If there's one thing activists hate more than people who oppose them, it's people who don't take a side - and Caitlin Clark's recent statement deferring all decisions on transgender athletes in women's sports to governing bodies is not sitting well with advocates for or against transgender athletes.
"I think, for us, it's not really a discussion we really have in our locker room," Clark recently said in response to the renewed debate. "I think it's for leagues and the governing bodies to work with their athletes to find solutions. Our focus is on basketball. That's what we talk about and how we can get wins, and, obviously, we didn't do that tonight. So we need to find an area to improve in that way."
That answer was not acceptable to legal counsel Beth Parlato of the Independent Women's Law Center, who admonished Clark for "punting" the question and treating it as "someone else's responsibility." Parlato declared that more athletes need to take a firm stance.
"Caitlin Clark had an opportunity to stand up for women and girls, and she chose not to. This isn't a question that should be punted or treated as someone else's responsibility. Female athletes deserve leaders and role models willing to say what the science, common sense, and now the U.S. Supreme Court have recognized: sex matters in sports," Parlato told Fox News Digital.
"Protecting women's sports isn't controversial; it is essential to preserving fairness, safety, and equal athletic opportunity for female athletes. More athletes need to take a stand like Sophie Cunningham has and have the courage to speak clearly in defense of the very category that made their own success possible."
Jaime Valdez-Imagn Images.
Organizations like Concerned Women for America and Moms for Liberty expressed similar disappointment in Clark's message, though others placed responsibility less on Clark and more on the league for not addressing the issue and nipping it in the bud far earlier.
The irony is that there isn't even a large swath of transgender athletes trying to get into the WNBA right now.
