that her vocal condemnation of “separation” based on biological reality appears to come with no risk whatsoever.

But what would happen if LeBron James became best friends with Dylan Mulvaney , threw on some lipstick and a dress, and entered the WNBA? What would happen if LeBronita “Queen” James took Griner’s spot and she was relegated to whatever league sits below the WNBA?

Would she consider the protection of her job a crime? Would she protest at her livelihood being destroyed? Would she complain that her decades of hard work and struggle were erased by James’s undeniable biological advantages?

The same can be true of women’s soccer star Megan Rapinoe , who has said she’s “100% supportive of trans inclusion” and that male domination of women’s sports under the guise of such inclusion is “just not happening.”

But given that the U.S. women’s team was beaten by FC Dallas’s under-15 boys squad in 2017, what would happen if Rapinoe lost her spot to almost any half-competent male soccer player in the United States? Surely her 100% support of “trans inclusion” would dip a bit.

When Griner and Rapinoe, both at the (current) peak of their respective sports, speak out in support of transgender athletes, their prowess is viewed as a proxy for authority.

But when we understand that their prowess is also acting as their own shield of false security, a shield that will eventually be smashed by male athletes who can only succeed as “women,” their authority fades away, leaving nothing but the words of virtue-signaling ideological gamblers who believe they have nothing to lose.

Ian Haworth ( @ighaworth ) is the host of Off Limits with Ian Haworth .