Indiana Fever guard Sophie Cunningham, who has never been shy about voicing her opinions, found herself at the center of the transgender athlete discourse this week after making comments about what needs to be done to “protect women’s sports” in an ESPN feature.
“I got a lot of negative feedback about me hating trans. And I’m like, ‘I never once said that,’” Cunningham said. “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.”
Cunningham, who some fans have dubbed “MAGA Barbie,” and who Chuck Klosterman predicted will be on a Presidential ticket in 2050, followed up by insisting that she does not lean right or left politically.
“I’m very much in the middle,” she said. “I agree with things on both sides, disagree with things on both sides. And that’s all I’ve ever said about my political beliefs. But people love to assume.”
Stephen A. Smith, who has flirted with the idea of running for the nation’s highest office himself, said that Sophie Cunningham “is a thousand percent right” in her assessment of the issue. Smith cited the “unfairness” of an NBA player transitioning and playing in the WNBA as an example supporting Cunningham, despite it being both incredibly unrealistic and not something the transgender community has ever fought for.
However, a more nuanced take on the situation in light of Cunningham’s comments has come from the most unlikely of places. The Fever guard’s childhood friend and co-host on her Show Me Something podcast, Bravo star West Wilson, posted a TikTok over the weekend on how much of a “non-issue” transgender participation in sports really is.
“Okay, transgender athletes in American sports is such a borderline nonexistent issue that right-wingers have convinced a massive portion of people in our country that it— that these people are like a threat to sports in America when mathematically that’s not the case at all,” Wilson said.
@westywilson♬ original sound – West Wilson
“And by continuing to platform this, f*cking politicians, athletes, journalists, news outlets, you’re only isolating transgender people even more by making them seem like this giant group of people is a threat to society, a threat to sports, when that’s just not proportionately the truth in any capacity.”
Wilson ended the video by providing real numbers about how rare transgender athletes are, and by calling for attention to return to the real issues hurting Americans.
“There is like 10 transgender athletes in all of the NCAA, and so I think there are unique questions that can be handled on an individual basis, but to allow this to take our attention away from like housing and healthcare and wars and all the other actual harmful sh*t in our country is dumb.”
