Sophie Cunningham is the angel of death for cancel culture
The Indiana Fever’s Sophie Cunningham comes out and says trans athletes shouldn’t compete in women’s sports.
The backlash begins, and it’s all-consuming. Social media erupts in fury, and the liberal side of the media enthusiastically echoes its loudest banshees: she must be punished for her prejudice, an example made.
The brands take their cue, pulling sponsorships and issuing regretful lamentations about “inclusivity” and Cunningham no longer “aligning with our values.” The league condemns her and she is suspended. The team drops her altogether.
Cunningham must offer an apology and contrition to dampen the flames, but still that’s not enough to sate the rage of social media’s culture warlords. The sin was committed, and she must be a woman condemned and canceled. For Cunningham, it’s over.
But this is 2026, not 2016, so none of that happened. Sophie Cunningham is the angel of death for cancel culture. She has reaped its soul.
The WNBA star had addressed the criticism she receives for her views on transgender people competing in women’s sports. “I got a lot of negative feedback about me hating trans. And I’m like, ‘I never once said that,'” Cunningham told ESPN earlier this week.
“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.”
There was, of course, a familiar response.
“Sophie Cunningham is unafraid. Unafraid to be blatantly transphobic,” wrote basketball journalist Roberta F. Rodrigues in a post on X, which has been viewed 5 million times.
Christan Braswell, a journalist who covers the WNBA, also wrote on X: “Sophie Cunningham openly clings to one of the most tired, transphobic tropes and I’m supposed believe she doesn’t stand for the worst of the worst in this country.”
An esports streamer, Andrea Richmond, demanded that Cunningham be “suspended for spewing transphobic dogwhistles publicly” under the WNBA’s “No Space for Hate” campaign.
The Script Falls Apart
But here’s where the script changes from what would have happened just a handful of years ago. Cunningham didn’t retreat, or cave in to the pressure of criticism. No politicians or corporations jumped on the cancellation bandwagon.
Cunningham played, as normal, notching 21 minutes of game-time and eight points in Indiana’s 123-88 victory over Connecticut. A European Wax Center campaign featuring her remained online.
Then she doubled down, with grace and defiance. “I said what I said,” replied Cunningham to a reporter asking about her recent remarks, adding that it’s “common sense.”
“When it comes just to protecting young girls in sport, and women in sport, I feel very strongly about that. I think that’s why you have Title IX, that’s why you have some of the greats in women’s sports,” she added.
“If Title IX and women’s sports weren’t protected then you wouldn’t hear about any type of women in sport.”
Cunningham, as charismatic and memeable off the court as she is on it, repeated the message in an Instagram post captioned “I said what I said,” with an accompanying glamorous photo of her tossing her hair.
The subtext was clear to her aspirant cancelers: I hear you, I see you, and I don’t care.
Outrage Loses Its Power
There’s just no currency in outrage anymore.
Most people and brands are fatigued by it, and the excesses of cancel culture that—even when right in its particular criticisms of a malign comment or act—sought to overcorrect with an unforgiving remedy that was, at its worst, life-destroying.
To be fair, Cunningham is only the latest entry in a lengthening list.
J.K. Rowling has spent years defying the same fury over sex and gender, and rather than pay for it she has watched HBO build a new Harry Potter series around her, seven seasons deep, untroubled by the backlash.
Dave Chappelle drew a Netflix staff walkout and demands that his special be pulled; the streaming platform refused and kept signing him. Shane Gillis, dropped by SNL in 2019 over resurfaced slurs, was invited back to host the show in 2024.
Morgan Wallen lost his label, his radio play and his awards eligibility over a racial slur—and still owned the year’s best-selling album.
The denunciations are as loud as ever from the usual crowds. But what has broken is the cultural and media machinery that turned their denunciations into a cascade of painful negative consequences that culminated in professional and even social exile.
Cancellation still lands on occasion, and attempts now arrive from the right as readily as the left. Just look at over the past year.
Standing With the Majority
But while Cunningham’s critics were yelling at her from the left, she was not making a particularly right-wing case. She had found the reasonable center ground.
On the specific question she raised—whether trans women should play women’s sports—Americans side with her by wide margins: Pew Research Center puts it at roughly two-thirds, climbing to 79 percent in a New York Times/Ipsos survey.
Yet the same public is no enemy of trans people—PRRI’s 2025 survey finds comparable majorities agreeing that transgender Americans deserve equal rights and legal protection from discrimination.
She is standing precisely with the great American middle—a position Cunningham explicitly adopts, despite her critics’ “MAGA Barbie” smears.
“I’m very much in the middle,” she told ESPN. “I agree with things on both sides, disagree with things on both sides. And that’s all I’ve ever said about my political beliefs. But people love to assume.”
Cunningham’s big significance in this cultural moment lies in the consequence gap. She expressed the view, defended it, and returned to work. The cancel culture era is over, and Sophie Cunningham is standing over its corpse.
