“I am not a role model,” Charles Barkley snarled in an iconic Nike commercial circa 1993. For NBA fans today, Barkley is the affable, plainspoken broadcaster with an infectious laugh, but early in his career, he was perceived as surly and controversial for his style of play and attitude.
The commercial was his response to his critics and sparked a conversation about athletes and the responsibilities of those in the public eye that continues to this day. The commercial ended with Barkley glaring into the camera and reminding everyone, “Just because I dunk a basketball doesn’t mean I should raise your kids.”
He was right about that, but those blessed with enough talent and work ethic to garner fame and fortune do not get to decide whether children look up to them as role models. Thirty-three years later, WNBA star Sophie Cunningham finds herself in a similar, Barkley-esque media frenzy.
When Celeste Keaton, a co-owner of the WNBA franchise Seattle Storm, publicly berated young girls attending a game wearing shirts in support of women’s sports, Cunningham offered immediate support. The WNBA responded with a half-hearted, limp-wristed, five-game suspension for Keaton. Imagine the level of tone-deafness for a women’s sports league to barely discipline someone who attacked young girls for speaking up in favor of keeping women’s sports for actual women. If we needed proof of how far we’ve come and yet how far we have to go as a culture, look no further than the WNBA.
This circus of irony began when, in an ESPN interview, the Indiana Fever shooting guard — and Caitlin Clark on-court bodyguard — commented that she is uniquely qualified to speak on the need to protect women’s sports. “I think that I am here to extend love,” she told ESPN. “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.”
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Predictably, this brought on a hysterical case of the vapors for members of the media, other WNBA players, and officials. Grasping for the fainting couch, The View brought Megan Rapinoe on to deliver a word salad so incomprehensible it would make Kamala Harris blush.
All this because Cunningham dared to say aloud what everyone in their right mind already knows — that there is a difference between men and women, and it matters. Despite the banshee-like wails of the grievance chorus, Cunningham doubled down, saying it’s “common sense,” and, with confidence-inspired, unyielding sass and brevity of wit, posted on Instagram saying, “I said what I said.”
Whether Cunningham ever aspired to be a role model, this is the courage of conviction desperately needed in a league partnering with Girls in the Game, which says that one of its values is “moving beyond the binary of ‘girl.’” Speaking the truth is also desperately needed in American culture writ large. The truth that men and women are different and neither can become their opposite recently had its day in court when Alliance Defending Freedom litigated alongside Idaho Attorney General Raúl Labrador and West Virginia Attorney General JB McCuskey in defense of state laws that recognize biological reality. The U.S. Supreme Court unanimously held that states can protect women’s sports under Title IX. That is a win for every girl in the 27 states where laws require a fair playing field. But what about the girls in the other 23 states?
Courage is contagious, and many female athletes in those states are speaking up. They deserve support from the men in their lives. Men, especially fathers, should be among the loudest voices protecting young women, not because they cannot speak for themselves, but because they should not have to do so alone. I dare any father to watch what happened to Kallie Keeler in Washington, who was never told she would be wrestling a male — one who then sexually assaulted her during a match — and ask yourself what you would do if it happened to your daughter.
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How long will young women and girls have to wait before those with the power to protect their privacy in the locker room, safety on the field, and opportunity for the future reject the warped ideology threatening all the above?
Sophie Cunningham’s finger-pointing became the meme seen ‘round the world faster than you could say, “Who is she pointing at?” For lawmakers who thus far have failed to protect girls in their states, for other female athletes whose silence is deafening, and yes, for the men who still adhere to chivalrous masculinity despite years of being labeled “toxic,” a paraphrase of the English poet John Donne comes to mind: “Ask not to whom Sophie points, she points to thee.”
Lathan Watts is the vice president of public affairs for Alliance Defending Freedom (@ADFLegal) and its sister organization ADF Action. He earned his juris doctor degree from the University of Mississippi.