WNBA Debate Intensifies Over Women's Sports Participation Amid Cunningham's Stance

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WNBA Debate Intensifies Over Women's Sports Participation Amid Cunningham's Stance
Photo: The Atlantic
politics· A press review of 6 outlets
  1. The debate over allowing men to invade women’s sports was kicked back into high gear in the WNBA after Indiana Fever star Sophie Cunningham expressed the common-sense position that women’s sports should not allow transgender players to join the WNBA. She said she feels protecting women’s sports should take priority over the unsafe and unfair physical advantage that men have over women.

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    The Atlantic

    No one—not even White and Freedom—seriously believes that the WNBA will let the two trollish men play as women. But the league apparently hopes to reject them without ever grudgingly coughing out an agreement with Cunningham’s view that biological males don’t belong in women’s sports. Five years ago, the WNBA’s official Twitter account celebrated Andraya Yearwood and Terry Miller, biologically male athletes whose female competitors in Connecticut sued to keep them out of girls’ races in high-school athletics. The ACLU defended the trans girls’ right to compete. Above a picture of Yearwood and Miller, the WNBA expressed its own support: “We support you and all of the other trans athletes just trying to compete in the sports they love.” (Six years on, there has been no ruling in the case.)

    Fox News

    She continued, "But at the same time, like, girls are strong." The debate has also spilled into professional basketball after Indiana Fever guard Sophie Cunningham indicated that she is against biological men competing in women's sports, according to a recent ESPN article.

    Associated Press

    The WNBA has been the subject of recent debates on whether transgender women — people assigned male at birth who transition to align with their gender identity — should be allowed to participate in the league. There has never been such a player in the WNBA. Although the league’s collective bargaining agreement says the WNBA is restricted to women, it contains no more specific language about gender identity or sex assigned at birth.

    The Daily Wire

    Both Kasey and Annie said that they had come to the game — and had chosen to wear those particular shirts — to show their support for Fever shooting guard Sophie Cunningham. Cunningham, who has repeatedly declared her position as not political, unapologetically stood up for women and girls in sports, saying that they deserved a space where they could compete without being forced to take on biological men.

    RealClearPolitics

    Boys Will Be Boys--But in the WNBA?

  2. The WNBA appears to be following the same playbook—gearing up to make an arbitrary decision because of bad publicity, rather than engaging with the fact that its policies have created an exploitable loophole. Keeping out Freedom and White is not a hard problem to solve: Just say that you respect people’s identities, but sports are segregated by sex.

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    Breitbart

    “And both these guys, I think, are doing a good job just to show the WNBA the hypocrisy that’s going on here. We have to protect women’s sports … I want to protect women’s sports. Title IX was one of the greatest pieces of legislation for women’s equality – that happened to be in sports.”

  3. “I got a lot of negative feedback about me hating trans. And I’m like, ‘I never once said that,'” she stated. “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.”

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    Fox News

    "I got a lot of negative feedback about me hating trans," Cunningham said to ESPN. "And I'm like, 'I never once said that.’ I think that I am here to extend love."

From the margins

5 details only one outlet reported

Independent claims that didn't surface elsewhere in our corpus. Treat as supplementary — not corroborated across outlets.

  1. 01 Breitbart

    Former Olympian and famously transitioned person Caitlyn Jenner is calling out the “hypocrisy” of the WNBA over the league’s policy about transgenderism.

  2. 02 Associated Press

    The league said in a statement Monday that the fans should have been free to wear the shirts.

  3. 03 Fox News

    But those in favor of allowing transgender athletes to compete in the league of the gender they currently identify with argue the movement to ban biological men from competing in women's sports is part of a targeted attack against transgender people.

  4. 04 The Atlantic

    The WNBA has become an appealing target for culture-war politicking, in part because the successes of Clark and a handful of other exceptional players have significantly raised the league’s profile in the past few years. As its prominence grows, its ability to sidestep controversy shrinks.

  5. 05 The Daily Wire

    Chicago Sky guard DiJonai Carrington viciously clotheslined the Indiana Fever’s Sophie Cunningham while Cunningham was driving for a layup during an Aug. 8 WNBA game. The referees called a flagrant foul on Carrington immediately and ejected her from the game. Sports Illustrated decided to frame it, in its headline, as payback: “Sophie Cunningham Got A Bitter Taste of Karma After Drawing Flagrant Foul.”

Assembled from 3 corroborated claims drawn from 6 independent outlets. Every passage above is taken verbatim — Dorothy doesn't paraphrase or summarize.

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Sources (6)

  • ap
  • breitbart
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  • dailywire
  • atlantic
  • foxnews

Original Articles (10)