The Indiana Fever’s enforcer has finally gone too far.
The plucky WNBA guard Sophie Cunningham — transformed into a star last year after she tackled an opposing player who poked her teammate Caitlin Clark in the eye — has caused a storm of outrage with fairly mild comments about the issue of males competing against females in competitive sports.
“I got a lot of negative feedback about me hating trans. And I’m like, ‘I never once said that,'” Cunningham told ESPN. “I think that I am here to extend love. But I also think with that love is truth, being honest. And I want to protect young girls in a locker room, or young girls in sport who shouldn’t have to go against biological men.”
It is difficult to imagine a more measured or polite defense of women’s sports. These gentle comments represent the views that we would expect most female athletes to hold. After all, the entire existence of the Women’s National Basketball Association — alongside every other women’s sports division — rests on the assumption that male athletes naturally possess physical advantages that allow them to easily dominate.
Of course, in recent years, male athletes have claimed titles and scholarships that should have been awarded to women or girls, and some have inflicted emotional distress on female athletes by compromising single-sex changing facilities.
Since the interview was published on Tuesday, Cunningham has been subjected to intense hostility. Unsurprisingly, LGBTQ+ enthusiasts condemned Cunningham as a “transphobe,” “bigot,” and “trash human being” who is “grifting” as a “TERF” and spewing “hateful propaganda” solely for financial gain.
Notably, these online crusaders neglected to set forth any actual argument. Rather than engaging with what Cunningham said, they stressed how unforgivable it is that she said it.
But thankfully, Cunningham didn’t cave to the malicious activists.
“I said what I said, I think it’s kinda common sense,” Cunningham told reporters on Wednesday. “I’ll always believe in that. I think it’s really important to protect children, and that’s little girls who are also involved in that category . . . I’m not a very political person, but I do have beliefs. I have morals, and I’ll always stand on those.”
Cunningham is entirely correct: Female athletes, and girls in particular, have to be protected from the harms that are directly inflicted on them by welcoming males in their divisions — and this has always been the “common sense” view, even though radical progressives insisted otherwise.
This isn’t Cunningham’s first experience as the victim of a struggle session due to her views on sex and women’s sports. Late last year, she said it is “probably true” that some middle-school-age boys could defeat WNBA teams, which was unfairly construed by commentators as belittling her own league. But then as now, Cunningham just says what everyone knows: Biological differences between men and women result in distinct physical advantages that are relevant to athletic performance. (A team of male teenagers defeated the women’s national soccer team in a scrimmage a couple of years ago.)
It’s unfortunate that stating something so obvious requires courage. But brave women like Cunningham, who pursue the truth without malice and maintain their principles when facing aggressive bullies, are helping to restore sanity to this issue.
Cunningham reminds us all that facts have nothing to fear, and she demonstrates that affirming our values — especially those that are regrettably controversial — need not be motivated by bitterness. She should serve as a role model to young girls everywhere who hope to pursue their passions, and other female professional athletes who might feel cowed into staying silent on this issue should follow her lead.