Jonathan Alpert: Women were told to speak up. Except about women’s sports

Sophie Cunningham did exactly what women have been told to do for generations: She spoke up when she thought something was unfair.

Apparently, that advice comes with an exception. Women have spent decades being told to trust their judgment, use their voices and refuse to stay quiet simply because an opinion makes someone uncomfortable. But when Cunningham said women’s sports should be for women, speaking up suddenly became the problem.

That’s what makes her story bigger than basketball. Cunningham is willing to say publicly what plenty of women are more comfortable saying privately: They can support transgender people, treat them with dignity and respect, and still believe that women’s sports should be based on biological sex. Women fought for generations to have their voices taken seriously. So why, when the subject is their own sports, are some of them afraid to use them?

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Women’s sports exist because biological differences matter in athletic competition. That’s why we have women’s teams, records, scholarships and championships in the first place. The separation wasn’t incidental. It was the point. Sports also require choices. Someone makes the roster and someone doesn’t. Someone gets the scholarship and someone doesn’t. Someone wins the medal and someone finishes second. Deciding who belongs in a competitive category necessarily affects everyone competing for those opportunities.

Cunningham isn’t standing on some obscure political fringe. More than two dozen states have enacted restrictions on transgender participation in girls’ and women’s sports. In June, the Supreme Court upheld laws in Idaho and West Virginia that allow eligibility for girls’ and women’s school sports to be based on biological sex. This isn’t some fringe position Cunningham dreamed up. It is now written into law across much of the country.

Yet when a prominent woman says essentially the same thing, the reaction can make the position seem beyond the bounds of acceptable discussion. Cunningham has faced criticism from within the WNBA, protests have followed the Indiana Fever, and the controversy has grown large enough that the league is now discussing the transgender-athlete issue. But the outrage gets the headlines.

The silence it produces matters more.

I’ve heard women talk about this privately for years. They don’t want transgender people mistreated. But when the conversation turns to sports, some hesitate. They wonder why the biological differences that justified creating a female category in the first place should suddenly stop mattering when deciding who gets to compete in it. In private, there are questions and disagreement. In public, there is often silence.

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You don’t need to formally censor people to make them stop talking. Social pressure can do the job just fine. Watch someone get attacked, ridiculed or labeled for expressing an opinion and you learn from it. You may still believe exactly what you believed before. You just decide saying it publicly isn’t worth the trouble. That’s how self-censorship works. Nobody has to tell you to shut up. You anticipate what will happen if you speak, and you do it yourself.

Teenagers are especially good at reading these signals. They notice which opinions get approval, which draw criticism and what happens to someone who says the wrong thing. If the social cost of an unpopular view gets high enough, the question changes from "What do I actually think?" to "What am I allowed to say?" That isn’t empowerment. It’s learning to keep your mouth shut.

For generations, women were expected to accommodate others, sometimes at their own expense. Feminism challenged that. Women were told they didn’t have to stay quiet simply to keep somebody else comfortable. Yet some women now find themselves doing exactly that when the subject is women’s sports. They may believe the rules are unfair. They may have questions about biological sex and athletic competition. They may simply believe that the female category should remain based on sex. But they also know what saying so publicly can cost them. Staying quiet is easier.

The vocabulary is new. The underlying instruction is remarkably old: Stay quiet. Be agreeable. Don’t rock the boat.

Women don’t all agree about transgender athletes, and they shouldn’t have to. Women who believe inclusion should come first are entitled to make that case loudly. Women who believe biological sex should determine eligibility for the female category should be able to make theirs just as loudly. None of this excuses treating transgender people badly. They deserve dignity, respect and safety. But respect cannot require women to pretend there is no conflict here, no competing interest and no legitimate question worth asking aloud. Women have a stake in this conversation too.

Cunningham spoke up because she thought something was unfair. When people got angry, she didn’t take it back. You can disagree with her. You can argue that she’s wrong. But the reaction to women who voice these concerns helps explain why others choose silence instead. Women fought for generations to have a voice. They shouldn’t have to whisper when the subject is their own sports.