Zitat des Tages von Megan Rapinoe:
I'm totally obsessed with Tilda Swinton. She has this strange, beautiful sexiness about her. I love everything she does. And I love her hair. It was a little bit of an inspiration for mine.
You have someone like Colin or many of the other athletes who have knelt, especially athletes of colour, and if you're not respecting what they're saying, if you're not believing their charges of police brutality or racial inequality, you're saying that they're lying.
There are plenty of sports teams that say they're very open and super accepting in the locker room. But are they really? Is it really a safe environment? Have they preset that environment to make these players feel comfortable for coming out? I don't think so because there's none out.
I've gotten a lot more disciplined since dating Sue.
I think we need to keep our faces out there and to keep our game out there and keep it growing.
I'm a pretty open book, so not being out publicly felt inauthentic. Hopefully we can get to a point where your personal life isn't anybody else's business, but until then, it's less about people having to know about your sexuality than standing up for what's right and fighting for equality.
I think people now - you know, a lot of athletes have come out and said, I would definitely accept, you know, a gay male athlete in the locker room and on my team.
It's really obvious that we have very serious inequality in this country across many different spectrums. Yes, we can talk about the form of protest or the way it's done or this or that. But it's still not really the conversation that I think we desperately need to have more of in this country.
If there's one thing this team doesn't lack, it's competitiveness and a desire to win. No matter if we come off a win or come off a loss, it seems like we don't really care. We're always motivated to win.
I think that a lot of these cops have been put in very difficult situations and tasked with very difficult jobs with very little training and very little help.
Being a gay American, I know what it means to look at the flag and not have it protect all of your liberties.
I need to feel like I have that freedom to make mistakes and to just try things.
I think, in a large way, it's, 'OK, you've knelt; you've made your point.' But I don't necessarily feel like that. I don't know what that looks like. Do I kneel forever? I don't know, probably not. But I think until I can feel like I'm being more effective in other ways, then this seems appropriate to me.
It's frustrating sometimes: as an athlete, you're thrust into the spotlight, and you know, I think this team has always done a really amazing job of understanding that we have this incredible platform; let's do something good with it.
I think more people are engaged in the issues I want to talk about.
Be honest about how you approach failure. Don't just be critical of yourself, because that can be self-serving. Approach it honestly, assess your performance, and assess the areas where you have fallen short. Correct them and move on. Don't dwell on it. Don't hold on to it.
Over the years, I have really figured out what works for me. It's not about what anyone else is doing. I can't worry about whether I am doing everything that another player is doing, which can be hard sometimes. I have to trust my training and know my body and figure out what will get the best out of me.
Homophobia in male sports is much stronger than in women's sports; the locker room environment is a lot different. It's going to be much more of a brave step, an earthshaking move, for a gay male athlete to come out.
There are not many athletes who are out. And I think it's something that's important. It felt important to me. I guess it seems like a weight off my shoulders, because I've been playing a lot better than I've ever played before. I think I'm just enjoying myself, and I'm happy.
The more I've been able to learn about gay rights and equal pay and gender equity and racial inequality, the more that it all intersects. You can't really pick it apart. It's all intertwined.
It's often hard to just throw money at a problem when you don't really know what the problem is.
I think our existence in professional sports is almost a protest in and of itself in sometimes the very sexist society that we live in. For us, it's just kind of right in line with what we always do.
We need to have a more thoughtful, two-sided conversation about racial issues in this country.
My mom, whether it's right or wrong, she had dreams for me to have a certain life. It takes time to get used to that. But they've been really supportive, and they love me for exactly who I am.
I think it's absolutely absurd that we're playing on turf, and it's really a slap in the face to women's football by FIFA and just a show of disrespect.
The climate is much different for men. That stigma is only going to be broken when people come out and see that there is a positive response. That doesn't mean there will be no negative response, but if people can have the courage to be one of the first, which is very hard, those barriers can be broken down very quickly.
You never want to go through a coaching change mid-cycle.
Being female and an advocate for equal opportunities, I want to see an equal representation in people applying for the head coach job for the women's team.
I don't think there's any perfect way to protest.
Maybe you're not having a thousand times more injuries, but there's an aspect to the purity of the game and the quality of the game that is played on grass that is different on turf.
As I got more into gay rights, I got more into equal pay, and you just see that it's all connected. You can't really speak out on one thing and not another without it not being the full picture.
Sometimes when you date people, you end up breaking up, and if teammates are mature enough to deal with that, then it's okay. I never want to bring any undue drama to the team.
It seems like I'm thinking 400 hours a day; that's kind of how it feels.
In female sports, if you're gay, most likely your team knows it pretty quickly. It's very open and widely supported. For males, it's not that way at all. It's sad.
