Friday Roundup: Sophie Cunningham's Journey To Being The WNBA's Conservative Darling
Her baseless transphobia has locked her into a lifetime deal as a conservative envoy.
Sophie Cunningham wants to have her “ban trans players” cake and eat it too. The other day, the 29-year-old Indiana Fever player told reporters that after spending the past month being a transphobic beacon, she wants to “get back to basketball.”
“The WNBA media, all we ever do is cover everything except basketball. It’s like, ‘What are we doing?’ You can talk about other things; those are great stories; it shows fans who people are outside of the court, but I also think we (have to) keep the main thing the main thing.” Cunningham echoed the comments in a delusional appearance on USA’s WNBA telecast, where she’s a contributor. She claimed, “my biggest thing is love and respect. There’s room for absolutely everybody” — this, while she’s been grandstanding about there not being space for trans women in women’s sports. She’s not known as a nimble player, but she’s already mastered the conservative spin.
Cunningham has been in the league for eight seasons, but didn’t gain notoriety until last year, when she hard-fouled Connecticut Sun player Jacy Sheldon in retaliation for her poking Caitlin Clark in the eye. Since breaking records at the University of Iowa, Clark has been the golden girl to a conservative sect of WNBA fans, and they reward people for anything that looks like alliance with her. Cunningham being considered Clark’s “enforcer” won her favor from this group. A ‘25 New York Times feature chronicled her receiving a sudden wave of sponsorships and pondering, “I think this is going to open up maybe what I want to do when the ball stops bouncing.” A year later, the woman who then called herself “right down the middle” politically went hard right on that path.
Her pointing at Phoenix Mercury player DeWanna Bonner during a minor dustup garnered a June ESPN profile (?!?) where she told them that she vied to “protect young girls in the locker room” and that “they shouldn’t have to go against biological men,” fluting a hateful song that further ingratiated her to conservatives. Right-wing commentators figuratively put her on their shoulders, even calling the bench player a “WNBA star” in some of their headlines. Anti-trans advocate and former NCAA athlete Riley Gaines lauded Cunningham for being “unshakable” while Minnesota Lynx fans recently booed her. There have been several pro-Cunningham rallies outside Fever games, where protesters and counter-protesters have clashed.
This week’s call for cooler heads was a 180 from her prior defiance: Shortly after the ESPN piece went viral, she made an Instagram post with an “I said what I said” caption. Cunningham was relishing being the WNBA’s conservative darling. But in the words of Rick Ross, “you wanna be the hottest, but that shit get complicated.” She didn’t anticipate her new supporters vilifying Clark for not supporting her transphobic cause. Currently hooping on a one-year deal for the Fever and averaging a middling 9.3 points, 2.3 rebounds, and 1.4 assists, Cunningham’s talent doesn’t warrant all the blowback. And now Clark, the player she was once considered the enforcer for, may be irritated with her hateful clout-chasing. What does Cunningham’s WNBA future hold? Even if she doesn’t sign another WNBA contract, her baseless transphobia has locked her into a lifetime deal as a conservative envoy.
The WNBA has experienced a commercial bloom because it’s let its predominantly Black, queer workforce be fully them. The NBA’s become a sanded-down product full of Jaylens — I mean players — molded by an AAU-to-prep school pipeline that eructs the blandest players possible to sell boatloads of shoes and sodas to middle America. The WNBA workforce didn’t grow up coddled, with their every single move analyzed for its potential impact on future earnings, resulting in a league teeming with brash, colorful personalities (who, go figure, are very marketable). The Washington Mystics call themselves “the young hoes.” For the past two years, the Studbudz, players Courtney Williams and Natisha Hiedeman, have aired 24-hour livestreams during WNBA All-Star weekend showcasing all kinds of hijinks. League commissioner Cathy Englebert was on the stream dancing to “Knuck if You Buck” last year. I couldn’t picture NBA Commissioner Adam Silver dancing with Anthony Edwards and LaMelo Ball on live.
The WNBA’s unfettered embrace of Black woman queerness put the league in the crosshairs of conservative grifters who need people to plankton their hate onto for clicks and views. Armed with plenty of racist, misogynistic, queerphobic fodder, this cohort also sought a straight, conventionally attractive white woman to exalt.
Thankfully, they’ve found all their would-be candidates unworthy. LA Sparks player Cameron Brink called out her white privilege and said she wished the league’s growing fanbase would “support all types of players.” Sabrina Ionescu came out against state-sanctioned violence against Black people in 2020 and has called out the racism that Clark supporters have infected the league with: “The league should’ve taken a stance a long time ago when this happened and not waited for it to get this deep and this far on what’s tolerated and what’s not in our league as a fan,” she told reporters, adding that the league should have a “zero tolerance policy” against “racist remarks.”
Fans have carried on a four-year-long parasocial relationship with Clark, viewing her, as Gaines does, as their “queen” despite her elusion of the role. When racist fans hurled racist remarks at Dream star Angel Reese last May, Clark said, “there’s no place for that in our game, there’s no place for that in society.” And when Phoenix Mercury star Alyssa Thomas’ rough play against her recently elicited the fifty-leventh discussion about Clark being intentionally targeted by (Black) players, Clark said the discourse was “such a disservice to the rest of our league.” Some would like Clark to more forcefully articulate that she rejects that racist core of fans — and stop being snotty in a way that serves their agenda — but gentle putdowns are as much as she’s been willing to offer.
Clark was sadly on the fence when asked about trans women in women’s sports the other night. She said, “I think it’s for leagues and governing bodies to work with their athletes to find solutions.” Despite not taking a side in this faux issue, conservatives lambasted her for not backing up Cunningham. Matt Walsh called her a “coward” for not speaking against trans women. Patti Garibary of Christian organization American Heritage Girls said she was “disappointed” by the same.
Where Clark was unwilling to feed the conservative agenda, Cunningham filled the breach. My friend Peter A. Berry wrote a polarizing piece surmising Paige Bueckers took Caitlin Clark’s “spot” as the WNBA’s best guard; there’s probably another instructional to be done on how, for right-wingers, Cunningham stole Clark’s role as the WNBA’s conservative darling.
And she did so by 100% grifting a nonissue. There isn’t a trans woman in the WNBA or in the draft pipeline. Trans people make up 1% of the population. As of December ‘24, there were “fewer than 10” openly transgender women in women’s NCAA sports. Sports governing bodies force trans women to meet strict criteria to ensure that they have no competitive advantages over women. A 2021 International Olympic Committee (IOC) study theorized that those rules work, and there’s no competitive advantage. And a 2024 study funded by the IOC concluded that many trans women may actually have physical disadvantages, including lower body strength, lung function, and bone density. Despite the public evidence demonstrating the even playing field, lawmakers, conservatives, and now Cunningham are fearmongering Juwanna Mann theories, as if young women are at risk of being physically mauled by trans women athletes. I saw a mutual on Twitter attacked by someone claiming that being for trans athletes means they think “LeBron James should be able to play in the WNBA.” It’s all hyperbole driven by hate over facts.
Cunningham latching onto this issue for increased profile is needlessly harmful to trans people who face an array of stigma and vilification for simply living in their truth. This kind of othering is on the spectrum that leads to marginalization in employment, housing, and other areas where trans people are disproportionately affected. Luckily, Cunningham’s crusade is primed for the margins. The WNBA’s conservative lot wanted to find their white damsel, and they did. But like them, she’s so mediocre that she probably won’t last much longer in the league after this fiasco.
Other Thoughts
Late pass: I’m really intrigued by Young Thug signing Teezus and Diamond. They’re two Atlanta artists from the ØWay collective who remind me of early versions of him. It looks like he’s trying his best to launch a new chapter of YSL; hopefully they reinvigorate him creatively. Their
People are purposely fearmongering with the way they report about these food recalls. When I hear about a brand recall, I pass on buying the brand for a time and keep it moving. But so many outlets are using clickbait headlines as if entire crops of food are ruined. Then you open the report and see it’s actually just specific brands in specific states. I still see and talk to people scared to eat any greens because of cyclospora despite the creation of cheat sheets that tell you who to avoid. If the cheat sheets were presented first, that wouldn’t be the case.
Killer Mike’s under fire for being proud of “moving like a capitalist” in a Red Bull freestyle. I don’t have much to say that’s not obvious if you read my work. But it just exemplifies how portraying a progressive artist is just as much of a false image as assuming any other role in pop music. Once you cross a certain threshold and make certain alliances, you’re just selling a product of ideas and images. Twitter user @giannis_berner noted that Killer Mike’s only other verse this year contained a demand to “kill our American masters.” We already know better than to believe that someone who “moves like a capitalist,” linked with the Atlanta leadership to deter protesters in ‘20 and legitimized Brian Kemp in his race against Stacey Abrams actually has any intentions of doing that. Sounds nice in the moment, though.
RIP to Brooklyn Vegan, Alt Press, Revolver, and Goldmine, whose staffs were all gutted this week by their parent company Veeps. I’ll echo Hayley Williams’ response: “Everyday we lose recipes to dorks who simply cannot cook. Looking forward to the inevitable vengeance of the underground.”