‘It’s an attack on women’: Megan Rapinoe defends trans rights amidst Sophie Cunningham controversy

The discourse surrounding the WNBA has been, once again, dominated by things that have nothing to do with basketball. On Tuesday, Indiana Fever reserve guard Sophie Cunningham spoke out against transgender girls competing with other girls in sports.

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

Unsurprisingly, Cunningham faced tons of backlash for her comments, but she refused to apologize.

“I said what I said. I think it’s kind of common sense,” she said, via The Athletic. “And I think I’ll always believe in that. I think it’s really important to protect children, and that’s little girls who are also involved in that category. I stand on what I said.”

“Black girls are gonna get questioned more.”

Fans were outraged with Cunningham and worried about the impact her words could have on vulnerable trans youth. However, on the same Tuesday, former USWNT star Megan Rapinoe addressed the importance of defending trans girls and women on The View.

“At first it was like, well, nobody likes women’s sports and nobody wants to watch it. Or there was, you know, abuse happening and nobody seemed to care. Now all of a sudden we’re gonna use a vulnerable group of people in the trans community to be like, oh, well we’re just protecting women’s sports and we care so much about it,” Rapinoe said.

“They’re going after trans people in sports and they’re using this as a wedge issue,” she continued, “because we love sports and, you know, ‘we don’t want our little girls to be unsafe in sports.’ And it’s like, unsafe from who?

“But now we’re using this as like an overarching thing when really what we’re attacking is women. We’re saying, if you look like this as a woman, you can play. If you look like this as a woman, there’s a bill in Washington happening right now that’s gonna require all girls, just like full stop, to go through a sex test, an invasive, like examining their genitals to see if they’re a woman. And that has not worked out well historically for people to do that.

“We know what that means. Black girls are gonna get questioned more and they’re gonna get questioned first. Who’s doing the examinations? Well, who wants to subject themselves to that?”

The American sports legend made it clear why she believes some people are so interested in keeping women down.

“They don’t like women in sports because it helps us with confidence and power. And we see so many women in the C-suite, played elite level sports. It’s just great for you physically and all of it, but it’s an attack on women in society.”