{"id":776975,"date":"2026-07-22T02:07:13","date_gmt":"2026-07-22T02:07:13","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/776975\/"},"modified":"2026-07-22T02:07:13","modified_gmt":"2026-07-22T02:07:13","slug":"sophie-cunningham-speaks-out-on-protecting-girls-from-competing-against-biological-men","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/776975\/","title":{"rendered":"Sophie Cunningham speaks out on protecting girls from competing against \u2018biological men\u2019"},"content":{"rendered":"<p><a href=\"https:\/\/www.foxnews.com\/category\/sports\/wnba\" rel=\"noopener noreferrer nofollow\" target=\"_blank\">WNBA star<\/a> Sophie Cunningham has made her position on protecting women\u2019s sports clear.<\/p>\n<p>In an <a href=\"https:\/\/www.espn.com\/wnba\/story\/_\/id\/49306657\/sophie-cunningham-finger-point-indiana-fever-wnba\" rel=\"noopener noreferrer nofollow\" target=\"_blank\">ESPN interview<\/a>, the fan-favorite Caitlin Clark teammate addressed the issue for the first time.<\/p>\n<p><a href=\"https:\/\/www.foxnews.com\/sports\/supreme-court-makes-ruling-trans-athletes-womens-sports#&amp;_intcmp=fnc_outkick-sports_article_main-content_article-body_6_5\" rel=\"noopener nofollow\" target=\"_blank\">SUPREME COURT MAKES RULING ON TRANS ATHLETES IN WOMEN\u2019S SPORTS<\/a><\/p>\n<p>\u201cI got a lot of negative feedback about me hating trans. And I\u2019m like, \u2018I never once said that,&#8217;\u201d Cunningham said.<\/p>\n<p>\u201cI 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\u2019t have to go against biological men.<\/p>\n<p>\u201cI\u2019m very much in the middle. I agree with things on both sides, disagree with things on both sides. And that\u2019s all I\u2019ve ever said about my political beliefs. But people love to assume.\u201d<\/p>\n<p><a href=\"https:\/\/link.podtrac.com\/dmwdd_article\" rel=\"noopener noreferrer nofollow\" target=\"_blank\">ZERO BS. JUST DAKICH. TAKE THE DON\u2019T @ ME PODCAST ON THE ROAD. DOWNLOAD NOW!<\/a><\/p>\n<p>Cunningham previously garnered backlash from the left in March 2022 after re-sharing a tweet from CBS Sports host Josh Pate about the controversy surrounding former Penn transgender swimmer <a href=\"https:\/\/foxnews.com\/sports\/wnba-player-faces-backlash-op-ed-criticizing-ioc-policy-protect-womens-sports\" rel=\"noopener noreferrer nofollow\" target=\"_blank\">Lia Thomas competing<\/a> on the women\u2019s team.<\/p>\n<p>\u201cFemale collegiate athletes deserve so much better than this,\u201d Pate\u2019s tweet said.<\/p>\n<p>Cunningham faced so much backlash over the re-share that she released a statement.<\/p>\n<p>\u201cTo my teammates, friends, family, supporters and fans, you know that I stand with all people, especially my fellow athletes. I do not judge, but support all races, religions, sexual preferences and gender equity. We all have a place in this world to compete and I hope we are able to grant everyone that opportunity fairly.\u201d she wrote.<\/p>\n<p>Cunningham has emerged as one of the biggest stars in the WNBA over the last year, especially <a href=\"https:\/\/www.foxnews.com\/category\/politics\/elections\/republicans\" rel=\"noopener noreferrer nofollow\" target=\"_blank\">among conservatives<\/a>.<\/p>\n<p>Riley Gaines, who infamously tied with Thomas at the <a href=\"https:\/\/foxnews.com\/category\/sports\/ncaa\" rel=\"noopener noreferrer nofollow\" target=\"_blank\">2022 NCAA women\u2019s<\/a> swimming championships, told Fox News Digital on the last day of June, after the U.S. Supreme Court ruled to uphold state laws that keep biological males out of women\u2019s sports, that she hoped the ruling would be a \u201cclarion call\u201d for athletes like Cunningham to speak out in support of protecting women\u2019s sports.<\/p>\n<p>\u201cLet this be a clarion call, not just to Simone, but to every, I think especially elite female athlete, professional female athlete, the likes of Caitlin Clark and Sophie Cunningham, Serena Williams, to link arms,\u201d Gaines said.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"WNBA star Sophie Cunningham has made her position on protecting women\u2019s sports clear. In an ESPN interview, the&hellip;\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":733560,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[73],"tags":[99,434],"class_list":["post-776975","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-wnba","tag-sports","tag-wnba"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/776975","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=776975"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/776975\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/733560"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=776975"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=776975"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=776975"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}