Whether you’re eagerly awaiting A League of Her Own, dropping in for a Saturday with your queer kickball league, watching the WNBA, following football, reading Alison Bechdel’s latest or following the long-held queer tradition of just existing outside — our queer community’s relationship to athletics, sports, and moving our bodies is a rich and complex tapestry that’s been in the making for as long as queer and trans people have existed (so, for, like, all of human history).
For this roundtable, I asked our team to tell me their “sports” stories — what they’ve loved, or hated, what they played or ran or watched or swam or tried — any encounter with athletics that was meaningful, that they wanted to talk about. When I say “sports,” too, I mean it in the broadest possible sense. I mean any athletics. I mean, ‘talk about it if you hate playing sports because that is also an opinion on sports.’
And if you want to sound off on your own sports story in the comments, then I am passing the ball your way! [See what I did there?]
xoxo,
Nicole
i love this roundtable! i’ve been reclaiming sports gayness as a comically unathletic person (which is partly due to my disability but didn’t know that until relatively recently) after a childhood of being really, really bad
i played a bat-and-ball sport for ten! ten years of my childhood and tragically i was bad at throwing, catching, running, and hitting. strategy and rules, however, are my forte, so i’d holler advice from my spot warming the bench and earn awards like ‘most enthusiastic’
in a twist of fate that i find deeply funny i now help coach a baseball team for a special olympics offshoot in my town, where we modify rules and actions for our players’ access, and turns out knowing what advice to holler is exactly what coaching is!
For most of my childhood I thought I wasn’t athletic because I thought I was fat (I wasn’t, I was just bigger and taller than my many thin friends) and because I didn’t run very fast. But after discovering my 🙌one true sport🙌 of rugby in college and coming to a new understanding of my body’s strength and power, I looked back and realized I had always been super athletic! I did gymnastics and figure skating when I was little, then swimming in middle and high school and was a pretty good second base softball player who made all the teams from elementary through high school.
But rugby really changed my life. The love (queer and friend) on that team and joy of having my size be explicitly praised and valued was incredible. I played all through college, then for a couple of years after with a club team, then when my body developed new disability while I was in grad school I volunteered to help coach the undergrad women’s team and taught a whole new generation of big young women/woman-adjacent folks to love their power. Truly nothing has ever brought me quite as much joy as transforming timid players who spent their lives trying to make their body smaller to GET BIG and enjoy their strength. It still makes me teary!! Plus getting the chance to mentor all those babies through the queer team drama was quite an experience…
Have you seen No Woman No Try on Amazon prime?
What you say about rugby’s validation of bigger, stronger bodies really comes across in this documentary. I found it interesting and surprisingly emotional!
This is so good. I’ve been thinking about this for days now.
My mother signed me up for like every sport – gymnastics, soccer, volley ball, swimming, tennis. I tried them all and I was just bad at most of them, although I did love swimming lessons. It took me decades to realize that part of why my mom wanted me to be in sports is that girls weren’t allowed to play sports when she grew up in the 50s and she really wanted me to enjoy the post Title IX opportunities that she didn’t have. Plus, she was naturally athletic and I was not. I just wanted to be left alone so I could go read my book in my favorite tree.
Between my undiagnosed ADHD, my lack of coordination and not much natural ability, organized sporting activities involving adults telling me what to do just weren’t my thing. I did love jumping rope, roller skating, kick-the-can and other kids playing outside type activities.
I mostly grew up in a Midwestern college town where football was the civic religion and in high school I rebelled by hating football and all competitive sports.
As an adult, I still don’t care much for sportsball but I do love walking and hiking and moving my body.
I really need to hear this “gay sex in the back of the team bus” story now