Ted Cruz appears in transphobic sports film Lady Ballers
Ted Cruz will appear in a transphobic basketball film. (Bill Clark/CQ-Roll Call, Inc via Getty)
Senator Ted Cruz is set to make his film debut in a new feature-length “comedy” that shamelessly mocks transgender women in sports.
This week, the Daily Wire released a trailer for a real film they made, directed by and starring their founder Jeremy Boreing, which tries its best to poke fun at trans inclusion in sports.
The film, which is unsurprisingly skipping a cinema or TV release and going straight to DailyWire+, tells the story of a group of male athletes who decide to pretend to be women in order to dominate a women’s basketball league.
In case it wasn’t clear, the joke here is that, even though these dudes don’t stand a chance against other cis men, they can beat women athletes without so much as breaking a sweat, because all women are bad at sports.
The aim of this film, according to its creator, is to show how easy it is for cis men to pretend to be trans and compete in women’s sports – which is, of course, deeply untrue.
There is not one real-life example of groups of cis men abusing trans-inclusive regulations in order to take over women’s sports.
Not only that but there are already intensely restrictive barriers set up for real transgender athletes across the US and beyond – a measure that has proven to be damaging.
In the last few months alone, a number of sporting bodies have banned trans participants in some, or all, capacities.
“Hollywood won’t make a movie about how laughably absurd it is that we now allow grown men to call themselves women and then dominate women’s sports. So we did,” wrote Boreing, proudly sharing the film’s trailer to social media.
As well as trans women, the film also takes aim at indigenous people, the lack of interest in women’s sports, and women in general. Plus there’s a very thinly-veiled dig at trans icon Dylan Mulvaney and her Days of Girlhood TikTok series.
Not only does the film feature anti-trans activists Ben Shapiro and Riley Gaines, but it has a bizarre cameo appearance from Texas Republican Ted Cruz.
Showing no signs of embarrassment, Cruz re-posted the film trailer and tagged talk-show host Jimmy Kimmel, writing: “@JimmyKimmelLive, this is how you make basketball comedy that is actually funny. Take notes.”
Aside from the rabid excitement from transphobic commentators, the response to the Lady Ballers trailer so far has been rather underwhelming – an unfortunate turn-out for the film that describes itself as “the most triggering comedy of the year.”
Judging by the social media response, those who bothered to check out the trailer aren’t so much seething with rage as they are unimpressed.
“This looks like 90 mins of the same tired joke,” said one Reddit user.
“Calling it a ‘joke’ is pretty generous,” replied a second.
Another pointed out “Don’t feel like you get to pretend to care about the integrity of women’s sports when you make jokes about how nobody watches women’s sports. Giving away the game a little bit there.”
Over on X, someone else pointed out that it’s not so much the premise of Lady Ballers that people will have a problem with, as it is the lack of charisma and actual comedy.
“The thing about Lady Ballers is… the concept is not inherently unfunny. If the butt of the joke were the misogynistic men taking advantage of a social “loophole” (gender fluidity) to stop being losers….. that could be straight-up Always Sunny in Philadelphia material,” they wrote.
“The problem is… they are not the butt of the joke. Trans people are. And women in general are. It is a form of ‘comedy’ that is hateful and rotten to its very core. That’s why it’s not funny in the least. That and none of the cast have any of the charisma necessary for it.”
