WNBA MVP Elena Delle Donne took to Instagram to address former NBA player Gilbert Arenas’ offensive comments about the women’s league with just the latest of her eloquent responses to the league’s detractors.

“Women were not put on this earth just for men to look at,” she wrote. “We are people. We have a purpose. We are role models. I am an athlete first and foremost. #ByeGilbert.”

Delle Donne’s comment came hours after Arenas wrote on Instagram that the best way for the WNBA to succeed is for the players to dress in their underwear to play basketball. He was rebuked by a statement from the NBA and WNBA as well as a number of WNBA players and their supporters.

On social media many have argued that Gilbert, who really is best known for that time that he threw his career away when he brought a gun into the Wizards’ locker room, isn’t worth the energy. After all, he’s irrelevant now and plenty of people say horrible things about the WNBA all the time. Whenever I write a story about it, 3/4 of the tweets responding to it are along the lines of “wait that still exists?” or “bor-ing.” Or worse.

But this isn’t the WNBA from 10 years ago that just had to be confident that if they kept playing, the fans would come and took the high road on snide comments made about the league (though because of the level of offensiveness of Arenas’ comments, they would have been moved to make a statement regardless of what year he had made them). This is a WNBA that has some of the biggest and most marketable stars in its history in Elena Delle Donne, Brittney Griner and Maya Moore. It’s a league that produced the first female NBA coach, a league that has a player that was one of the first athletes on Jay Z’s Roc Nation’s sports agency’s roster. And it’s one that NBA commissioner Adam Silver has been publicly addressing as a priority. The NBA’s biggest stars have been quick to acknowledge their female counterparts as well — something that is much easier for them to do with the advancements in social media than it was 10 years ago.

It’s also a league where its players have more access to social media and their own marketing to be able to form a stronger voice. Which is where Delle Donne comes in.

The Chicago star, who posted one of the best seasons in basketball history (for either gender) is rarely shy about acknowledging that there are some people who dislike the league.

“I feel like so many people disrespect the game without ever watching it. It’s generally the guys (on Twitter) who are cutting us down and saying get back to the kitchen or something ridiculous like that,” she told the Chicago Tribune earlier this year. … You know the NBA players, they respect us like crazy and support us. It’s those guys who were high school has-beens who want to cut down us WNBA players.”

Or in this case, an NBA has-been.

Meanwhile, on Instagram, Arenas seems to be relishing the attention that his Instagram posts have garnered. In his third and fourth post on the topic, he clarified one thing that he believes people were getting wrong about what he said. “Hahahahaha I didnt say anything about them being #Lesbians lol…” he wrote, before going into even more offensive territory that we’re not sharing on this website.

(Hopefully someone will also tell him that some of the women in the WNBA are, in fact, lesbians, open and proudly, because in 2015 there’s nothing even slightly scandalous about being a gay athlete.)

“#peoplehatethetruth,” he continued. “what makes me laugh is if you ask men,name a few women basketball players.. we only know the cute ones lol #mayamoore #skylarD #leilani #candiceparker #penny #suebird #lisaleslie #swincash #dianataurasi #mariastepanova #brittneyjackson and #hoopz from #flavaoflove hahahahahaha.”

The thing is though, according to the WNBA players who are proving that they’re not just going to sit by and let people insult their league anymore, no one cares what those people who can’t name many of the league’s players think. Because in their world, it would be nice if those people who doubted WNBA players’ abilities and marketability as Arenas does checked out a game.

But if they don’t, the players are making it clear that thanks to the power they’ve gained through social media, that no longer gives them an open license to insult the league.