It Could Happen Here - Sophie Cunningham's Transphobic WNBA Panic

Episode Date: August 26, 2026

Mia talks with trans sports journalist Frankie de la Cruz and former trans college athlete Bugsmaytrix about WNBA bit player Sophie Cunningham's pivot to transphobia and the right's war on trans people. Links: https://www.thefrankiedlc.news/ @thefrankiedlc + @bugsmaytrix.bsky.social   https://www.iheart.com/podcast/269-everything-is-wrestling-336405745/See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

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These are the Survivor Files. Every week, I'm with survivors who live through the unthinkable, abducted, stalked, controlled, and nearly silenced. These are stories about what it takes to make it out alive. Listen to The Survivor Files with Elizabeth Smart on the IHeart Radio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. If your bookshelf and your For You page are equally important to your personality, welcome home. Pro Society is a weekly podcast that's part book club, part group chat for anyone who thinks Pride and Prejudice and Love Island to serve the same level of discourse. Each week, we're connecting the dots between books, the internet, and pop culture,

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No way. Listen to the latest episode of Hey Jonas on the Iheart Radio app, Apple Podcast, or wherever you get your podcast. Call Zone Media. to it could happen here, seemingly the only podcast bold enough to do what the mainstream media is too cowardly to do and let trans people talk

about ourselves, I guess, or the unhinged issues that a bunch of reactionary cis people have foisted upon us. And here to talk with me today about a truly baffling

and very weird and shitty anti-trans panic that has been launched in the WMBA is Frankie Dela Cruz, who's a sports writer who writes at the intersection of sports and gender and does a very good job of it in a way that I was going to say few others do, and then I was like, who am I thinking about who also does this and does it this well? And like, I'm not sure I have anyone. So incredible work.

I appreciate that. The other guest I have on today is Bugs Matrix, who, if you have like been on the internet and been anywhere near trans people, you are aware of bugs. What I think people are less aware of is, A, that if you ever heard a trans person say, yeah, that's bugs. And B, B, B, B, B, B, B, was also a trans college athlete. So both of you two, welcome to the show. And I'm excited to get to actually talk about this WMBA, Sophie Cunningham bullshit, with the trio of

former trans college athlete, trans journalist, and whatever the hell I am, transgender. It's truly the meeting of the vines. Yeah, I'm excited to, I spend most of my time talking to cis people about this, so it's nice to have different conversation partners. Yeah.

It's so nice to be able to talk with people who intrinsically know balls. That too. Oh, God. So, okay, speaking of knowing. ball. So the specific controversy, I don't even know what to call this.

Media frenzy. Witch hunt? Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Centered around a WMBA player named Sophie Cunningham, which I guess people have heard of her now. My first experience of this was seeing everyone talking about Sophie Cunningham

and being absolutely baffirmingham, and being absolutely baffled because I was like, wait, isn't she that bench player from the fever? Why is everyone talking about her? I don't know. In like football terms, the only thing I can think of is like somehow everyone in the world knows who like the Broncos long snapper is.

It's like, what? Like, why does anyone know this? Like, what's happening? It's like, she's the drop chap. What's going on? Yeah, I mean, yeah, I think the ball knowers have kind of always known because she's a rage baiter.

She's kind of been a professional bench warmer and rage baiter. But the rage baiting has really come to the forefront over the last season or two. I think she's personally preparing for a exit of the basketball career to right-wing grifter kind of trajectory. Oh, absolutely. And this worked out perfectly, didn't it? Yeah. Yeah. I can't believe this is still a leapfrewed and grift.

Yeah. I mean, I feel like there's so many. like places that we can like start to talk about it but it's so i think for me as a journalist the most frustrating part of the entire thing is how it started which was like with irresponsible journalism and like irresponsible like espn profile with this like dropped in quote from her and it has i mean we're on what week of this three of this i think we're somewhere in week three yeah yeah it seems Sort of like it's never ending. I wish it would end.

Yeah, like, we're going to get more into this a second. I cannot emphasize this enough. This is a player who comes off of the bench on this team, which means she's not a starter, and she comes off the bench to, like, break a couple of threes and then goes back. And start fights. This is, like, not a... Excuse me, excuse me, and be racist.

That's true. But, like, this is not like a star. And the team that she's on, the Indiana Fever, has like several legitimate superstars on it and ESPN is like cutting their highlights where the first highlight will be like her making a basket and it's like well okay that's the only basket she's made in like two weeks but it's like why god i don't know i'm frustrated about this but we should tell the actual story and i think it's all the story i think we need to go back and talk about kately clark's entrance to the league because i think that to some extent is the beginning of all of this

and the beginning of kind of this bunch of weird fascists who are now, I guess, quote-unquote, WMBA fans? No, I think that's true because, you know, I think that WMBA has this reputation as, like, a very progressive league. And for the most part, that's the players that have been progressive. The league is a corporation that has benefited from the players, you know, actions. But there's always going to be. be conservative, you know, players or people in kind of any atmosphere. And Sophie Cunningham, if you've followed her since her college career, has always been that. She, you know, was known for being racist when she was at Missou.

Like there was the meme of her and Clea Copper when they were both on different teams. They really did not get along. This is a reputation that Sophie has had for a long time. And on its own just would have been, I think, you know, again, a random bench player that most people didn't know. But Caitlin Clark coming to the WMBA and being as high profile as she was and the way she was framed as the next great white, straight, cis hope for this league really brought a particular kind of culture and fan with her. And so I think without Caitlin Clark coming into the league and, you know, MAGA people and right when people seeing her as a way to kind of gain a foothold with this league, I don't think Sophie. blows up in the way that she does, especially when you consider that, right,

she's been brought to the fever as essentially Caitlin Clark's enforcer, because Caitlin Clark can't play defense or, like, hold her own on the court at all. I swear to God. It's like, like, this team, I keep doing cross-sports comparisons, but it's like, it's like,

the fever are this weird team where it's like, they're like last year's cowboys where it's like a weird, weird white fan base that also, pulls in a bunch of random, like I just kind of know about football fans. B, elite offense, literally cannot play defense at all. Yeah, and like this isn't hockey. We don't have enforcers in women's basketball in the same way.

Right. It's not full contact like this, dog. Yeah. I think it's worth kind of talking about the racial dynamics of this because a lot of the, a lot of the initial hype around Caitlin Clark was this weird sort of, like, yeah, like what you're saying, Frankie, like, this great white hope stuff. And, like, her rival was, like, she was, like, set up against Angel Reese, who's a black player, who is very weird and interesting basketball player, but unfortunately nobody really cares about that because

everyone, there's just this, like, racist sort of panic around this whole thing to, to the extent we're, like, there's, like, congressmen who are talking about, like, starting investigations into Caitlin Clark's, like, fouls. Yeah. And I think. think it's important to like point out whether you want to be super generous and put none of this onto Caitlin and say she's an avatar for whatever culture were the right is waging or you want to say she really should have been shouting this down a long time ago and she's whether she believes this or not she's in part responsible because you know she's complicit in her silence whichever kind of root you want to take with that what you can't deny is that every time she

flops or is, you know, takes a hard foul against a player who is black, queer, masculine, it gets blown up. The player on the other end of that is getting, you know, death threats. They're dealing with harassment and abuse and racial slurs. And this has been a pattern that goes back to her rookie season. And so there is very much a gender component, right, a racial component to how Caitlin Clark is being received by this fan base and how her opponents in a predominantly black, overwhelmingly queer league are also being received.

Yeah, and circling back to what you were saying about whether or not Caitlin Clark is, you know, either you think either she's complicit or not in this. Like that is the base of people who have surrounded her, and that's been the basis of the way that sports media also has interacted with her because if your sports media, you know, there's an enormous incentive to just sort of drive out this racist drivel and like, you know, make clips of like every single time she gets knocked down or something or every time she just like flops when someone like is like even vaguely in her proximity. It creates this sort of feedback loop of it where you have, on the one hand, you have, you have these like white supremacists, right, who feed off of this stuff and want to use this to just push as an avidavis. to push their racism, but then also that develops this like symbiotic relationship with the sports media who are like, yeah, we can make money off of this. And like, we're, you know,

sort of like this a lot of the time anyways. Yeah. And I've been covering the WMBA since for about a decade, since it was just lesbians and old people in the stands. And those were the best days, I will say. And as someone who has covered the league for that long and been to as many games as I have, I will obviously say not all fever fans feel a particular way or believe a certain thing. Of course that's the case. I've also seen the shift in the three years that Caitlin Clark has been in the league of who shows up to the fever games. And as we will continue to talk about, I think as we talk about Sophie, now that kind of Sophie has become the actual mouthpiece that Caitlin has failed to be for these people, the people who are showing up to their road games as well in support of Sophie. and her viewpoints.

And so, of course, right, probably the majority of fever fans are great. And it's also true that there really has been an influx of people who never, I can curse here, right, never fucked with the WMBA, right? They didn't care about women's sports. And they have shown up and brought a lot of the, like, toxic mainstream culture and things about men's sports culture that probably most of a bunch of watch women's sports to get away from has shown up here. Right.

Yeah. And it coincides with Caitlin Clark, you know, coming to the league. So I guess we should start actually talking about Sophie Cunningham. Unfortunately. Yeah. Like, for better or for worse, Caitlin Clark does want to play basketball. Yeah, like, she's here to literally play ball.

Like, like, definitely her not speaking up against, like, being betrayed. as this avatar is shitty and frustrating but like at the end of the day she's here to play with the nice little orange sphere and so funny not so much

yeah this is one of these things where it's kind of vibes based but I feel like the way that it was portrayed in the media and then this also fed into sort of like the fascist base was that Caitlin Clark was going to come into the WMBA and she was immediately going to be the best player and everyone was going to have to deal with it and that like didn't

happen because she's like a pretty good player, but like... She's fine. A, even if she was that good, it's like, okay, unfortunately for every other great basketball player in the WNBA, you exist at the same time as Prime Major Wilson. So like, good luck ever winning any award. Like, I don't know. This is like, this is like maybe the greatest basketball player who's like walk the earth to this generation. Like, good luck. It's true. And even when Caitlin drops 30 points, she's often giving up 30 on turnover, so she kind of ends up being a net neutral. Yeah, and Angel Wilson, by the way, was like defensive player of the year and MVP.

And like, you know, she's like, yeah, you know, just this like transcendent player. But I think there's this moment where like it becomes clear after like a couple of years of this that like, you know, like there's still a bunch of people who are in the trenches being like Caitlin Clark is the best player in the league. But like, no. It's not clear to be if she's better than, like, rookie Olivia Biles. She's not. I don't think she is. Like, she's not. Olivia Miles has an MVP case, like, as a rookie.

I mean, Katie doesn't, in my opinion. I love her. I want to talk for her at the end because I want to end up, like, a little bit of just, like, ball good. But I think there's this moment of, like, Caitlin, like, I guess she, like, kind of denounced it at, like, the end of her first season. in, but like she... Without going, like, hard in the paint to it, like, you're still leaving room. Yeah, but it's, it's like,

she won't go hard in the paint against it, but she also, you know, as you're saying, like, before the break, it's like, yeah, she wants to play basketball. Yeah. And so she's not willing to go on camera and say the things and do the things that these people want.

And I guess that's where Sophie Cunningham came in because she will do that. She will. And I think it's also related that she started a podcast this year, right? Like she has decided to, she's basically using her profile as a fever bench player, aka, you know, Caitlin Clark's enforcer,

and the exposure that has come with that, which is more than she's ever had in her, you know, however many seven or so seasons in the WMBA. But to me, what's clear is that she is setting herself up for an exit, and the podcast is kind of the first step in that. And maybe people didn't care what she had to say before. But now that more people know who she is, because of who she's playing with,

she is kind of starting to step into this other. And it's very, very, we can talk more about this too, but it's very insidious the way she talks about sharing her views because she's basically co-opting social justice language when she'll say things like people tell you to use a platform and then when you use it, right, they criticize you for it or whatever it is. And so she's kind of doing this thing where she's starting a podcast. She also keeps getting fined for saying shit on her podcast about the reps and stuff.

She really just like mouths off. Yeah. Wait, maybe her being on a podcast is a good thing. Yeah, right? So she has this podcast. But then at the same time, she's projecting the, I'm using my platform for, you know, my beliefs. Which is something that, like, I've heard even sort of, like, left-wing people, like, in the space doing this, like, well, it's just interesting thing because the WMBA has always been a league where, like, players do use their platforms to do activism.

And, like, and that is absolutely true. Like, the actual first professional sports. Actually, I could be wrong about that because maybe there was another women's league that did it first that I just missed. But I'm pretty sure they were the first professional sports league that was actually doing, like, anti-police brutality protests. Yes, they were. They also. they were doing that before Colin Kaepernick took a knee. Oh, yeah.

And then once he did kneel, actually that's how I started following the WMBA, was I was writing about player protests, and somebody told me entire WMBA teams were kneeling on the court. And it had gotten no coverage. And I was like, oh, and that's when I actually started. So, yeah, they were doing media blackouts to talk about police brutality before Colin Kaepernick knelt. Yeah.

That's fucking awesome. Yeah, they fucking rocked. Like, it's good. as hell. Why? That's so sick. But then you get media people being like, well, this has always been like a league where like people use

their platform for like activism. But it's like... That's such a kneeling out of bullshit. Like, okay, sure, technically, but like... I guess you could call a clan rally activism. If you, like, really want to do that, I will be angry at you. But like,

this is like not the same thing at all. There is no difference between the United. There's, like, right rally and going to help out at food not bombs if you're stupid. If you're fucking stupid.

That must be such an amazing world to live in psychologically. If everything must be so easy for you if you just like don't understand anything. You've got to be so great to be a moron. I mean, the Turning Point USA flyer to support Sophie Cunningham spelled her name wrong.

So honestly, of course. This is coming back to one of the things about being on the right versus being on the left, which is like, you know, in order to be on the left, you do have to have standards. Like, you can't be, like, an abuser, right? Like, you will eventually get run out for that. Maybe. Whereas on the right, you can just do it as fine.

But, comma, if you get arrested, only one of these two groups is going to be there for you. And it sure is fuck not the people who are going to spell your name wrong on the promotional flyer. It's so beastline. Get Bell, Pure Fiber Internet. with Crave Netflix and Disney Plus from $94 a month. Price guaranteed for two years on internet with a two-year term and auto pay credit. Visit bell.ca for details and to check availability.

Bell, connection is everything. When I was 14 years old, I was kidnapped and held captive for nine months. I survived, and I've spent my life exploring how other people survive what should have destroyed them. I'm Elizabeth Smart, and these are the Survivor Files. I just remember, This low, taunting voice next to my ear saying, shut up, don't say anything. Every week, I'm with survivors who live through the unthinkable.

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Every time I tried to be alone, I kept meeting people, and they were like, you smiled at us. Not a lot of people smile around here. It's when you're alone that you're most receptive to the world as it is and not the lies you're sold about it. It can be a time where you push your limits, change your mind, or wake up to a new version of yourself. So whether you're a solo travel veteran or you're too nervous to book your first trip, I hope you listen to Solita on the IHeart Radio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. Okay, but like, what is Sophie been saying and doing? Let's just get into the media.

Yeah, let's talk about that. Yeah, and I think this is where, as I kind of said at the beginning, I think it's important to look at where it started because I think this was a failure of media from the beginning and the reason that it has snowed. in the way that it is with an incredible headline. It was basically, like, love her or hate her, like, Sophie won't be ignored. And I kind of was like, well, she was, I was ignoring her until you decided to run a profile. Yeah, you decided she won't be ignored. On a baseline, like, this is such a baffling player to run a profile look.

Right. Well, so the profile itself, too, is, like, such to me an example of, like, shoddy journalism, because they spend, like, most of it where her parents are kind of bragging about how she was a childhood bully. Then they go on to say how she used to play on teams with boys and beat them. And that was like a source of pride for them. And then after those things, they kind of casually drop in Sophie saying, people think I hate trans. End of sentence.

And trans what? We don't know. Yeah. But I don't. I don't. just essentially, I believe in love, but I think, you know, biological males should not be in sport with girls. So again, we also have adult men being, playing somehow playing sport with young girls. So there was just so many places as a reporter if I were writing this profile

that I kind of would have been like, huh, okay, well, can you give any examples of, you know, grown men playing sports against girls? Could you talk to me about why you're so proud of having played against boys, but you think, like, there were so many places you could have gone here, and none of it happened. It just sat there in the middle of this profile. To be fair to ESPN, they did fire most of their actual journalists in order to give more money to a fucking Pat McAfee, a guy who used to be a hunter, I think, and who now spends all of his time having fucking Aaron Rogers on his show to scream about why vaccines are bad and why trans women should be able to compete in sports.

So, like, you know, this is truly not ESPN's fault. They simply fired everyone who could normally do journalism, and now we're left with whatever this shit is. Another person whose opinion on trans women in sports, we should really be listening to, Aaron Rogers. Yeah, Aaron Rogers. I will listen. I will not agree with Aaron Rogers' position on sports,

but if he can stay in the pocket for longer than 2.3 seconds on two consecutive plays, I will listen to him talk about women's, sports. And he can't. He can't do it. He won't. God, okay. Me being pissed at Aaron Rogers for hitting me aside. Why did they write this? That's the part I don't understand. I mean, because there is like a larger media ecosystem that's going to feed on just that one little nugget of like anti-trans hate. Like it is so easy. The left is going to get mad. The right is going to embrace this. And it's going to just fuel this culture war. Like it's, that's going to generally

generate so many clicks. It is. And I think I don't know how long this profile was in the works. Sometimes it can be, you know, for profiles like this, it can be in the works a very long time. Other times it's not, but I think it's also worth mentioning that just before this profile dropped, Sophie got into a high profile skirmish during a game against the Phoenix Mercury. Many people, most people, have probably seen the kind of viral meme of her pointing. And she's pointing at DeWana Bonner, who they are formed.

teammates actually and Alyssa Thomas and basically I mean it was almost like a full team brawl but there were a lot of kind of racial undertones to the way that that went down racial overtones the way it was talked about like they were just

racist shit. Yes yes yes and the way that meme has shown up I think is really important because there's not really a way to deny that it was racist when it's actually being used in very like I've seen it at least in very racist or, you know, offensive or problematic ways since it happened.

But that profile drops on the heels of that really big fight that was all over the televisions it was being played up. And people were taking sides and saying how great and how cool Sophie was. It was appalling actually to watch. But these two things, this profile drops right on the heels of that. And I think that that really put more eye. on it than might have happened otherwise as well. That makes sense. So I did just pull up the profile and the framing of this is so fucking annoying.

There's a whole section as is she hero or heel? And then there's just anecdotes where she's the hero here. She's a heel here. It's like it's, oh my God. It's written very clickbait. It is. I was going to say this is incredibly clickbait. This is incredibly like it's supposed to be like she's the,

divisive for some reason, but we're telling you that she's divisive. And I don't think there was any reason to have asked her about her stance on trans women in sports because before this profile, we could have maybe guessed where she stood based on some like likes and retweets of, you know, things about protecting women and girls, but nothing was overt. She had not been overt enough that it actually, to me, again, as the journalist writing this story, I wouldn't have asked her about it because to me it wasn't significant enough. And what she had said, it isn't a thing I would have even wanted to try to have her clarify. So it seems to me either she brought it up or she was deliberately asked about it and given the opportunity to make these comments.

Yeah, and I guess this is an important part of the pivot because kind of before this story, she was just a racist. Like, that was her laid with just being a racist. Let's get into her doing the transphobia pivot, which was kind of arch to, well, okay, I'm saying pivot here. It's not like she's not still doing, like, racist stuff, but... The transphobia, yes, and. It's yes and. And I think actually, if we talk about transphobia as being rooted in white supremacy, they're really two sides of the same coin here, because at the end of the day,

what's actually, like, happening is conversations around, you know, who is an acceptable definition of a woman, whether it's the black masculine women she's playing against and bullying or, you know, the trans women and girls that she's speaking out against. So, like, I'd say, and two sides of the same coin. I think that's a fair way to sum of them. I'm realizing now, we probably should have mentioned this at the beginning for people who have not seen her. But, like, Sophie Cunningham looks like the kind of person you would have seen on, like, I don't actually know who did the, like, positive propaganda for the Nazis.

But, like, I don't know, like, if you're doing, if you're doing, like, a dare storm. Oh, Lenny Oriefenstall. Like, yeah, Lenny Orifunstall would have loved her. Yeah, yeah. Like, Lenny Reefersol, like, Recruitment ad thing. Like, she is like the person you would put on that. Right. Yeah. Well, she's now had more gender affirming care than most dolls could ever dream of having.

So also that, also that. They want to be quirky so bad. It's crazy. Like, there's something psychosexual rooted in like Mar-a-Lago face. I swear to God. Yeah. So let's talk about kind of the arc of Sophie Cunningham as anti-transmedian. person because she initially leans like all the way the fuck into it. Yeah, Sophie leans into it, but what happens pretty quickly is that right-wing media picks

it up. It kind of gets, you know, news aggregated everywhere. And then she doubles down in press conferences and starts to kind of say, I said what I said, essentially. And I should have the ability to, you know, say what I believe. And once she doubles down in the press conference, that's when you start to see the rallies happening, anti-trans rallies outside, because the fever's on a road trip now. And so, and every city they visit anti-trans groups start showing up, whether it's, you know, to promote their bill for, you know, children having genital exams to play sports or whatever else they're there to do. But some of the more high-profile anti-trans groups starts to show up, and that's, I think,

when it devolves. Yeah. Yeah. I guess we have ahead of us the branching path of, should we talk about the devolution, or should we talk about her brief attempt to pivot back to basketball? Well, I guess what I think is really notable is that the group that really, you know, shows up and I think where there starts to be some controversy is a group called XXXY Athletics that was started by a woman named Jennifer Say. And I think that mainstream people do not

know who this group is. And basically their whole thing is that they pay cis girls to protest sporting events where they might have to compete against a trans girl. And then that protest creates media and controversy. So they literally are like, paying people to create these controversies. And they showed up and they paid two girls to sit in the front row at the game against the storm with signs thinking Sophie and a storm owner got upset and curse them out. And the storm owner got suspended and the transphobes got an apology. And so this, I think, is also where the WMBA now had an opportunity to do something.

And they took the wrong side. And so the thing to me that is really. notable is that the specific group and then Riley Gaines, you know, noted fifth place swimmer or Riley Gaines shows up. Oh my God. And once that happens, it's kind of, it's out of control, but I think what sucks as someone who's been covering this for so long is there are certain names that when I see them, I know the playbook, I know what's happening, I know what's coming, and I'm prepared for it. And no one in media was prepared for it. And they have failed to identify people in XXXY shirts in the front row of a basketball game

as wearing hate symbols. They have failed to state that, like, trans people are being genocided by the government, and it has turned this entire thing into, like, we can agree to disagree. And so I feel like that's kind of the missing piece here, right? Yeah, no, it is just like an abject failure to do an iota of research on, like, who these folks are. So following the event with the storm, coach getting penalized for being a normal person, like the WMBA's statement pissed me off so hard because it's like,

we're having hard conversations, thinking about a lot of things. And like, there has never been a trans woman competing in the WNBA. There are no trans athletes who are likely to be competing in the WNBA anytime soon. Like, this is such a hypothetical non-issue that, like, this shouldn't be a hard conversation to have. Just like, take us stance. Like, even if you fuck up, take us stance, I swear to God. Yeah. And not only is it a non-issue at this point.

We have people saying, well, we can have hard conversations and agree to disagree. And I'm like, who gave a bunch of cis people permission to disagree about a group that, like, they are not part of and policies that actively do not affect them. And the other piece that the media doesn't do is like, okay, we can agree to disagree or we have two different opinions. What are those opinions? Like one group wants human rights, basic human rights and to be included in society. And the other group wants at best for a group of people to like not exist and at worst to die. Yeah. The fact that we're in a genocide by our government and nobody will name that. And this is that's so frustrating. These are the stakes here, right?

Right. Like this is microcosm for all of it. And it's just like, like you're saying, like agree and disagree on what? It's like what do you disagreeing with? Like let's say that the WNBA takes the radical stance of implementing the former standards that the International Olympic Committee had up until fairly recently regarding trans athletes, which necessitated like two years of hormone therapy before a trans woman could compete. And like just as on a personal stance, I'm like, I don't like setting hard boundaries for like when trans people can exist. But like, that aside, like having just a baseline policy that will not impact a single player currently involved in the WMBA that's so bare bones. That is the easiest thing to do because it functionally changes nothing on the day to day. I do think the WMBA needs to be careful because we've seen like the policy you're talking about wouldn't impact anybody and whether I agree that they should have a policy. I mean, you know, I don't really think anyone should have these policies. Right. No, no, no. I agree. I agree with that. But I see your point. I think my concern becomes we've seen how chromosome testing and some of

these other forms of sex testing are happening above the WMBA and often in the, you know, the International Olympic Committee and everything. Oh, my God. Yeah. And often, right, that trickles down. And I think something the WMBA needs to be very careful about and cognizant of, the people, who are most directly impacted by these sex testing policies. There's no trans women in the WMBA. They won't be impacted. But, you know, black women in particular are so often the directly impacted population. Like the league, the WMBA is actually full of people who are directly impacted by a lot of

the policies that we're talking around, even though they're not trans. And so it's a very slippery slope that I, like, I hope they get right in this moment. Because if they go too far in the other direction, it will be a. a mess in like 12 ways. Oh, yeah. No, and I'm not actually advocating for them to implement a policy like that. I'm just like, for me, having any policy just to shut up like the couple of a former NBA gothous who are like, I'm going to go be a woman now.

And I'm like, well, you can go shut up. Yeah. Oh, no, I didn't think you were advocating for that. I think just because we can see how sex testing is going elsewhere, I think sometimes people forget. Yeah. No, I remember I remember Castor Semenya. Like, don't worry. I like absolutely do not want to see that. Yeah. And but mainstream, like, whether mainstream people are like mainstream media or just like cis people in general, they don't like there's so many nuances here too. Yes. They get completely missed and everything gets flattened and then it becomes, well, we'll just put this policy in place. And then, you know, people don't think about that it's a whole different, you know, can of worms.

Yeah. The fact. that they had no policy before any of this came into being. It's kind of what I think led this to be the perfect storm. Yeah. Because like with it being such a blank slate for grifters, bad actors, and even just super misinformed folks who don't really know what's going on, like to kind of project and or manipulate like the situation, there is not a clean, quick answer. There's not, and I will say a lot of leagues, I think, are trying not to put policies in place right now if they don't already have one because if there's no policy, there's nothing to violate. And I think they hoped they could fly under the radar. I know that a lot of trans advocates in the space are actually, you know, behind the scenes kind of suggesting that as well, kind of wait it out a little bit because without a policy, you hope you don't end up on the radar of the Trump administration or whoever else. Obviously, that has not been what happened here at all, unfortunately.

I want to talk a little bit about the weird shit where, like, Ennis Cantor Freedom, who's like a former sort of NBA washout turns, like, right-wing culture war guy, him and, like, Royce White. And apparently some other just absolute fail sons of the MNBA, they're like, oh, we're going to declare for the 2027 draft. And I think that in some ways, I think is actually a really clarifying thing for what the question of can trans women play women's sports is actually about. And I think this is the thing that the media has really not understood because, you know, some of it I think is just trans misogyny, right? Like they don't actually really think that trans women are women. but like the argument over can trans women play women's sports if you listen to how people like Sophie Cunningham frame it

and this this has spread throughout even parts of the Democratic Party where you get people talking about like well should young girls be playing against men and like and that's that's the actual argument here the stakes of this argument is not about sports it's are trans women women or are we not and if we're not then it becomes sort of de facto legitimate to impose, you know, all of the segregation policies that they've been putting in place, all of the, you know, and when I say they've been putting in place, I'm not talking about even sports leagues, I'm talking about like the federal government, right?

Right. And a bunch of state governments, the Catholic Church, you know, in terms of gender-affirming car bands, that's the actual stakes of this is like, are we women or not? And the moment you go, no, you're not, you're like some other. kind of thing where like maybe we'll let you do this eventually at some point you start getting people making you know we listen to these people being like well the leagues can decide individually like league by league who they think is like legitimately qualified to play and it's like okay this is an argument for segregation yeah right this is explicitly an argument that is league should be allowed to segregate players

and that's also the whole like oh why don't why don't trans people go start their own league it's like we had this it was segregation it's this thing that's like infuriating it just doesn't click that that's what the goal is here. Right. I think what makes like trans women in sports so such a potent like rallying point. It's preying on so many axes of not just like putting young girls in danger, but also like I can like there's an economic component too because like so many people get involved in sports as kids so that they're able to get college scholarships. Right. And so like, it's just, it becomes this thing all the way down.

Yeah. But like, it's this situation where by saying that this boy could be on the girls team, that is implicitly signaling this notion that this boy is going to get all of the college scholarships, or this trans woman who we're affirming as a boy on the girls team, because God forbid they just be normal for 10 seconds. And aside from everything else, that is a fundamental misunderstanding of, how much money there isn't in like women's college sports programs or even like women's professional sports.

There is not a single trans athlete who was transitioning for that good, good money. No, it's never happened. That is literally never happened. Like even if you were to transition to play in the WMBA, it's like, great, you're making, you're making as much money as like, I don't know, if you're the best player in the league, you might be making as much money as like a practice team guy on like an NFL team.

Like if you're transitioning so that you can play women's sports, something tells me you just needed an excuse and you were going to you wanted to transition anyway. Yeah. Also that like if if you start okay actually actually if you start transitioning as a bit so you can dominate women's

sports, call me. I want to have you on my podcast. Truly commitment to the bit. It's like obviously like none of the people who are doing this are ever going to, like, do any kind of even vaguely transitioning thing? No. The closest thing I've seen to this, the actress who did, she's the man. Amanda Bynes.

Yeah, like, talked about it in an interview one time that, like, having to, like, pretend to be a guy gave her, like, she didn't have the words gender dysphoria, but if you read her describing it, it's like, oh, no, she got gender dysphoria. No, she totally talked about having gender dysphoria. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah, like, it's very genuinely, again, like, if you, if this is the push, that you need to start playing with your gender

because for some reason you really want to play on the women's teams. Like baby girl, DIY H-R-T. Yeah. Yeah. It's just this like right wing protect the children fantasy that they're using as the justification for, you know,

like this is the wedge issue that they use to push all of the rest of their stuff. And if you go back to like the daily wire people who are instrumental in getting a bunch of the anti-trans bills pass under the Biden administration, like, before they kind of, like, blew up their company trying to make Penn Dragon.

They're thankfully in their clop era right now. Yeah. But, like, back when they were doing this, you know, you would listen to them talk about how we need to eradicate transgenderism because that was the actual goal. It was never about, like, sports. It was about eradicating us. Yeah, the second they're allowed to speak, yes, that's when the mask comes off. And, yeah.

And I think the piece about the transmasogyny, that I think sometimes gets missed too, is we can look at somebody like Jennifer Say, who runs the X, X, X, Y athletics. And she, in addition to someone like Nancy Hogshead, who was an Olympic swimmer, who started the Women's Sports Policy Working Group with Martina Navrilova,

a similar kind of group trying to, you know, not allow trends women and girls to play sports with girls. These are people who actually made their post-athletic kind of names as advocates against sexual abuse in sport. They'd both been victims of adult male coaches. This is where that really insidious turfy kind of when you paint trans women as men. Again, the problem is still men, right?

And so these are people who were known as feminist advocates in the space before making the anti-trans pivot. And I think that sometimes that piece gets missed too in the very insidious way, the framing trans women as men actually can make some of these target points of making them seem like threats appealing or make sense to maybe feminist quote unquote like Jennifer Say or Nancy Hong said. You know, this has been a thing that's been happening back down to like the original turfs, right? Like the original like transphobic wing of the radical feminists were like, if you look at how this played out during the porn wars too. one of the fundamental issues with organizing as any kind of marginalized group is that, you know, there's always going to be people inside of your marginalized group who you don't agree with.

And there can become a point where the incentive to, instead of trying to, like, fight or directly, like, have conflict with the actual group that is oppressing you, right? We're like, yeah, if you're doing women sports, the group that is oppressing you is, like, the men who are abusing you, right? You can look at this in sort of the class context, right? Where, you know, like, yeah, if you were a worker, like you were being oppressed by the actual ruling class, which is the capitalist class that owns the means of production. But there becomes a point where it's easier to try to police the behavior of your own than it is to fight the dominant group. And this is, you know, I'm taking this on a little bit of a tangent here.

But, like, if you've ever heard the term, like, the lump in proletariat, it's just this term that I know there are going to be some people in the audience who are very attached to that term. as like a self-referential thing. But it's supposed to be this, like, part of the working class that's, like, drifters and vagrants and, like, Marx goes on this, like, really sort of, like, blood-curdling rants about, like, organ grinders and, like, pimps and, like, runaway soldiers

and, like, all of the, like, boot shiners on the street. And, like, all of these groups of people who have nothing to do with each other from, like, a sociological class in that sense. Like, there is, like, absolutely nothing in common that, like, someone who polishes boots on the street has in common with like someone who's like run away for being a soldier.

But this is like Marx's, you know, there's this thing in the journal End Notes about this. This is like Marx's disgust, specifically at like, the Victorian discussed about like this part of the class that he thinks is like lowly or whatever. And Marx just like goes off on these people. And this has been a thing for a really long time of like the working class movement trying to like purify itself

of these like lumpen elements who are supposed to be like anarchists and like unpeer. and you get this in the feminist movement we're like in the feminist movement like that was us that was trans women we were we were like the elements that was like the easiest to

you know you could be like well all these trans women are actually men and they're trying to like infiltrate our spaces and you can spend all of your energy trying to purify your own movement against this other group of people who are inside of your movement instead of actually like fighting the outside

and also you'll be rewarded for it you're doing the patriarchy's work for them yeah and they'll pay you for it instead of fighting you. Right, by pitting cis women and trans women against each other, they fight each other instead of realizing that their struggles are tied up together and, you know, fight the patriarchy together. Yeah, right.

Like, literally, like, trans access to health care is going to help everyone else, too. It's that simple. Yeah. There's, like, an unbelievable number of, like, reproductive health care organizing, like, are trans people? Yeah. Like, it's a bunch of trans pass. And also,

trans femmes too. Like it's like, you know, these are struggles that are intimately bound up. From an external perspective, if you can pit these two groups against each other, and then from an internal perspective, if you can, you know, convince one of these groups that the reason they're being impressed is the other one and channel them into this path of least resistance, where you can nominally be doing what you think is like radicalism to like free your people, but is actually just like fucking over another group of people in service of the ruling class, you can do genocides. And here we are. Yep. Yeah, and here we are.

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your podcasts. So there's a couple more things I wanted to touch on. One of which, and I think bugs, you have an interesting perspective on this, is that like, it didn't used to be like this for trans athletes. It literally didn't used to be like this. So yeah, like, I mean, I'm the very funny camp of having been a college athlete, having competed on both the men's and women's teams for track, albeit this would have been like, you know, small potatoes, D3, everything. But it was such a non-issue for me to this. So this would have been like end terms. I'm not going to give like firm dates, but like, you know, end of the Obama era, beginning of the Trump era, roundabouts, like mid-tens. And I never faced any pushback to myself from either like my

teammates or anyone that I competed in the other side, I ran track. And I mean, it was kind of like eye-opening because like I was expecting it to be like much shittier. But like, no, like, it was just people were just normal. And I mean, I think this is also just kind of thinking, about the ways in which like transphobia writ large has become so many people's like pet little bigotry situation because they want to they want to oppress someone and it's so so so so easy to go after the trans is but yeah like I managed to compete at a fairly high level within D3 as a trans woman and I like genuinely was terrified for like I competed in nationals and for like a week after I was like, and then someone's going to show up.

And people are going to like, I'm like, someone's going to write an article about this. And no one did because, I mean, I really don't want to bring like the politics of passing into this. But like that could have also played a factor at least when dealing with like competitors. Like obviously everyone on my team was very aware because. Even though I was like very baby Tran running on the men's team because it was just like, well, I want to compete and the airbug rules ain't no one. No one cares that the trans woman is smoking the men's team because she hadn't started hormones yet. But like even within the context of that, like, and again, just getting back to what we said earlier, I do not think there is a simple or one size fits all policy for any sort of like, hormonal requirement because as we discussed, that is so right for abuse.

But I can speak from personal experience in saying that after being on hormones for a period of time, the fastest 400 I ever ran as a woman was slower than the slowest 400 I had ever run competitively in track dating back to my freshman year of high school. And so, like, if a trans woman's competing in sports, it's probably going to be fine. We have seen this over and over in the few instances where trans women have been allowed to compete. Like, Leotanis took fifth. Like, even in the moment, like, I think before Riley Gaines became Riley Gaines, like, that was still a nothing. moments. Yeah, and I think it's funny because we can argue about this on a basis of like a human rights

issue, which I think it fundamentally is and that should be enough. But then if you like, people want to argue about the science, the science is also on our side. Like there's literally no evidence that there's an advantage. You talk to any trans woman who has been an athlete before and after transition and she will tell you, I lost muscle mass. I lost bone density. I lost like, long capacity, like I watched my times go down or my weight go down. Yeah, and it happens pretty fast, or it happened fast for me. Like, your mileage may vary, but. Well, my mileage is I started taking low-dose tea, so I'm going to make the Olympics next year.

Watch out. Oh, well, dog. All right, all right, all right. I'm on testosterone now, so watch out. Well, well, and it's one of these things for, like, you can look at the extent to which this isn't really like, about... It's literally not about this. You can tell it's not about ability

because, like, I can't play women's chess. Yeah. It's like, what the f do we doing here? Like, the second Magic the Gathering bans trans women from the pro tour. Are they going to have a pro tour anymore? Yeah, no, the pro tour actually just came back. As of this year, thank God.

Yeah, but ability-wise, too, and like, so what? Like, let trans people win things. Yeah, like, that's all. So okay. Yeah, it comes out to this. Again, like the fundamental question is, like, is a trans woman a woman or not? Right?

And if you're a woman, then you have all of the rights that a woman does. And if you're not, then you don't. That's just fundamentally what it is. Yeah. And it's so frustrating that this has turned into this sort of like, oh, we can like agree to disagree about like whether you should exist or not. And it's like, well, can I agree to disagree whether you should exist or not? Like, is this a too waste?

I'm just using my platform to advocate for my beliefs. I think journalists should be banned from having health care. I think it's actually dangerous for me as a trans woman to exist in the same space as a journalist, because journalists have a long tradition and history of harming my people. So I think we should talk about restricting their access to health care, because giving journalists health care allows them to reproduce transphobia. I mean luck It got me convinced

God Well okay Before we wrap up I do I do want to get a little bit of joy Out of this episode Which So The kind of

One of the kind of concluding points To this story I don't know Given the fact that like We now live in an administration Where the richest man on earth Gave two Nazi salutes at the inauguration Like who knows

Like by the time this episode comes out Sophie Cunningham might have like Fucking born a swastika or some shit. But like, there's a kind of capstone to this story, which is Sophie Cunningham doing this. Oh, why are all the journalists talking about the culture war instead of focusing on basketball? So I want to take a second to talk about Sophie Cunningham as a fucking basketball player. Because I have been so angry about having to fucking hear about this motherfucker. Like, you know what, fuck it. I'm going to do the Julius Caesar bit.

The whole of Gaul, Julius Caesar once remarked, is divided into three parts. Likewise, analysis of athletics is also divided into three parts, one of which the tape grinders inhabit, the analytics nerds another, and the old school coaches the third. The life of the tape grinder consists of endlessly digesting and watching like fucking 17-second clips of some athlete doing something and trying to figure out whether or not they're good. The analytics nerd lives in statistical annexes of unimaginable tedium from which they emerged to tell you that this player is either good or bad based on a bunch of unbelievably convoluted mathematical formulas

they are not capable of explaining. And the old school coach largely consists of old white guys on the internet going that boy nice after they've been fired for saying slurs in a locker room. Now, very rarely, all three of these factions will come to a consensus on a player. You have heard their names. This is Asia Wilson. this is Michael Jordan, this is like peak LeBron,

all three factions will unite to be like this player is good. Occasionally, once in a blue moon you will get all three factions agreeing that a player fucking sucks. And that is Sophie Cuttingham.

She is statistically one of the worst players I have ever seen. Like, the regular statistics, the game before she did her big, she did her big we're pivoting back to sports she shot zero percent from the field zero percent

can you explain what that means for a player to shoot zero percent from the field it means they didn't make a single basket I mean I love this this pivot for her it seems like being transphobic is somehow making an already bad basketball player worse and like again couldn't have happened to a better person in my opinion I was about to say I could do better than that but then I'm pretty good point. So.

Oh, no. Okay, speaking of I could do better, can we talk about the game that she played after she did her weed to pivot back to basketball thing? Because, like, this is not a good WMBA player even when she's not embroiled in controversy.

Like, there's, oh God, who was it? Does the Stephen A. Smith joke about someone getting a single single? Like, if she averages a single single over the course of a week, that is her doing good. This is someone who comes off the bench, misses a bunch of three-pointers, get somewhere between like 8 and 12 points

and then fights people. I think her career average is about 8 points a game, but she played like 28 minutes last week and scored 2 points, 3 points, something like that. Oh, wow. Yeah, you know, really productive time on the floor.

Go for her. You could put a horse on the fucking court and it would do more. Truly, I do feel like maybe I could also at some point throw a basket and like it might, it might go in. But it's biggie. It should have.

That two-point game, she scored two points on free throws. She didn't make a basket. She just got free throws. Oh, my God. Oh, my God. And then she had another game, which was statistically, this isn't really an advanced. There's a basketball statistic called plus minus, which, frankly, you correct me if I'm, if I'm explaining this incorrectly. But it is, when you are on the court, either how many more points does your team score or does the opponent's team?

score. So if you're, for example, like a plus 10, that means when you were on the court, your team scored plus 10 were points and when you were off the court. Yes. She played a game where she was on the court for 17 minutes and she had a plus minus of negative 28. It's incredible. How is it even possible to be on a court? Is it the worst game in WMBA history? It's close. It's the worst game on a win. Okay. Okay. Yes. There's a great Instagram account. I think has TikTok to you, WMBA stats. or WMBA data, that's what it's called Maddie. And Maddie looked at this game, and it was definitely, if not the worst game in WMBA history, very close. Yeah, I think it was like the worst ever in a win. And I kind of emphasized enough, right? The WMBA games are shorter than NBA games. So you have less time to build scoring volume, right?

So you like kind of have to be more efficient. So to have the other team score 28 more points when you were on the court for 17 minutes is, astronomical. They might as well be down a player. Like, why are you even there? Yeah. No, if you were literally playing four out five, I think you would do better. Like, that's like, it's astonishing. This is a slightly dishonest way of putting it, but it gets into, like, how colossal of a fuck-up this is. Yeah, I mean, she's never won a championship at any level. I mean, if I'm unless you're counting high school. No, of course not. Yeah, because she's bad. And like,

To put a perspective how bad being minus 28 is. So, Aja Wilson is by a pretty big margin, like the highest points per game score in the WNBA this season, she's scoring 26 points a game. That's the best player in the league, the like a kind of like, I don't know, like perennial MVP, like literally a generational player, is dropping out on average 26 points a game.

You were minus 28. Having you on the court was like having Asia Wilson, but better on the other. team. Like, and this is the fucking basketball players. She was a horrible or Lisa. I just like, this is the basketball player who's like, like, maybe like the second or third most famous person in the WMBA now because of all of this bullshit.

No, truly, I was at the Sun game last weekend and they were not playing the fever. And there was two people in fever Cunningham jerseys, which is obviously now the new MAGA hat. And I kind of just wanted to go up and be like, why are you wearing the jersey of like the worst player in the league. Like, at least the Caitlin Clark jersey, I kind of get it. But like, Sophie Cunningham, really? Yeah.

Is everything okay at home? Yeah. Like, you need someone to check in on you, babes? Oh, God. As just like a source of joy, I want to close this by talking about Olivia Miles, who is maybe my favorite basketball player ever now, who is so cool. I love her. She's great.

She's my height? So she's like a five, ten. 10 point guard. But, like, she scores at the rim. Nothing about the way that she plays basketball makes any sense to me. It's like, this shouldn't work, and it does, and it's beautiful, and I love it.

And she's, like, she was the best player and the best team in the league as a rookie. She's amazing to watch. You know, I knew she would be great in W. I think I was shocked at how quickly her game translated. And I think it really highlighted not to, like, shit on Caitlin again. but I think it highlighted what people kind of thought Caitlin Clark would look like because, you know, she's also a point guard and they have similar, you know, great passing ability, great court vision.

Those are things that both players share. And you're like, oh, well, there's always a transition period. You know, you're playing against grown women. Like, you got, you know, you're going to get your butt kicked your first season. That's just kind of how it goes. And then Olivia Miles steps in. And it was like, seamless. Like no time had passed.

Courtney Williams was like happy to be like, I'm going back. to being a shooting guard, you're leading our team as a rookie like you got us. Yeah. She is, I don't know how to describe what she looks like when she plays because nothing she does seems like it should be possible. And yet it's also just like graceful and powerful and like smooth and just kind of everything all it wants. And she's got really great style off the court and I love that.

Also, did you see the nickname because she wears the, she was glasses off the court? She wears like goggles on the court. and the nickname The Spectacle, which I'm now obsessed with. Oh, my God. Oh, that's so good. That's so good. No, because, like, I've only recently learned who she is. It's like literally a couple days before we recorded this, and I'm like, holy fuck.

Yeah, she's breaking ankles everywhere. And I, she could be, she could be an MVP candidate. I don't think, I think the only time we've seen a rookie of the year in MVP was Candice Parker in the same year. She could do it. I support it. Yeah, it is really truly one of those, like, I feel so bad for her for having to be in an MVP race with Agent Wilson. But, like, I... The other thing about her that I love is, like, she also plays defense.

She does. And she's, like, seems to really enjoy it. And, like, I have this, like, indelible image of her, like, in this game where she's trying to defend someone... I can't remember who she's playing. She's trying to defend someone who's, like, four inches taller than her. And she, like, bites on a fake. So she's, like, in the end. but somehow she has like, she's like, she's like, she's like, she's like, she's like, she's like,

in the air jumping and she has like her back to the shooter. But somehow she has managed to angle this such that even though she's, she, like, bit on a fake it is jumping, she's still blocking the shot by being in the air in front of it. I was like, how is that even possible? Like, how, how do you, how do you do that? Like, I, like, I don't know. It's just, like, you, like, you owe it to yourself to go watch, just go watch some of her highlights.

Just go watch Olivia Miles highlights. It was like what I was using as like eye bleach after I was trying to watch Sophie

Cunningham tape which was like one of the most miserable experiences of my life. Yeah, Olivia Miles is kind of a walking highlight

real. She's really something to watch. I'm excited that it's just her rookie season too. I get a lot more for her.

Yeah. Yeah. And she's on a really good team. She's in a great environment. Like everyone

seems to love her. And I'm so happy for her. I'm still hooked on to this spectacle. That's so fucking good. It's so good. It's so good. Oh.

Yeah. So this has been Nickadapic here. And thank you both for coming on and also for letting me be gush about one of my favorite players because I love her. She's so great. Yeah. Thanks for having me. Oh, my God. Literally any time.

Thanks for hate you. If you would like to be found and have people find your work, where can people find your work? I am on social media on Instagram. and Blue Sky at the Frankie DLC.L.C. And probably the best place to follow my work is my newsletter called Out of Your League,

where I write stuff, but I also link out to the stuff that I write elsewhere. Really good. And we have a great queer women's sports discord community. And yeah, it's pretty dope. Oh, yeah. Yeah, you can find me on Blue Sky app and about stuff and or

if you've enjoyed hearing my Dulcett cackles, I got a podcast called Everything is Wrestling that I do with my friend Ella Taylor, where we basically just invite cool people on to info dump about their special interests, and we try to relate it to professional wrestling. I think at the time this drops,

the most recent episode will either have been The Law is wrestling, or Muppets is wrestling. I'm proud of mom. Hell yeah, hell yeah. Thank you, too, again so much for coming on and talking about this, And maybe we all live long enough to see trans women actually in the WMBA.

Honestly, yeah. That'd be sick as well. Yeah. It Could Happen here is a production of Cool Zone Media. For more podcasts from Cool Zone Media, visit our website, coolzonemedia. Or check us out on the IHeart Radio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you listen to podcasts. You can now find sources for It Could Happen here listed directly in episode descriptions. Thanks for listening.

I survived nine months in captivity, and I've spent my life exploring how other people survive what should have destroyed them. I'm Elizabeth Smart, and these are the Survivor Files. Every week, I'm with survivors who live through the unthinkable, abducted, stalked, controlled, and nearly silenced. These are stories about what it takes to make it out alive. Listen to the Survivor Files with Elizabeth Smart on the IHeart Radio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. If your bookshelf and your for-you page are equally important to your personality,

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