Sophie Cunningham’s Trans-Exclusionary Welcome Committee Couldn't Fill a Sidewalk Outside Seattle Storm Game

Tens of people gathered outside of the Seattle Storm vs. Indiana Fever basketball game to support the WNBA’s transphobe of the month, Indiana Fever guard Sophie Cunningham. The bench warmer suddenly rose to notoriety when she voiced support for excluding trans women and girls from women and girls’ sports earlier this month, quickly becoming a new icon for the right wing. 

While their obsession with policing trans women is concerning, their pitiful turnout should give queer-friendly Washingtonians some hope. These are some of the same advocates pushing initiatives to exclude trans girls from girls sports (I-638) and forcibly out queer kids (I–001). The fact that even national attention on their culture war campaign could only draw out a few dozen people does not bode well for their ability to turn out the vote in November. 

Over the last week, right wingers haven’t shut up about their new (and for many their first) favorite WNBA player. In a now infamous ESPN interview, Cunningham spoke in favor of barring trans women and girls from women and girls sports. 

"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."

It’s not exactly a brave stance to want to exclude a tiny fraction of the population, who are already incredibly marginalized, over essentially immaterial concerns for safety. And it’s not really unique either — plenty of Americans want to make sure the sports they otherwise pay very little attention to uphold their bioessentialist view of womanhood.

But still, the perpetual victims on the right wanted to show Cunningham some love when she came to the big, scary gay city.

On Tuesday evening, podcast host Brandi Kruse, activist Amy E. Sousa and a small California-based advocacy group known as “Women Are Real” hosted (and I can’t impress this upon you enough) a small pre-game rally to welcome Cunningham. 

Kruse emphasized that the rally applauding exclusionary remarks did not intend to “oppose” anyone, but rather support Cunningham.

However, it was clear that some attendees had a broader goal than supporting Cunningham — short-form vertical video content desperately trying to recreate the same tired anti-trans debates that gave other conservative influencers their big breaks with the algorithm. Afterall, the event drew almost as many right-wing streamers as it did dedicated supporters, and those chuds only leave their mom's basement when they think they can clip farm fights with libs and lefties.

One asked me to define a woman. I said something to the effect of, “someone you will never sleep with.”

He continued to press, obviously longing for a woman’s attention.

I just said, “I don’t know” as I understood my insults would only arouse him further.

He, someone at the purported protect-women-rally called me dumb and panned his camera to look at my body head-to-toe. Cool. 

Inside the arena, the rally may as well have not existed. Queer news outlet Them declared that Seattle Storm’s Stefanie Dolson “mog[ged]” the “failed” Cunningham rally in her “Trans Rights Are Human Rights” t-shirt. Cunningham didn’t even acknowledge her supporters, notably absent from a post-game presser. 

When asked about the rally, a spokesperson read an organizational statment: "Neither our organization nor Sophie had any knowledge of this demonstration and no contact with its organizers. Our only goal as a team, whether at home or away, is to win basketball games and make Fever fans for life, and we are united on that mission."

For a movement that insists it's speaking for ordinary women, Tuesday's turnout suggested a far narrower constituency: a handful of activists, a cluster of livestreamers, and a WNBA player who never even stopped to thank them.