Competing protests broke out outside the New York Liberty’s Saturday matchup at Barclays Center, where demonstrators backing Indiana Fever guard Sophie Cunningham’s remarks about transgender athletes in women’s sports stood across from trans rights advocates before the teams met on the court.
The scene in Brooklyn echoed other rallies that have followed Cunningham during recent WNBA stops. About 60 committed supporters of the Fever player gathered near the arena, while more than 100 counterprotesters advocating for transgender rights assembled close by, with NYPD officers and barricades keeping the two groups apart.
Dr. Elizabeth Fedak, 35, a Liberty fan, helped organize the demonstration supporting Cunningham, who sparked widespread backlash last month after telling ESPN she wanted to “protect young girls in a locker room, or young girls in sport who shouldn’t have to go against biological men.”
Critics accused Cunningham of making “transphobic” comments, but her remarks also drew praise from people who said she was voicing a common-sense position. Fedak was among them, saying she was “happy with what Sophie did because I’m a women’s rights advocate.”
“It’s very important to me that we be able to speak the truth about what a woman is and what our bodies are. I’m here standing for basic material reality, women’s sports were created for women, and it needs to stay that way to ensure fairness,” she said.
Fedak, who holds a doctorate in mathematics, pointed to the case of Payton McNabb, saying “a male player threw a volleyball at her, at her back,” and argued that “the risk of injury for women is much higher when they’re competing against men.”
“So it is a safety issue as well,” she said.
Julie Potter, 48, who traveled from Bucks County, Pennsylvania, said she was angered after a paid scoreboard message she had purchased was canceled less than a day before Saturday night’s game, for which she had bought 25 tickets.
Portter’s scoreboard message wrote “Thank you, Jennifer Sey XX XY Athletics will save the day,” — a reference to the former US gymnast whose company actively campaigns to ban transgender women from competing in female sports categories.
“I went back and forth, they issued me a refund, and said what I was saying, ‘wasn’t in the spirit of positivity.’”
Potter believes “that little girls deserve to play sports without having the fear of a man or a little boy in their locker room,” and said she has played sports her entire life and “never [had] a man near me.”
“I want these little girls to have the same childhood. I will fight tooth and nail for it,” she said.
Meanwhile, New York District 8 congressional candidate Vance Bostic told The Post he came out to the arena where Cunningham was playing because it’s important to “support trans people and trans athletes.”
“We need to change the way we view trans people in sports and make it more universal for everyone to play in sports,” the 39-year-old candidate said, adding that he wants “to replace Hakeem Jefferies.”
When asked by The Post how that ideal would translate to reality, Bostic said “all sports should be mixed with gender…100%”
“That’s how we end the gender segregation that we have in our system, and we deal with the trans debate at the same time,” Bostic added, who claims on his website he is “not a politician.”
But when questioned about the possibility of injuries with smaller women being injured by larger men, Bostic admitted “it’s a safety issue.”
“I think sports has a modern way with using science to determine how players compete against each other,” he said.
“So I think leaning into that more and getting people who size up physically, that’s how you go about it versus being like, well, we should have men on men’s team, women on women’s team.”
“We can start modernizing the way players play against each other, using modern ways of science to determine their body makeup.”
As fans entered the Brooklyn arena, pro-trans supporters behind a barricade at the entrance yelled out a barrage of chants including, “ban bigots, not trans women,” “trans people belong in all sports,” and “Liberty fans stand with trans kids.”
After the ESPN interview ran, Cunningham didn’t back down, despite the blowback..
“I got a lot of negative feedback about me hating trans. And I’m like, ‘I never once said that,’” Cunningham said.
When asked about the building rally outside the arena before Saturday night’s tip off, Cunningham said “it’s happened every game and so I’ve already kind of stated how I feel about all that.”
“I’m focused on New York tonight,” the Fever player said.
“And it’s cool that people are using their freedom of speech and doing what they want to do but that’s them, and I’m in my two feet. I’m where I’m at, and so I’m just focused on New York.”
