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Sophie Cunningham shared her feelings about trans athletes in youth sports
Phoenix Mercury forward Sophie Cunningham has become one of the most polarizing figures in the WNBA over the past year, largely due to her physical style of play and her willingness to engage with the culture war discourse that has surrounded the league. She certainly leaned into the latter with her recent comments about youth trans athletes.
In a new ESPN profile, Sophie Cunningham addressed the transgender athlete debate directly and said that she wants to “protect little girls” from “biological males” playing in female sports.
A study from UCLA’s Williams Institute found that “as many as s 122,000 transgender youth could be participating in high school-level team athletics,” which would represent less than one percent (roughly 0.75%) of the current high school population in the United States (estimated to be between 15 and 17 million).
Additionally, while trans people are estimated to make up 1-2% of the population of the United States, they represent less than less than 0.002% of college athletes in the country, according to SF.gov.
Regardless of how you ultimately feel about the topic, its presence in the ongoing political discourse is not proportional relative to its actual scale in society.
Sophie Cunningham says she wants to “protect” young female athletes from biological males in locker rooms and sports
She’ll weigh in on how to “protect women’s sports,” she says, because she’s in that world and feels qualified to speak to that world. “I got a lot of negative feedback about me hating trans. And I’m like, ‘I never once said that,'” she says. “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.” [via ESPN]
Cunningham’s comments immediately went viral on social media and split opinions, with critics calling her position transphobic and supporters arguing she’s expressing a view held by a majority of the public on the specific question of biological sex categories in sport.
In the same interview, Cunningham claimed that her political beliefs are “very much in the middle.”
“I’m very much in the middle. 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.”
Cunningham’s comments come amid heightened political discourse around the WNBA, much of it centered on Caitlin Clark and the league’s handling of physical play directed at her. A group of Republican lawmakers sent a letter to the WNBA’s commissioner earlier this month demanding the league take “accountability” for the perceived way that Clark is being treated, stating that the “attacks against Clark may be racially motivated.”