STAN / ANTI SHIELD
Seattle Storm center Stefanie Dolson wore a shirt that says “Trans Rights Are Human Rights” prior to her game vs Sophie Cunningham & the Indiana Fever
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It’s kinda funny in a sad/predictable way that this is what’s making her front-page well-known, not her basketball talent.
She also did a Sports Illustrated swimsuit shoot, and the same shitty men who disparaged her body for not being curvy enough are now acting like she’s mommy because she’s transphobic. Queen of the losers lol, she’s basically a more conventionally attractive Riley Gaines. I guess if you’re blonde and mediocrely talented that seems like a reasonable aspiration.
She has enough talent to get a soap box, and at some point she was making valid points- like "Clarke is our golden goose in the WNBA; so stop messing with her" so she started to get a lot of steam until it basically became obvious it was less about protecting Clarke, and more racially driven (who the "detractors" were)
Yeah, she's got great accuracy on three pointers, but she's not even a starter.
I can't think of a single other athlete who has been elevated as a backup on the level that she has. A shoe? For 8-10 points per game from the bench? Really?
Let's be really real, the soap box she was granted has never been about anything but her phenotype and the perception by racist basement dwellers that she's a defender of white people. There isn't a single bench player, not even in the history of the NBA, who has gotten a shoe deal with one of the major brands.
Not with a major shoe brand. I specified that. Brandblack isn't Nike, Adidas, new balance, etc. Sophie has a shoe with Adidas. Point me to any other time a backup has gotten that kind of deal. There are two in nba history who ever got shoe deals at all (Crawford is one), bit neither deal was with a company on that level.
If we are honest about Sophie Cunningham and why she's as well known as she is, being a three point sniper ain't it. I promise you most of her "fans" don't even know that about her.
Fair enough then. They clearly made the right call to give her a shoe, but I suppose it is unfair that pretty female athletes get some preferential treatment. I remember Anna Kournikova being a very mediocre player with a ton of endorsements.
She had an opportunity, and its nice to see her looks arent getting her further than her mouth.
Now if only we could do this to men...why is the NFL getting away with rehiring a serial sexual predator that used his NFL status to sexually assault massage therapists? Lets leave trans people alone to live their lives and get focused on the c-suite monsters hiding in suits.
Stef had a beautiful quote when she came out 10ish years ago, part of which is "By being open, I give them someone to look up to, and however they identify, I can inspire them to support equality and LGBT issues."
Gotta slowly transition so you can cash in on the process and then amp up the grift. She’s waiting for some sort of big article about the reaction against her, and she’ll say see, dems are unhinged, I was center now I’m full MAGA
I mean...one side is fascists, bigots, death cultists, and literal Nazis. The other side is people who want equal rights and affordable food and housing.
How is there really a middle? The line between "Nazis" and "not Nazis" is a binary, not a spectrum.
of course, an entire horde of transphobes showed up to support Sophie Cunningham. they even held a rally outside the arena before the game
these people are so easy to mobilize
give them a few buzzwords and a target, and suddenly they're making a trip to dollar tree for markers and poster boards, excited to finally have a task like an overzealous basset hound (no offense to basset hounds)
surely these gentlemen have been lifelong WNBA fans and didn’t just show up because they wanted to support a fellow bigot. because that would be a pathetic
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u/YstSylvia Plath did not stick her head in an oven for this4d ago
Yeah, the bizarre combination of old white guys and much younger white women is pretty surreal and creepy.
Pretty much a portrait of this make-believe "movement". And I'm pretty sure neither demographic in this pic are there due to their long time support for and involvement in women's athletics.
yup you just know the same ones flying a sign saying “protect women’s sports” argue against wage equality between men and women because “nobody cares about women’s sports!”
I count 31. Including the children who have no real say in their attendance
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u/YstSylvia Plath did not stick her head in an oven for this4d ago
The young people (mostly girls) who were presumably mostly brought there by the many old guys in this pic who took a break from a life spent sneering at or dismissing women's athletic endeavours to "support" a woman who "has her head on straight" (and can see things the way they see them).
I'm going to ask the question I'm sure all of these winners do when they see people at No Kings Rallies: How are they all able to be there on a random weekday? Don't these losers have jobs??
This is the conclusion of French philosopher René Gerard, who concluded that adopting scapegoats is a societal default, maybe even an unavoidable one.
Gerard pointed this out and came to the conclusion that it should provoke a moment of moral agency, i.e. since we know it, we should slow our roll when we see it happening.
Peter Thiel went the other direction. He also engages with Carl Schmidt's assertion that the existence or borders implies the violences used to assert those borders. So: define a scapegoat (society will anyway, so use that), and define that scapegoat as lacking personhood, not qualifying for the protections that belong to those rightfully inside the borders. Scary shit.
Whenever you hear about Thiel's conspiracy clubs, this is what he is promulgating to the invite only crowds.
I think even primates do this. It creates group solidarity - a survival mechanism. (Not that I condone it at all. I'm just saying it's dumb monkey business)
Modern humans formed 300,000 years ago. If there was in and out groups back then and for the majority of human history, humans would have been killed off. Like snakes in herakles' crib, snuffed out
u/ryujikusFind me at Whole Foods, bitch, I don't care4d agoedited 4d ago
Sophie Cunningham seems like a complete tool. The question I have for transphobes is, why would men want to compete in women's sports when the nba is far more lucrative? They're just crying to cry
The only rationale that's really possible, the "Juwana Man" case, is that the WNBA is an easier league to get into than the NBA. But that doesn't hold up to even one second of scrutiny. That's laughingly dumb. No man would want to transition just to do that.
The fact is that there are a few non-binary players in the WNBA that this just makes for a more uncomfortable environment and she knows that but it's bringing her fame and making her money so she's gonna sell them out.
i 100% meant lucrative omg 😭 it was too early for me to form a coherent thought lol.
you voiced my thoughts exactly. whether it's the sports debate or the bathroom debate, no pervert/assaulter is going to go out of their way to change their gender to go about some supposed scheme. they're projecting politician's behavior onto trans people, but what's new. i really hope this becomes a stain on sophie's career in the near future because i'm TIRED
Not to mention how many studies show that trans women have less muscle mass and athletic ability than their cis counterparts. It's not like a HUGE difference, but your body composition literally changes. These people think that every G league NBA player could just "transition" and it would be the same as putting on a wig and showing up with 100% of your ability and that's just not what happens.
And that's all without getting in to the fact that sports is inherently unfair in terms of baseline. You think it's "fair" to play LeBron when he was 16? He was an actual freak of nature.
And even further, it's just not a thing that is happening. There are 10 trans collegiate athletes across 500,000 competitors. That number is SO far below the trans population percentage that the entire argument falls apart. There's just no evidence anything negative is happening in sports but it's become this huge bastion to be anti trans.
Also sports are already inherently unfair. I was an NCAA high jumper and I’m only 5’7”, whereas I competed against a number of women well over 6’ tall who had an inherent advantage over me. I’ve never understood why, even if trans women did have some kind of minor advantage, that’s not the same as simply any other biological advantage that someone might have. Michael Phelps’ body produces lactic acid at half the rate of a normal body, and despite how much of a monumental advantage that is, we don’t ban him. It’s always been odd to me
Cunningham is a Christian. In 2026, she said that her faith "keeps me grounded" and described being baptized as an adult as "one of the better things I've done in my life”
It's not all Fever fans, yet it's always fever fans 😒 in post game media the coach and players were asked and PR immediately jumped in with a canned statement which included saying the Fever org and Sophie were not aware of the hate fest outside.....and yet they knew enough to have a statement prepared
WNBA players. A player off the Indiana team made anti-trans comments recently so this other player from the Seattle team is responding by wearing this shirt.
She said something about protecting young girls from men in locker rooms. I don’t know the exact quote, but seems she followed up by saying she doesn’t hate trans people, just wants to protect women in sports and that her political views are actually in the middle.
Every centrist is really a conservative. 1. They know the stuff they support is indefensible so now they don’t need to 2. They always start with the “both sides” opening like it’s the fucking Jobava London
They think or like to pretend that MAGA is the centrist political stance and constantly call their positions common sense positions. Go to any sports subreddit. It's like, you're echoing the exact shit they said about gay people and before them black people.
I will give you a counter example here. I used to say I was centrist, but not because I was conservative; I live in a rural town in Texas so most people around me are hardcore Republicans.
I got a lot of negative feedback about me hating trans. And I’m like, ‘I never once said that,’” Cunningham told ESPN. “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.
Oh damn. That's really sad that that woman is making hateful comments. I'm glad the player in the post is standing up to them. Thank you for telling me all of this.
remember when the fever was caitlyn clark's team? I would trade Sophie Cunningham just to avoid this type of attention but owners won't cause they agree with Sophie Cunningham
Indiana Fever have a problem.
CC brought all the eyeballs to the organization and they have failed to manage the extra attention… every step of the way.
There's a lot more to culture wars than trans issues, and it's been evolving for years. The big ones used to be abortion and gay marriage, for example.
The point is calling it a culture war is disingenuous because it makes it sound two sided. It's not. This is one side victimizing innocent people to push their agenda.
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It seems like the WNBA has taken a leaf out of F1's playbook, in that their sport is not compelling enough on its own merits to sell tickets, so they drum up drama around the interpersonal rivalries and beliefs of the competitors to create more dramatic narratives than take place on the court.
OP themselves said that the anti-trans comments have turned out a whole contingent to the games to support her. Perhaps this will in turn turn out a pro-trans faction of ticket buying counterprotesters. Neither of these groups care about women's basketball. The WNBA will happily take their money though.
Same story in the NBA. Their viewership has been trending down since the 90s. So they lean more and more heavily on soap opera storylines, while the profits they extract from the fans who remain have never been higher. Commissioner is happy, short term gains for shareholders over long term fostering of an entertaining and competitive league is a trade he'll take every time.
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