Jonathan Alpert: Women were told to speak up. Except about womens sports
Apparently, that advice comes with an exception.Women have spent decades being told to trust their judgment, use their voices and refuse to stay quiet simply because an opinion makes someone uncomfortable.
But when Cunningham said women’s sports should be for women, speaking up suddenly became the problem.That’s what makes her story bigger than basketball.Cunningham is willing to say publicly what plenty of women are more comfortable saying privately: They can support transgender people, treat them with dignity and respect, and still believe that women’s sports should be based on biological sex.
Women fought for generations to have their voices taken seriously.So why, when the subject is their own sports, are some of them afraid to use them?CLICK HERE FOR MORE SPORTS COVERAGE ON FOXNEWS.COMSophie Cunningham No.
8 of the Indiana Fever warms up before a game against the Seattle Storm at Climate Pledge Arena on July 28, 2026, in Seattle, Wash.(Soobum Im/Getty Images)Women’s sports exist because biological differences matter in athletic competition.
That’s why we have women’s teams, records, scholarships and championships in the first place.The separation wasn’t incidental.
It was the point.Sports also require choices.
Someone makes the roster and someone doesn’t.Someone gets the scholarship and someone doesn’t.
Someone wins the medal and someone finishes second.Deciding who belongs in a competitive category necessarily affects everyone competing for those opportunities.Cunningham isn’t standing on some obscure political fringe.
More than two dozen states have enacted restrictions on transgender participation in girls’ and women’s sports.In June, the Supreme Court upheld laws in Idaho and West Virginia that allow eligibility for girls’ and women’s school sports to be based on biological sex.
This isn’t some fringe position Cunningham dreamed up.It is now written into law across much of the country.Yet when a prominent woman says e...