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WNBA star Sophie Cunningham has been widely accused of having conservative politics — partly because she is white and from Missouri, as she has pointed out, but also partly because she has never flatly denied being conservative. In a new ESPN profile, Cunningham fought back against assumptions about her politics while perhaps offering some insight into where those assumptions came from.
“I’m very much in the middle,” Cunningham told ESPN of her political views. She explained that there are things she agrees with and disagrees with on “both sides” of the aisle. “And that’s all I’ve ever said about my political beliefs. But people love to assume,” Cunningham said. She also said people have accused her of hating trans people, but “I never once said that.”
What she did say, however, was that she wants to “protect women’s sports,” suggesting she doesn’t think trans women should be allowed to participate. “I think that I am here to extend love. But I also think with that love is truth, being honest,” she said. “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.”
Cunningham’s concern about “biological men” sounds a lot like the popular conservative talking point that baselessly frames trans women as a threat to cisgender female athletes. The Trump administration has used the same fear-mongering argument to pass a flurry of anti-trans executive orders, including allowing federal agencies to withhold funds from organizations that don’t abide by an interpretation of Title IX that defines “sex” as the gender a person is assigned at birth.
In June, the Supreme Court’s conservative supermajority issued another blow to trans rights, ruling that states can ban transgender athletes from participating in girls’ and women’s sports. “To the Court, the facts do not matter, even though the consequences are serious,” Justice Sonia Sotomayor wrote in one of three dissents. “Sports, of course, are often zero sum, but the law need not and should not be.” I guess Cunningham disagrees.
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