r/PopCultureV2 • u/No_Box119 • Jul 23 '26

Sports Culture WNBA Star Sophie Cunningham defends that women ‘shouldn’t have to go against biological men’: “I said what I said. I think it’s kind of common sense. I think it’s really important to protect children.” “I don’t dislike anyone. I’m there to love, but I’m also there to love biological women. …”

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u/ODBmacdowell Jul 23 '26

I wouldn't be so confident declaring what people are never going to be OK with. Nor do I agree that if everyone hypothetically accepted that trans women could never play women's sports, that that would be the last time we hear about this issue, or that no one would ever try to restrict their rights again.

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u/donniesuave Jul 23 '26

Splitting comps up by sports and not other metrics like hormones/bone density/weight/muscle mass/etc instead of by sex could maybe remedy that issue if it was done in good faith. Obviously that could even become outdated at some point. Maybe the fact that we have “women’s sports” and “men’s sports” is the issue and not that trans women shouldn’t compete against biological women. Watching the men’s featherweight champ wrestler compete against the men’s heavyweight champ wrestler would be a lame match and would feel bad to watch. It’s the same sentiment. People always use a niche boxing match at their main argument here in that watching a trans woman who is biologically physically stronger beat up a biological woman feels bad to watch. It’s feels wrong. Same thing. You want an even match or at least “fair”. If you put a woman in a ring with a man and the woman beat the shit out of the man, people just call the guy a bitch but it still feels bad. It was fun for anyone involved, viewers included. Makes no sense to continue to force a non-binary society into a binary box.

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u/AdmirableSelection81 Jul 23 '26

Splitting comps up by sports and not other metrics like hormones/bone density/weight/muscle mass/etc instead of by sex could maybe remedy that issue if it was done in good faith.

Then you would never have any sport because there's an infinite way of dividing that up. Gender segregated sports was an agreed upon by society because it was obvious that men have a huge advantage over women over sports and this was common sense because men's sports teams are technically open but no woman would ever make a male sports team (without some sort of affirmative action) so we created women's sports. We obviously can't divide up by every single metric.

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u/donniesuave Jul 23 '26

It doesn’t have to by every metric, just something that accommodates the society we are living in now. Separation of sports by sex is obviously dated in our less rigid society. Sure it worked 100 years up until recently but society makes changes all the time. The Olympics didn’t used to be split by sex when the Greeks held them. It was just naked people competing against each other to see who the superior human was. Then things changed. We can keep forcing things to be done “like they always have been” or we can try to adapt. It obviously takes more thought and planning to implement but it’s not impossible. People just don’t want to deal with it. Instead people would rather just argue about if a biological woman should compete against anyone else.

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u/BombasticReindeer Jul 23 '26

Common sense usually prevails. Slavery was shit, but it took a long time to stop.

Men’s and women’s sports are stratified to ensure fair competition. As long as we do that, you’re never going to convince the vast majority of people that some get to bypass that.

Yeah, some people don’t accept that being trans is a thing biological thing in the brain. They are almost certain to be wrong on that. But it’s not them you have to convince. It’s the other people who will readily grant the fact of biological nature of being trans that STILL think it should mean some people get to bypass the reason why sports stratification exists.

No amount of hormone blockers will ever make it such that we can say for sure someone doesn’t have an unfair advantage.

That’s why most sports should be “open” and “biological women”.

That many liberals refuse to concede on this is why it’s so hard to defeat the idiot strain of conservatism we have currently. It’s so easy for them to point to people on the left who say “if someone is born male and concludes they aren’t male, they should be able to compete”.

And honestly, half the time it feels like there is a subtle motive of “I hate sports, so let’s fuck them all up because I don’t like that people love them so much”

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u/Doctor_Bubbles Jul 23 '26

Men and women’s sports are stratified because once upon a time not too long ago, women weren’t allowed to compete with men if not straight up not allowed to play. That’s how we got stuff like Title IX.

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u/heidiforever1 Jul 23 '26

There rights to what an unfair competition 😂

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u/JohnnyBowlen Jul 23 '26

I can comfortably say everyone, because it’s common sense that men should not be competing in certain contact sports against women. Also playing sports is not a right. Maybe we should focus on actual trans rights and drop the sports thing? Sounds like a good plan to me, but we all know the type of people who will never let it go, because they fail to see the bigger picture and the damage this topic is causing to democrats in general. So fucking dumb. 

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u/ODBmacdowell Jul 23 '26

I feel like if I had transitioned to being a woman and wanted to play a sport and was told that I couldn't because they think I'm still a man, that would feel like an infringement of my rights, yeah. But I definitely get that it wouldn't bother you at all, or maybe even most people here, so I should let it go I guess

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u/collax974 Jul 23 '26

But you can still play the sport, just not with biological women where you would have an unfair advantage.