Unrequited Love
On Being a Queer, Disabled Sports Fan
Part I: On Queerness
If you’re like me, there’s always a moment of awkward tension in each live sporting event: the kiss cam. Watching it, my stomach always twists itself into giddy knots. What if it lands on siblings? What if a husband refuses his wife’s attempts, quelling her excitement? It’s the type of secondhand embarrassment that inevitably makes the crowd erupt into cheers and laughter, nervous giggles abound. I lived this moment repeatedly while attending PWHL (Professional Women’s Hockey League) Minnesota games this spring. The first game I attended had a camera that landed first on the typical prospects: middle aged couples who reluctantly pecked, retirees exemplifying the hope for lasting love, enthusiastic millenials. Then, to my surprise, it ended on an older pair of lesbians. Dressed in the team’s signature purple, with matching short silver haircuts and smile lines, the women looked like the future I never let myself dream of when I was younger. When they kissed, the crowd erupted as though we had scored a goal. The cheers for this queer couple were louder than all of the others combined, and, for the very first time, that stadium felt like home.
We lost in that first game, but I kept coming back. I went to four playoff games - first venturing there alone, then dragging my brother along to two more, and finally watching the penultimate game in the championship series alongside my parents. Falling in love with women’s hockey and supporting my state’s team in the inaugural season unlocked a new feeling of hope that got me through another Minnesota winter. Win or loss, each time I walked through the doors of that stadium and looked up to see “State of Hockey” painted across the top of the gates, I felt a little more Minnesotan, a little more proud. And when a sapphic couple was shown on the kiss cam at every single game, I felt a little more at home - in the sport, in the state, and in myself.
PWHL Minnesota won the championship after barely making it into the playoffs and needing to complete a reverse sweep against the number one seeded team, Toronto, on May 29th. Not two weeks later, on June 10th, they drafted an openly transphobic bigot, lost a large portion of their fanbase, and altered the course of their franchise.
Women’s sports is far from the inclusive, utopian dreamland that fans such as myself may wish for it to one day be. Instead, it is a microcosm of society, with frequent reality checks in the form of racism, homophobia, and transphobia. Being a sports fan has meant taking off the rose colored glasses, gritting my teeth against harsh realities, and deciding to love it despite these reminders. It has meant questioning, again and again, where the lines lie between professional sports as athletes’ careers and professional sports as the holder of hope. Can I celebrate victories while my team outwardly supports someone who hates everything I am? Do I appreciate the beautiful goals when the athlete scoring them is a TERF? Can I buy tickets to games and wear baseball caps with their logo when they bankroll bigots? Where is the line, and how do I continue loving something, even as it fails to return that love?
I’m still learning the answer to those questions. I’m still figuring out how to cope with that unrequited love.
The U.S. Women’s National Team was my first introduction to queerness as a closeted child growing up in rural Wisconsin, attending Catholic school. Though it took me years to come out and come into myself, I think I always knew that I loved the team for more than just their victories. They played beautiful, thrilling soccer on the field, but they were icons off of it as well.
Now, I credit Megan Rapinoe, Kelley O’Hara, and Bend It Like Beckham - which I rented from Family Video every Friday for months straight - for my gay awakening. I watched Rapinoe’s last game with the USWNT from the stands, next to my brother, wearing matching jerseys emblazoned with the number 15 on the back. We cried together and fell even deeper in love with a team that has felt like home even when the world around us didn’t. Moments like that aren’t easily forgotten, which makes the new aches hurt all the more.
Korbin Albert made her debut on the USWNT on December 5, 2023. She plays in France’s professional league with Paris Saint-Germain as a midfielder and has, in the months since her first game, become a consistent presence on our international tournament roster, playing in both the CONCACAF W Gold Cup and She Believes in 2024. She was also selected for the team’s 18 player Olympic roster.
While Albert is, objectively, a skilled (though not impressively or sufficiently so) player, she has also been openly transphobic and homophobic. In March, she reposted a video on TikTok of a deeply dangerous yet not uncommon sermon that insinuated that transness was wrong, unnatural, and something that could simply go away with the help of religion. When Megan Rapinoe tore her achilles in her final professional game, the NWSL championship, Albert ‘liked’ a joke about the injury being punishment from God. To add insult to injury, quite literally, she briefly inherited Rapinoe’s number, the same number that I often wear while cheering on this team. The same number that has meant so much to so many.
When PWHL Minnesota drafted Britta Curl just ten days after lifting the Walter Cup for the very first time, their social media comments were filled with requests for season ticket refunds, disheartened queer fans, and desperate pleads for allyship. It was June, and their logo had been dutifully changed to display the rainbow, yet they signed a well known bigot to a two year contract. When I looked to Curl’s social media, I found the slap in the face I was expecting: anti-vaccination propaganda, anti-abortion rhetoric, support for Donald Trump, and the likening of queerness to perversion. This would be the forward inevitably scoring goals for my team - the team I repeatedly drove three hours round trip to see - next season.
As I write this, a miniature banner celebrating PWHL Minnesota’s inaugural season hangs above my desk. It was handed to me when I first walked through the gates as part of the team’s celebration of their last home game of the season. If I slide open my closet door and rifle through the bottom of my shelves, I’ll find the towels I collected at each playoff game, the towels I clenched and swung through the air and balled up into nervous fists. I don’t know if I should still cling to these things. I don’t know which team I’ll be cheering for next season. Only time will tell.
What I do know is that I boo when Korbin Albert takes the field, but I can’t help but cheer when the USWNT wins. I roll my eyes at every careless mention by commentators of her “controversy,” never once calling it what it is: hatred. The imprecise language stings, and I wish that the organization demanded that her learning be just as loud as her hate. A PR statement apology will never be enough; allyship is a verb, and it’s one that I hope she one day has the maturity and compassion to display. Perhaps that hope is a naive one, but I’m choosing to hold it nevertheless.
Part II: On Disability
A couple of months ago, I was scrolling TikTok when a Paralympics video popped up. Set to a trending audio, the video and the athletes in it made me laugh. I liked it and carried on scrolling. Over time, more videos of Paralympians appeared. Each time, the athletes were set to a funny, trending audio. Each time, I laughed, smiled, and carried on scrolling.
Simultaneously, non-disabled athletes started preparing for the Olympics, and often, when I came across videos featuring these Olympians, I found myself tearing up or holding my breath while watching an incredible moment of pure skill and athleticism. These athletes were remarkable - some I was familiar with, some not - and I found myself becoming increasingly thrilled, anxious for the games to start.
Disabled athletes - disabled people - are consistently divided into two possible categories: inspiration or pity. The expected ableist content, then, is the Paralympian sob stories, the commentary not celebrating their strength or athleticism, but appeasing the non-disabled viewer’s most comfortable view of a disabled person. I was, then, caught off guard by the trendy, hip use of sound to create engaging, silly content about these athletes. This ableism was the insidious kind, the kind that I needed to view through a non-disabled lens before I could recognize it.
“Thanks to the person running the Paralympics account, we’re both going to hell!”
I saw the same version of this sentiment in several TikToks, where people laughed at videos of Paralympians then felt the need to share their guilt with the internet, hoping that the universality of laughing at disabled people would absolve them of their sins. Instead, it reminded me that many, many of the viewers engaging with those “funny” videos see disabled people as objects, as animals, as less than human. The consistent, mocking tone of those videos was not just a marketing ploy to grow engagement. It was ableism in action, as the account - knowingly or unknowingly - capitalized on the desire that so many people have: to laugh, freely and without shame, at that which makes them uncomfortable. At bodies that are often hidden from the spotlight. At people they perceive as animals. At disability.
Disabled people are funny. They’re funny and smart and hot and cool and sometimes they’re cruel and mean and boring. They’re strong and athletic, or they aren’t. They’re professional athletes, or they aren’t. Disabled people encompass every scope of humanity, because disabled people are human beings. To have to spell that out, over and over again, is exhausting and wasteful. There are so many more complex, valuable discussions to have - about care work, community, accessibility, and dreams of the future - but each time I attempt to break down ableism, I am left reiterating my community’s most basic level of humanity.
Before I accepted that I would need to give up soccer as my own disability progressed, I went to physical therapy several times a week for years. I shoved clunky ankle braces into my cleats. I experimented with different styles of support - tape, more rigid, less rigid, inserts, custom inserts - and refused to believe that my body was changing, and with it, I would need to change too. My injuries, though constant, were never really from the sport itself; still, I feel a familiar twinge each time I watch a player go down in a match.
AFAB people are up to 3.5x more likely to tear their ACL than men. Some research suggests the number is even higher. This statistic is unsurprising to anyone who watches women’s sports and has, likely, watched their favorite athletes experience season ending injuries and the long rehab journey to return to the field (or the mat or the court.)
Every person I know who was born with a uterus knows what it feels like to sit in a doctor’s office and be told that it’s all in our heads, we’re overreacting, our pain just isn’t that bad. We are told to take Tylenol before going through the most painful procedures of our lives and are prescribed a day in bed and a box of chocolates to treat it. Women and AFAB people are intimate with the sexism of health care, which is compounded by racism, ableism, and queerphobia.
So, then, perhaps no one is surprised that I have witnessed more athletes than I can count on two hands go down in a game and not get back up. Season ending injury after season ending injury. Players, coaches, and fans talk about the injury rate, talk about the lack of resources, and call out the seeming disinterest in funding a change, in protecting women’s bodies. Still, nothing really changes - certainly not fast enough to protect the players.
So, I watch my favorite athletes rehabilitate after injuries and surgeries. I listen to them disclose the fear, the pain, the hospital visits. Though their disabilities - their injuries, their pain, their accommodations - may not be permanent, I am left feeling closer to them than before. I am also left wondering what would happen if we normalized discussing permanent disabilities as much as we talk about the temporary injuries of our favorite athletes. There is a narrative shift when the injury moves from temporary to permanent. It is no longer livable; it’s life ending. It’s no longer something to learn to work with and through; it’s something to hide. I want to change this narrative.
Part III: A Not-Quite Conclusion
In my commentary on Taylor Swift, I ended by stating that to love is to encourage and foster growth. Refusing to critique the things - artists, athletes, teams - that we love is to do them a disservice. It is this particular thing that I must remind myself when I consider tearing the banner off my wall and dirtying my playoff towels. I can - and will - cherish the joy that sports bring me. I fought to find that joy again after walling off my heart. It isn’t something I’m willing to forfeit once more.
At the same time, I will demand better and give the space to be better. I am impatient, and I am quick to outrage when faced with injustice. I also know that without using my voice to encourage growth rather than stifle it, people will not try to get better, to open their hearts and change their minds. It is a privilege to carry this patience, I know. It’s patience I’m trying to practice. It’s a balance I’m trying to find, between expecting change and allowing for growth.
And, while Korbin Albert’s presence on this USWNT Olympic roster pains me, it is also a roster led by Black women. These stars - Trinity Rodman, Mallory Swanson, Soph Smith, and more - are reigniting hope in this team, this program, and the ability to once again win on an international stage. The jersey I wear on match days no longer bears the number 15, but the number 4, for Naomi Girma, a daughter of Ethiopian immigrants who advocates for mental health and provides a resilient aura of calm to our defensive line. Twitter is rife with jokes about the long lost era of “Alex Morgan and her lesbians” but I’m ready to celebrate this team that may be very straight and is certainly far from perfect but is giving supremely talented Black women the spotlight that they deserve.
Truthfully, I don’t think my love for women’s sports is unrequited. That love comes back to me tenfold - in the group chat of queer sports fans that lights up my phone during games, in the FaceTimes with long distance friends when the ball hits the back of the net, in the Instagram DMs and the tears I can’t help but let roll down my cheeks when someone wins. I don’t need every player on the field to send this love back to me, because my community does that, and that’s what I’ve always loved most about sports: never really being alone in the stands.
Autumn, this just might be one of my favorite things you’ve written so far. Coming off the high of the Olympics & prepping for more high energy/emotions come the Paralympics, this was so resonant!
So, you like sports and you don’t like transphobes. That means we have one thing in common.