Jonathan Alpert: Women were told to speak up. Except about womens sports

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 should be for women, speaking up suddenly became the problem.

Thats 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 womens 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?

Womens sports exist because biological differences matter in athletic competition. Thats why we have womens teams, records, scholarships and championships in the first place. The separation wasnt incidental. It was the point. Sports also require choices. Someone makes the roster and someone doesnt. Someone gets the scholarship and someone doesnt. Someone wins the medal and someone finishes second. Deciding who belongs in a competitive category necessarily affects everyone competing for those opportunities.

Cunningham isnt standing on some obscure political fringe. More than two dozen states have enacted restrictions on transgender participation in girls and womens sports. In June, the Supreme Court upheld laws in Idaho and West Virginia that allow eligibility for girls and womens school sports to be based on biological sex. This isnt 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.

Ive heard women talk about this privately for years. They dont 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 dont 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 isnt worth the trouble. Thats 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 isnt empowerment. Its learning to keep your mouth shut.

For generations, women were expected to accommodate others, sometimes at their own expense. Feminism c