[ Consider the fact that so many of the people heaping invective
on this U.S. team are doing so while trumpeting the need to “protect
women’s sports” – something that has never been about reducing
harm for athletes or calling for increased investment]
[[link removed]]

THIS WORLD CUP’S ANTI-USWNT OUTRAGE ISN’T JUST HATEFUL, IT’S
IRRATIONAL  
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Meg Linehan
August 9, 2023
The Athletic
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_ Consider the fact that so many of the people heaping invective on
this U.S. team are doing so while trumpeting the need to “protect
women’s sports” – something that has never been about reducing
harm for athletes or calling for increased investment _

U.S. Women's National Soccer Team, after loss to to Sweden in the
World Cup, AP photo

 

Here we are again.

The U.S. women’s national soccer team, can you believe it, has done
something to elicit a flood of commentary, criticism and right-wing
vitriol. But in a novel twist, this time it was prompted by an
on-field result — a World Cup round of 16 loss on penalties to
Sweden, the first time in 12 years that the team has stumbled on the
world’s biggest stage, with team lightning rod Megan Rapinoe missing
her first-ever World Cup penalty kick in the process.

Clearly, a lot of people have been waiting for this to happen.

On social media, former President Donald Trump attributed the loss
[[link removed]] to current
President Joe Biden, adding that many of the players were “openly
hostile to America,” among more unhinged contempt. Political
commentators, almost all right-leaning, have parroted this talking
point, with former Fox News and NBC host Megyn Kelly declaring on her
SiriusXM radio show
[[link removed]] that
she was “thrilled” the U.S. lost. Players’ public stances on a
number of social, cultural and political issues have repeatedly been
cited as offenses that constitute “revel(ing) in anti-American
vitriol,” as Texas senator and former Republican presidential
candidate Ted Cruz put it on Twitter
[[link removed]]. So too are
their marketing deals, their hairstyles, the awards some have
won…everything down to the clothes they wear
[[link removed]] and
the way they choose to celebrate
[[link removed]] existing
at the peak of their profession.

Somehow, these voices have been given weight despite the fact that
it’s likely few if any of them actually watch the USWNT, or
women’s soccer, or women’s sports in general on a regular basis.
And it’s all in addition to social media’s rotten waterfall of
bigotry; hate speech masquerading as commentary, posted by trolls
masquerading as serious people.

They’ve all gotten their chance to gloat. So here we are again.

When the U.S. women won the World Cup in 2019, conservative
politicians and talking heads had a playbook they followed to the
letter. The equal pay fight was at its zenith, kneeling for the
national anthem was a hot topic, and Trump was trading barbs with a
U.S. team that was at the center of those conversations. In a way, one
could understand the uproar that accompanied that moment. The
discussions at play were significant and real enough that nothing felt
forced.

Four years later, no actual discussions are on the table — just
wedge issues conservatives are gleefully pushing in the hopes of
scoring political points.

Consider the fact that so many of the people heaping invective on this
U.S. team are doing so while trumpeting the need to “protect
women’s sports” –  something that has never been about
reducing harm for athletes
[[link removed]] or
calling for increased investment and resources, but has always been
about a deeply hypocritical politicization of women’s sports
[[link removed]],
about erasing trans people from public life and denying them the joy
of playing at any level, and about policing the behavior of women.

These are all things that several members of the USWNT drew attention
to last year, when they wore wristbands reading “Protect trans
kids” during a friendly in Texas. Now, at least in part because of
that stance, the players are in a target zone of hate.

The backlash actually has very little to do with the World Cup
performance. You can tell because it didn’t start with the team’s
loss to Sweden, or the awful performance against Portugal, or the
lackluster draw against the Netherlands. It first became noticeable at
the earliest possible moment, before the United States’
[[link removed]] opening win against
Vietnam, when some team members sang the national anthem and some did
not. That, somehow, was enough to cause a ripple of outrage — a
small one, but big enough that USWNT defender Naomi Girma was asked
about it at a subsequent press conference.

The USWNT press corps — people like me who cover this team on an
everyday basis — chose not to engage in that topic because it
clearly wasn’t about singing the anthem. If it had been, I might
have pointed out that most of the USA baseball team didn’t sing the
anthem in the final of the World Baseball Classic this year, or that
the USA men’s basketball team didn’t sing the anthem in the
Olympic gold medal game in 2021. I could have pointed to a significant
number of USMNT players who didn’t sing the anthem at the last World
Cup, or identified the same among other countries who have competed in
New Zealand and Australia over the last few weeks.

I might even have pointed out that the U.S. law concerning behavior
during the playing of the national anthem (U.S. Code Title 36, Chapter
10, Section 171) makes exactly zero mention of singing. What it does
mention, though, is standing. That isn’t something that was debated
rationally very often in the buildup to World Cup 2019, but at least
there was a basis to do so.

The 2023 outrage has never been rational. It’s just one group
shouting regardless of whether anyone is listening or not. It is
rooted in misogyny and sexism, racism, homophobia and transphobia —
all the antitheses to the things this team has stood for collectively
and individually.

We could be talking about all of the many reasons why the USWNT
failed; the actual soccer
[[link removed]] that
was played, coaching mistakes
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or larger systemic issues
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will need to be addressed by the U.S. Soccer Federation moving
forward. All those things contributed to the team’s earliest exit
from a World Cup in tournament history. Becoming too “woke,”
whatever that means, certainly didn’t hurt them this time, just as
it didn’t help them when they won in 2019, or even in 2015.

While the attacks are crude and meritless, they have at least proven
that the platforms of the USWNT as a whole, and those of players like
Rapinoe, are significant and far-reaching. They have power, enough to
be considered both a target and a threat. That’s still a deeply
uncomfortable if not outright dangerous
[[link removed]] position to
be in — there is a real, human cost to this vitriol we are
forgetting as we debate whether to engage or not.

The bigger question here is: Who are we listening to right now, and
why?

Is it someone like Fox Sports commentator and former U.S. men’s
national team defender Alexi Lalas, who declared the USWNT
“polarizing”
[[link removed]] because
of their “politics, causes, stances and behavior,” at least to a
certain “portion of America?” I wonder if he has followed his own
train of thought long enough to consider how his network’s coverage
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the 2022 men’s World Cup in Qatar had its own political approach,
from choosing to ignore Qatar’s lengthy history of human rights
abuses directly related to that World Cup, to segments like the one in
which Lalas appeared in a thobe alongside Qatari influencer Khalifa Al
Haroon (also known as Mr. Q).

Perhaps instead we should be listening to the voices that know this
team, this sport, and the USWNT’s legacy that extends beyond the
field. There are numerous current
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former players who have provided excellent analysis
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the World Cup, and players from other national teams who have credited
the USWNT with growing the sport. If the U.S. women’s national team
had clearly been acting out of step with what was expected of them,
surely these are the people who would be able to tell.

“The U.S. women’s national team, they’re pioneers,” Sweden
forward Kosovare Asllani told Tobin Heath in a clip posted following
her team’s win over the U.S
[[link removed]]. “You
are raising the game, you’re opening doors for the rest of the
community, the rest of the world. You’re first with everything.”

She also mentioned she had told an American journalist not to “talk
sh–” about the USWNT.

I still can’t help but resent even having to write this column. I
resent having to spend a single second of a single minute of a single
day at this World Cup — a tournament of upsets and excellence —
thinking about what bad-faith politicians and commentariat have to say
about the USWNT loss. All of this is so cynical, so manufactured and
so cheap. It’s not about soccer, nor is it about the facts, nor has
it ever been. They’ve been waiting to see this team stumble, and
they’ve finally cashed in on their chase to poison the USWNT’s
World Cup platform for their own gain — especially in the case of
Rapinoe.

Something she said four summers ago
[[link removed]] still
works at this moment, though.

“I think that I’m particularly and uniquely and very deeply
American,” Rapinoe said, addressing her own view of what patriotism
means. “If we want to talk about the ideals that we stand for, the
song and the anthem, and what we were founded on, I think I’m
extremely American.”

This team, more than ever before, represents the diversity of the
United States. Keeping the spotlight on them as players, as humans,
and on their platform and their “politics, stances, causes and
behaviors” — as if any of those are anything but standing on the
right side of history — is the best way to ensure they win, even if
they are out of the World Cup.

Otherwise, we’ll just be right back here again.

_[MEG LINEHAN [[link removed]] is a
senior writer for The Athletic who covers the U.S. women's national
team, the National Women's Soccer League and more. She also hosts the
weekly podcast "Full Time with Meg Linehan." Follow Meg on
Twitter @ITSMEGLINEHAN [[link removed]]]_

* USWNT
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* soccer
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* World Cup
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* women's sports
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* U.S. women's national team
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* Women
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* Trans Athletes
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* war on women
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* Donald Trump
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* MAGA
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