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Trans debate hovering over WNBA reaches Toronto with rally for Sophie Cunningham
Supporters of a WNBA player caught at the centre of a debate about transgender athletes in women’s sports led a rally outside her team’s game in Toronto on Tuesday.
Ahead of the hometown Tempo’s game against the Indiana Fever, a group gathered on the sidewalk outside Scotiabank Arena bearing signs in support of Fever guard Sophie Cunningham, whose July comment to ESPN about wanting to protect women’s sports has resulted in demonstrations in cities where the team has played road games.
“I got a lot of negative feedback about me hating trans. And I’m like, ‘I never once said that,’” she told ESPN in a profile published July 21. “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.”
The signs on display read, “With Love is Truth,” “Canadian women and girls thank you #8,” and “This lil’ beaver loves women’s sports,” showing a beaver caricature in a maple leaf T-shirt and holding a non-descript flag with three horizontal stripes.
It was the first Cunningham rally held outside the United States, according to Fox News . Supporters first gathered outside Seattle’s Climate Pledge Arena on July 28, then in Portland on July 31, Minneapolis on Aug. 2 and Chicago on Aug. 8, where the Chicago Young Republicans and XX-XY Athletics organized a rally on Madison Street outside the United Center. Counterprotesters turned out at each one.
Some of the women in Toronto also wore shirts from XX-XY Athletics, a company founded by former U.S. gymnastics national champion Jennifer Sey that says it donates part of its sales to fund “the fight to protect fairness and opportunity in women’s sports.”
Among them was Canadian powerlifter April Hutchinson, who came to the fringe sport during the COVID-19 pandemic and has since won gold and silver medals in national and international competitions.
Speaking on the sidewalk outside the arena before tipoff, Hutchinson told the Toronto Sun she wanted Cunningham to know the group was there.
“Thank you so much for being brave but thanks for having integrity because a lot of people just don’t have integrity these days,” she said.
On her own website, Hutchinson has written that the Canadian Powerlifting Union suspended her for speaking out about a transgender competitor, and that she chose not to renew her membership afterward.
Toronto police also issued tickets over a mobile billboard truck parked outside the arena associated with the rally, Fox reported, with the charge reportedly falling under a section of the Toronto Municipal Code barring signs that carry video display elements.
Cunningham, meanwhile, has tried to distance herself from the debate.
“I think it’s just people practising their rights of freedom of speech and doing what other fans have been doing since the WNBA has started,” she told reporters in Portland last month. She has since called the attention a distraction and said she wants to get back to basketball.
Inside the arena, there was a mix of cheers and boos when Cunningham entered the game. Fans cheered when she missed her first free throw, and cheered again late in the fourth quarter when a banner supporting transgender rights appeared on the video screen during a timeout.
The 2026 collective bargaining agreement says only players who are women are eligible for the WNBA, with no further definition and no public policy on transgender or intersex eligibility. In 2024, NCAA president Charlie Baker told Congress he knew of 10 transgender athletes among more than half a million students on college teams.
Cunningham thanked the Toronto crowd afterward.
“You’re going to get boos, you’re going to get cheers,” she told reporters.
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Unpublished Newswire
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