New revelations showed how deep the influence of gays inside the Women's National Basketball Association (WNBA) and the ugly truth about how they used that influence to bully straight women.
The league has actively courted LGBTQ fans for several years, has had several star players come out of the closet with little controversy, and generally been ahead of the NBA, its relatively socially progressive parent league, on every related issue. Although there were no documentation on how the development unfolds inside the locker room, it is now fair to say that there is no acceptance of straight behavior.
One prominent retired WNBA player says that the gay culture made it difficult for straight players to thrive.
Candice Wiggins, the No. 3 pick in the 2008 WNBA Draft and a champion in 2011 with the Minnesota Lynx, announced her retirement last March. In a new interview with the San Diego Union-Tribune, Wiggins says that "98 percent" of the WNBA is gay and that she would have played two more years if not for the "toxic" environment that affected her as a straight woman:
The league has actively courted LGBTQ fans for several years, has had several star players come out of the closet with little controversy, and generally been ahead of the NBA, its relatively socially progressive parent league, on every related issue. Although there were no documentation on how the development unfolds inside the locker room, it is now fair to say that there is no acceptance of straight behavior.
One prominent retired WNBA player says that the gay culture made it difficult for straight players to thrive.
Candice Wiggins, the No. 3 pick in the 2008 WNBA Draft and a champion in 2011 with the Minnesota Lynx, announced her retirement last March. In a new interview with the San Diego Union-Tribune, Wiggins says that "98 percent" of the WNBA is gay and that she would have played two more years if not for the "toxic" environment that affected her as a straight woman:
"I wanted to play two more seasons of WNBA, but the experience didn’t lend itself to my mental state," Wiggins said. "It was a depressing state in the WNBA. It’s not watched. Our value is diminished. It can be quite hard. I didn’t like the culture inside the WNBA, and without revealing too much, it was toxic for me. ... My spirit was being broken."
Wiggins, a four-time All-American at Stanford, asserts she was targeted for harassment from the time she was drafted by Minnesota because she is heterosexual and a nationally popular figure, of whom many other players were jealous.
"Me being heterosexual and straight, and being vocal in my identity as a straight woman was huge," Wiggins said. "I would say 98 percent of the women in the WNBA are gay women. It was a conformist type of place. There was a whole different set of rules they (the other players) could apply. […]
"People were deliberately trying to hurt me all of the time. I had never been called the B-word so many times in my life than I was in my rookie season. I'd never been thrown to the ground so much. The message was: 'We want you to know we don't like you.'" […]
"It comes to a point where you get compared so much to the men, you come to mirror the men,' she said. "So many people think you have to look like a man, play like a man to get respect. I was the opposite. I was proud to a be a woman, and it didn’t fit well in that culture."
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