Professional women’s basketball player Sophie Cunningham called the attention around her comments about barring transgender athletes from women’s sports a “distraction.”
The Indiana Fever guard told WISH-TV she “wants to get back to basketball” and wants to make sure “the focus stays where it should be”.
“I got a lot of negative feedback about me hating trans. And I’m like, ‘I never once said that,’” she told ESPN in March. “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.”
In July, Cunningham told the cable sports broadcasting network she doesn’t “dislike anyone,” but continued, “I’m also there to love biological women, and I think that there are rights that need to be protected.”
“Protecting women” is often a euphemism used in the MAGA world for restricting transgender women from female sports.
Cunningham earned the moniker ‘MAGA Barbie’ after fans caught her following and liking posts from prominent Republicans. Complex was the first to report that Cunningham had gained the nickname during her college days in Missouri due to the people she followed and engaged with on social media.
She told The New York Times she was “right in the middle” politically, but fans speculated that her views were more MAGA than she lets on.
The 29-year-old has rejected the nickname, saying it’s based on assumptions about her background rather than her actual politics.
The basketball player also blames the media for making her a distraction from the sport.
“The WNBA media, all we ever do is cover everything except basketball,” she said. ”And it’s like what are we doing? There’s so much. You can talk about other things, I think those are great stories, I think it shows fans you know who people are outside the court, but I think we got to keep the main thing the main thing.”
Some WNBA members have expressed their displeasure with Cunningham’s stance.
When the Seattle Storm played the Fever on July 28, Storm center Stefanie Dolson wore a “trans rights are human rights” T-shirt, seemingly in response to Cunningham’s comments.
During the Sunday game against the Minnesota Lynx, Lynx head coach Cheryl Reeve wore a shirt under her jacket that said, “Trans kids belong”. Cunningham was booed by the crowd throughout the game.
