Sophie Cunningham and the cynical economics of the anti-trans athlete

The conservative media machine is turning WNBA athletes into well-compensated culture-war assets.

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Before this summer, the WNBA player Sophie Cunningham was probably most famous for her decision, in the waning seconds of a 2025 game, to more or less tackle an opponent who had poked the eye of her Indiana Fever teammate Caitlin Clark. In the weeks that followed, Cunningham signed a bunch of endorsement deals and picked up more than a million new TikTok followers. She earned a second wave of social media-driven attention this season, when her exaggerated, taunting finger-point at another opponent went sufficiently viral to earn the attention of, among others, the former NFL quarterback Tom Brady and President Donald Trump.

It also caught the attention of ESPN, which in a lengthy profile, described Cunningham, a reserve guard, as one of the WNBA’s “most magnetic stars.” Most of the piece, which was published in July, explores the putative contrast between Cunningham’s appearance—“white,........

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