From Kiss-In Protests to Ellie the Elephant: Why the WNBA Took 30 Years to Get This Gay

Washington Mystics Rookie Lauren Betts was on yet another TikTok livestream recently with former and current teammates Charliese Leger-Walker, Angela Dugalić, and Cotie McMahon. “I saw a comment that said Ang should try women,” Betts blurted out to the group. “I said, ‘I agree.’”

The quartet burst out laughing, with Leger-Walker adding, “Hey Ang, happy Pride.”

Dugalić, who was cracking up during the whole exchange, decided to sing in response. “Be who you are,” she belted to the group. In basically the same breath, she quickly switched back to her spoken voice, to make sure her next response was taken in the right spirit: “I’m not there yet, sorry.”

McMahon emphasized that Dugalić said the word “yet” rather than shutting down the possibility completely.

Betts raised her eyebrows, prompting Dugalić to clarify with a smile and note that she’s not there “period,” rather than “yet,” all while McMahon continued to cackle.

This moment, which has since been viewed, clipped, and reposted by thousands of people, is just one of the growing recent examples of WNBA queer inside jokes that players and their fans are making about each other and the league.

“I feel like it’s not something that you have to hide from,” Betts tells Them of her comfort talking about sexuality in that viral exchange. “I feel like we’re past that time where you have to hide your sexuality, and the conversations about that. So I feel like, for me and my team, that’s something that we openly talk about, and I'm sure a lot of teams do as well.”

During the WNBA’s first-ever season 30 years ago, conversations like this would have been absolutely inconceivable. The first player to come out publicly was New York Liberty backup center Sue Wicks in 2002 when she answered a question about her sexual orientation in an interview with Time Out New York. This came five years after the league’s first game was played in June 1997. Wicks told Time Out that she typically didn’t like answering such questions and feared that “the issue” of sexuality in general would become bigger than the league itself.

This is the exact opposite of how many players, including Betts, now feel about the WNBA as it reaches new levels of popularity and a cultural cachet that seemed out of reach just a decade ago.

“I feel like this league is just a really safe place for everybody,” Betts says. “So I think it’s welcome to have those conversations and speak freely about what you believe in and who you are.”

It’s clear that there has been a distinct shift from WNBA players staying silent on queer topics to now overtly discussing their sexuality on social media and in interviews. The question is: What changed? The answer has everything to do with changing attitudes on LGBTQ+ acceptance, and the modern platforms that allow everyone in the league to express themselves more authentically. Players are breaking out of the league’s past molds — and queer fans love them for it.

The WNBA has always drawn a queer and sapphic fandom who have refused to sit idly by, even when the league ignored their existence altogether. A 2002 kiss-in protest, at former WNBA arena Madison Square Garden, was led by an informal group called “Lesbians for Liberty.” This was one of the earliest prominent displays of queer activism in the space, taking place the same year Wicks came out.

In the ensuing decade, league legend Sheryl Swoopes came out, among several other players who spoke up about LGBTQ+ issues, all as the next phase in the fight for queer civil rights in the U.S. took center stage. Leading up to the landmark Obergefell v. Hodges decision of 2015, which legalized same-sex marriage nationwide, the league continued to shift, both in terms of its relationship to its fandom, and to the players themselves.

Minnesota Lynx star Seimone Augustus’ 2012 public coming-out announcement was a major milestone, placing the star player on the front lines of a political battle against a proposed constitutional amendment that would ban same-sex marriage in the state.

Seimone Augustus in 2012 Jerry Holt/Star Tribune via Getty Images

Then the 2013 draft class arrived on the scene a year later, which proved to be absolutely monumental in the queer history of the WNBA. Brittney Griner became the first overall draft pick in league history to be openly gay. Layshia Clarendon, who would later become the first openly transgender and nonbinary player in league history, was also drafted in this same class. It’s not a coincidence that, just a year later, the WNBA league office decided to adopt a league-wide Pride initiative.

The W initially left it to the franchises themselves to decide what types of theme nights teams wanted to hold for their fans. The Los Angeles Sparks had become the first team to acknowledge Pride month in 2001 when Sparks players boarded a bus and participated in a rally for LGBTQ+ rights followed by an event at Girl Bar, a now-closed Los Angeles lesbian hotspot. Thirteen years later, the league became the first pro sports league to establish an official Pride campaign.

“I think it signaled to fans that they were welcomed,” ESPN reporter Katie Barnes said on the Locked on Women’s Basketball podcast in 2024. “Teams at that point had been doing like one-off Pride nights, but it hadn’t been official, and the W made it official in 2014. And I think that gave permission for players to really consider who they are and how they want to present themselves publicly.”

What followed was a flurry of superstar players coming out left and right. In 2016, Elena Delle Donne came out in Vogue magazine, with Sue Bird and Diana Taurasi following a year later. Bird and Taurasi in particular had come up through the league back when it pushed marketing strategies that favored straight-presenting femininity, catering to the male gaze. And once both came out, the ways they both presented themselves changed as well.

Bird was asked to react to the outfits she wore during the 2000s in honor of the WNBA’s 30th season while on site for USA Basketball Women's National Team at a training camp this past April. She was handed a phone, looked down and then her smirk turned into a sigh.

“Oh my God,” she said while looking at the old photos. “This is devastating.”

She wore dresses that were way too big, and she appeared in yoga outfits that showed her abs. Apparently she had never done yoga before, and was asked to performi poses in her various photoshoots promoting the league.

“I think for a long time we were trying to sell a certain image and there’s a couple of us that got caught up in that era,” Bird reflected. “Then obviously when you see pictures when someone is wearing something they’re comfortable in, that’s what fans are gonna connect to. That’s what’s gonna make people want to come watch the games.”

Following the great coming-out boom of the 2010s, players like Jonquel Jones, now a center for the New York Liberty, felt safer and more empowered to follow. But that didn’t mean that all the online chatter was positive. The vibrant queer fandom the WNBA enjoys today hadn’t fully arrived yet. While she was playing in Connecticut for the Sun back in the late 2010s, Jones remembered seeing comments online saying the reason the WNBA lost an early wave of fans was because its “gay players started coming out.”

While Jones calls this an idiotic take, she tells Them it still made her quite sad to see. What made matters worse were simmering public tensions between the league’s straight and queer players. In 2017, former WNBA player Candice Wiggins made comments to the San Diego Union-Tribune claiming that she was being targeted because she was straight, sparking uproar among players.

“I know before I was in the league, there was a player who mentioned ‘how difficult it is to be straight,’ and I’ve never ever seen that in the league,” Golden State Valkyries star Gabby Williams, who was drafted in 2018, says. “I don’t think that's true at all. Obviously, I’m not straight, but I feel like it’s always been very inclusive for everybody.”

Gabby Williams in 2026Eakin Howard/Getty Images

Still, even as WNBA players found acceptance among each other, they were not yet being marketed authentically. Player agents have reported that building brands around gay players in the WNBA has historically been much more difficult.

But a cultural shift, led in part by a new wave of viewers and fans, started to turn the tide. It began with the league being much more accessible during the 2020 COVID-19 global pandemic, when over 90% of the league’s total games during that shortened bubble season were nationally broadcast.

Now in 2026, 276 total regular season games are televised via national broadcasts, up 130% from what this was back during that 2020 season. For context, a game between the Indiana Fever and the New York Liberty earlier this Pride month averaged 2.5 million viewers and became the second most watched WNBA game in the regular season or playoffs since the year 2000.

As more people got plugged into the W, more queer people — this publication included — began to pay attention to everything from inter-league dating subplots to Paige Bueckers’ continual shattering of league records.

“People who aren't sports fans are now getting the ability to dive into this world that they weren't a part of before that they didn't even know existed,” veteran guard Sydney Colson tells Them of this period. “It feels like when you see a representation of yourself on screen or something, when you see somebody that is like you, and that wasn't something you're used to seeing on TV or movies.”

The growing LGBTQ+ fandom began making their own social media content including popular instagram account @wnba_gay, which, for a few years running, has been ranking the rosters of individual teams based on the number of out gay players. In early June of last year, Jones, being the competitor she is, saw that post in her feed and decided to comment, clarifying that her team in the Liberty was gayer than the post had advertised.

“A yall missing some of our points!” she wrote. “Gabby [Williams] on the list but not Marine [Johannès]..? Jaylyn Sherrod? Leo[nie Fibiech] is as well. We number 1 and also we have a 4 out starting 5.”

It was a moment that would go down in internet infamy, sparking Reddit threads, X discussions, and TikTok breakdowns, many of them exuberantly playful. Instead of the WNBA simply feeling safe for queer players and fans, the tide was now turning to levels of openness and public jokes that WNBA players previously didn’t feel comfortable acknowledging.

“In the past, it used to be taboo to kind of talk about it,” Jones tells Them of this shift. “It was kind of like we all knew, but no one spoke about it, that type of thing.”

Jones compares the transformation changes she experienced within her own family. “I had family members that would tell me, ‘It’s OK, you can be that, but you shouldn't post it on social media, the world doesn't have to know,’” she says. “And I'm like, ‘No, that's just another form of suppression for me.’ I just want to be open about who I am. I’m not hiding who I am, or whatever I decide to share on social media is what I want to share.”

That same humorous energy was on display on the orange carpet of the 2026 WNBA draft, from Rookie of the Year frontrunner Olivia Miles. “Rooting for the lesbians, you just have to,” Miles said to this very publication with a smile this past April.

To older players, it’s a thing to behold.

Breanna Stewart, a two-time MVP and three-time WNBA champion, stood in Miles’ shoes ten years ago. Stewart didn’t have a formal coming out, but instead began posting about her personal life once the calendar turned to 2021, around five years after she was drafted.

Stewart proposed to her now wife and former overseas teammate Marta Xargay Casademont in May of that same year, and the couple now share two children. Candace Parker too had a different way of coming out compared to Delle Donne or Bird. She took more of the Stewart approach, letting the world know about her wife and former teammate Anna Petrakova via an Instagram post celebrating their wedding anniversary.

Stewart sees Miles’ comfort in her own skin, at just 23 years old, as something that can’t be rushed. “You can’t force that,” she tells Them. “You can’t make anybody be anything that they’re not ready to be. And I think that now it’s like there’s a safe space where you can really just be yourself and be genuine and know that there’s fans behind that that also have that same sentiment.”

Jones believes that social media and in person levity is a sign of growth and progress. “That just goes to show that we have a healthy community where we can speak about it, and we can make those lighthearted jokes, and everyone feels included.”

Everyone, including straight players.

4X MVP A’ja Wilson has bought a custom Pride themed cake four seasons in a row for her queer teammates, and Sabrina Ionescu and Napheesa Collier were deemed “Power Straights” on their respective WNBA rosters.

According to Dallas Wings forward Alanna Smith, who is another straight ally, in order for players like Wilson to be able to make a Pride cake for her teammates and for Ionescu and Collier to be enthusiastically celebrating their teammate’s queerness, there has to be a level of trust, like the kind she shares with former teammates Courtney Williams and Natisha Hiedeman, or as many know them as, the StudBudz. “Allyship was built on trust and relationships,” she says.

In many ways, current WNBA players have benefited from a craving for authenticity fueled by the TikTok boom of the late 2010s and early 2020s. Colson has taken advantage by using social media to expand her reach while testing out her own queer-coded comedy bits and standup routines. And of course, the StudBudz — now-former teammates Williams and Hiedeman — took a step off a proverbial diving board to test the waters of direct fan engagement, and found a community that was largely dispersed and still niche when they began making content together.

The StudBudz began livestreaming their antics on Twitch in June of 2025. This quickly led to the infamous 72-hour straight All-Star weekend livestream that was heard around the world, in which they discussed rumors that allowed fans to learn about new WNBA player couples, and brought viewers in to watch them dance with Commissioner Cathy Engelbert and Lynx head coach Cheryl Reeve. The stream amassed 40,000 viewers at its peak and became one of the top stories at last year’s All-Star weekend.

For players like Colson, who is currently still rehabbing a torn ACL while hosting her podcast Unsupervised with close friend and former teammate Theresa Plaisance, that kind of unfiltered humor has become a way to show a more human side to the league. It’s also a platform to make light of awkward and uncomfortable situations that include sex and sexuality.

The way that Colson and Plaisance addressed the now-viral moment a green dildo was thrown onto the court during multiple games last July, which included Colson pretending to be the green object in question, is just one of the many examples of how she uses talents off the court and her genuine communication style to engage fans.

“I think [Colson’s] done an amazing job at using humor to kind of make light of situations, but also to talk about who she is as a person, be relatable to others who maybe don't feel as comfortable to talk about it,” Smith tells Them. “She’s someone who’s used humor as a bridge to find a way to be comfortable to talk on certain issues.”

The StudBudz and Colson are feeding a growing beast of a fanbase who are becoming enamored not just with the sport itself, but with the different queer subplots that exist within it. Those included: the on, then off, and now absolutely off relationship between former college teammates NaLyssa Smith and DiJonai Carrington, and the enemies-to-friends-to-lovers relationship of former Connecticut Sun teammates Marina Mabrey and Saniya Rivers.

While this explosion of attention for queer WNBA players has helped to elevate some players and their personal brands, the constant discussion about who they are potentially dating is not without its drawbacks. Players like Bueckers and Azzi Fudd have both been prompted, under press questioning, to make it clear that their business is their own. The newfound candor around queerness in the league can lead to boundary crossing.

Smith, who is now teammates with both Bueckers and Fudd, tells Them there’s now a “tug between” telling stories and “respecting people’s privacy.”

Stewart, however, sees the situation as the new normal for WNBA players — something that’s difficult to try to control. “WNBA players now are in a light that they’ve never been in before,” she said. “There’s going to be a lot of conversations behind it, and that’s just how it goes.”

Players are also already looking beyond the current level of acceptance to ask where queer activism in the league goes from here. For Gabby Williams, the WNBA’s next move is advocating for the safety and rights of trans athletes, which have been under forceful attack since President Donald Trump assumed office for his second term. Only yesterday, the Supreme Court ruled in favor of state-level bans on trans participation in sports.

Las Vegas Aces forward Brianna Turner is already leading the charge on that issue, penning an op-ed in which she criticized the International Olympic Committee’s new sex verification policy with urging people not use the visibility of women’s sports to vilify and exclude trans women.

Jones and Colson agree that the WNBA must continue to represent all queer people, especially at a time of sociopolitical regression. Colson sees firsthand that queer people are fighting back, and more aggressively seeking out community, even as these political attacks continue. “It’s encouraging more people to be themselves,” she says.

As a result, the WNBA fanbase has never been so diverse and inclusive of people who might not know the ins and outs of basketball Xs and Os. This has led popular culture to intersect with the WNBA in ways that it hadn’t meaningfully before. Case in point: after appearing on RuPaul’s Drag Race last year, Betts and the league can now say they’re encountering fans from all over the queer community.

Internet personality, drag artist, and rising star Anania Williams is one such more recent fan. She recently posted a video about her undeniable appreciation for Ellie the Elephant, the Liberty’s incredibly queer and drag-coded star of a mascot. While Anania made a video about Ellie as a part of a branded content partnership, her fandom of the league clearly isn’t fake. (Peep the WNBA shirt she wore while talking about her Tonys performance as part of The Rocky Horror Show cast.)

Between her ballroom-inspired death drops, diva tributes, and the new fans she has inspired, Ellie is perhaps symbolic of the league’s evolution as a whole. In 2021, she replaced the New York team’s original mascot, Maddie the Dog, who cheered on the Liberty from the league’s beginnings flowing into its awkward teenage years back during a time when an obviously queer-coded mascot would be taboo. During the WNBA’s 30th Anniversary season, Maddie has appeared alongside Ellie for a handful of games and based on her choreography, seems to have taken a few pages out of her successor’s playbook. The dog dances a little bit more freely than she used to.

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