Just in time for Mother’s Day, I’m pleased to launch the brand new “Proud Soccer Mom” line of t-shirts, sweatshirts, hats, and more. Suitable for both playgrounds and Pride marches, they could become a wardrobe staple.

Buy now through CafePress.

Lesbian mom and basketball superstar Sheryl Swoopes spoke with the Seattle Post-Intelligencer today. She’s playing for the Seattle Storm this season, not her long-time team the Houston Comets. In the article, she talks about how the WNBA’s lack of support for lesbians is “the one thing that’s hurt my feelings more than anything else.” One of the Storm’s new owners, Anne Levinson, said, however, that the league has grown and is doing “a lot of things with marketing to acknowledge and respect the diversity of the fan base.”

Part of what could be driving the change is that Levinson co-owns the Storm with three other women, including Microsoft VP of Human Resources Lisa Brummel, one of the members (along with Swoopes) of my “Most Powerful Lesbian Moms in America” list. The Storm might just have the highest lesbian-mom quotient in the league.

Other happy sports news this week includes the announcement that the Women’s Professional Soccer League will kick off a year from now. After Ellen has the scoop. I’m thrilled there will be a team in Boston; I’m still pining for a WNBA franchise here. You’re also in luck if you’re near Chicago, Dallas, Los Angeles, New York, St. Louis, Washington, D.C., and maybe San Francisco.

My own soccer news this week is that my son has started his first “serious” soccer class, by which I mean that he now owns shin pads and cleats. Lesbian soccer moms unite!

ESPN’s Outside the Lines show this Sunday tackles the topic of negative recruiting and perceived sexual orientation. My son is far from college age, and I have no idea if he’ll turn out to be an athlete, but I have to wonder how the fact of his two moms would play in a recruiter’s mind. More immediately, sexual orientation (and gender identity) bias is a problem for young people today, and it bothers me as a mother, a lesbian, and a former NCAA athlete (albeit at a non-scholarship school).

The National Center for Lesbian Rights has been working with Outside the Lines to shed light on this topic:

In October 2006, NCLR co-hosted an LGBT Sports Think Tank with the NCAA designed to examine ways to address negative recruiting and sexual orientation. Following the success of our Think Tank, NCLR along with Pat Griffin, the Director of the “It Takes a Team!” Educational Campaign for LGBT Issues in Sport, began calling for a national dialogue concerning the impact of negative recruiting based on perceived sexual orientation. Recently, we’ve worked closely with the producer of Outside the Lines on the difficult task of convincing coaches and athletes to break the silence around this harmful practice. . . .

The program will air on ESPN on Sunday, March 23 at 9:30 a.m. EST, and will re-air at 12:00 p.m. EST on ESPNEWS. Reporter Julie Foudy will discuss the topic of negative recruiting and perceived sexual orientation with several special guests.

Yes, that’s 9:30 a.m. No interference with the season finale of The L Word in the evening.

The Washington Senate yesterday passed a measure to give registered same-sex domestic partners an expanded set of rights. The law would treat them as equal to opposite-sex spouses in a number of areas, including those related to probate and trusts, community property and homestead exemptions, guardianship, powers of attorney, and spousal testimony. Domestic partners of public officials would be required to submit financial disclosure forms, just as opposite-sex spouses of officials do. The bill now goes to Governor Chris Gregoire, who is expected to sign it.

All that and they get Sheryl Swoopes. Congrats to all the lucky dykes of the Evergreen State.

A couple of sporty lesbian moms in the news:

• Sports writer Kaki Flynn profiles lesbian mom Jenny Fulle, who in 1974 became “the first girl to officially play Little League baseball since the rule disallowing girls was added in 1951.” Fulle is now executive vice-president and executive producer of Sony Pictures Imageworks, whose film credits include “I Am Legend,” all three “Spider-Man” movies, two of the “Matrix” movies, and “The Chronicles of Narnia.” She also coaches her own son’s Little League team.
• After Ellen reports that Lisa Brummel, Microsoft’s openly lesbian senior vice president for human resources, is one of four women who just bought the Seattle Storm WNBA team. I’ll add that Brummel is also a mom, who raised two children with her partner. (Business Week had a flattering article about her last fall.)

Tennis legend Billie Jean King is the subject of a long interview in today’s Sunday Times (London), after having received the Lifetime Achievement award at the newspaper’s Sports Women of the Year banquet. She talks in depth about her career, her fight to establish a women’s tour, the much-hyped match with Bobby Riggs, being outed, and coming out to her parents. It’s a detailed article with several bits of information new to me; for example, she is godmother to her ex-husband’s first child (by his new wife) and has four other godchildren, whom she talks about “with fondness.” She also still plays tennis regularly “and says that her forehand now is vastly better than ‘the shocking forehand’ she struggled with in her prime” (and which only won her 12 Grand Slam titles, 67 singles titles, 101 doubles titles and 11 mixed doubles titles). You go, girl! I hope you teach your godchildren, if not tennis, at least a lifelong love of fitness and dedication. (Thanks to National Gay News for the link.)

Fellow tennis legend Martina Navratilova has signed a deal to be the “Health and Fitness Ambassador” for the American Association of Retired Persons (AARP). For those who don’t know, the New York Times tells us this about AARP: “With 35 million members—more than one-tenth of the American population—and hundreds of millions of dollars in annual income from the sale of health insurance and other products to people 50 and older, AARP is perhaps the wealthiest and most influential advocacy organization in the nation.” And now they have one out lesbian telling them to get in shape.

I find it hard, however, to imagine Martina as the spokesperson for an age-based group my own parents belong to, but like Billie Jean, Martina is aging, and doing it well. It’s almost harder to imagine AARP, which is non-partisan but not known for being particularly liberal, as having a lesbian spokesperson. Maybe things are changing, however. Their Web site, after all, has a rainbow-hued navigation bar. LGBT seniors, too, are also both a force to be reckoned with (an estimated 2.4 million GLB Americans (and some unestimated number of T Americans) are over the age of 55), and a population often ignored. Now, if the AARP site ever has a link to SAGE (the services and advocacy group for GLBT elders), then I’ll know we’ve gotten somewhere. Perhaps Martina can help build some bridges.

Originally published in Bay Windows, November 1, 2007.

Governor Deval Patrick recently endorsed presidential candidate Barack Obama with the Red Sox reference: “Around here, we know how to come from behind and win.” His statement underlines just how deeply sports are ingrained in American culture. Sports are also, in our society, fundamentally gendered, with different teams, rules, and in some cases, whole different sports for males and females. Political scientist Eileen McDonagh and journalist Laura Pappano, in Playing with the Boys (Oxford University Press: 2008) have written a provocative work that looks more closely at the interaction between these two truths, in the process questioning traditional gender distinctions.

Sports in the U.S. are organized on the principle of “coercive sex segregation,” they say, keeping the genders apart based on presumptions of female inferiority, greater susceptibility to injury, and a sense of immorality (or at least impropriety) about sex-integrated competition. These ideas go back to the origins of organized sport in America, which began as a way to convey the social values needed by men in a newly industrial society. Women’s sports, however, were framed differently. “Girls could play, but had to be feminine so that real sports for males could remain celebrated displays of masculinity.”

Male-female differences in sport are not absolutes, however. In fact, McDonagh and Pappano assert, “sex-segregated policies construct sex difference, thereby articulating in athletic and public life the relative potency and status of what we mean by male and female.” Even today, “Despite enormous gains the fundamental norms are still firmly in place: women can play sports as long as their participation reinforces, rather than challenges, the view of women as heterosexually attractive and lesser athletes than men.” Men’s sports’ domination of the media reflects this bias. Women athletes may get attention—but often, as much for their looks as for their abilities. Unless we take steps towards greater parity, the authors say, we will continue to reinforce traditional gender roles and the lesser status of women. Read more »

I’m sitting here watching Venus Williams and Jelena Jankovic battle it out for a U.S. Open semifinal spot at the USTA Billie Jean King National Tennis Center, and flipping over to ESPN2 to watch the Phoenix Mercury and Detroit Shock in the first game of the WNBA finals. Life is good for us sporty gals. (Having said that, I play none of the above sports beyond being able to show my son the basics, preferring obscure pursuits like fencing, taekwondo, and rock climbing.)

If you’re also fond of sports—and athletic women in particular—make sure to check out Kaki Sports: Lesbianish Sports & Entertainment News by veteran sportswriter Kaki Flynn. Lots of good stuff there, including news of a new women’s soccer league launching in 2009, with teams in Boston, Chicago, Dallas, Los Angeles, New Jersey/New York, St. Louis, and Washington, DC. Whether you play or watch sports yourself, have kids who do, or just want to hang out with what is sure to be a dyke-laden crowd, this is good news. Let’s wish them the luck of the WNBA, and not that of the ill-fated Women’s United Soccer Association (WUSA) which folded in 2003 after three seasons.

My partner and I took our son to his first baseball game this past weekend. It was a minor-league game, since we figured that at four years old, his attention span might not last a full nine innings, even with Cracker Jacks and ice cream. (We were right, despite the attraction of the grinning-baseball mascot.) It was also Breast Cancer Awareness Day at the park. I was going to write a post about the gender-bendiness of watching the home team take the field in pastel pink caps—but over at Suburban Lesbian Mom on Friday, Sara Whitman already tackled issues of baseball, gender expression, and sons. I don’t want to do a copycat post, so below is her piece, reposted with permission. Read more »

The Wimbledon Tennis Championships start today, making this a time of celebration for us sports-loving types. Even though legend Martina Navratilova retired last fall after winning her 59th career title (at the U.S. Open), she’ll be participating as a commentator for the BBC. Defending champion and out lesbian Amélie Mauresmo is one of the top contenders, though she’ll face tough competition from world number-one Justine Henin, number-two Maria Sharapova, and the always formidable Williams sisters.

This is also the first year that all women competitors will now receive the same prize money as their male peers, an equalization long due. Wimbledon started this year in traditional fashion, however, with a rain delay. (Organizers are planning a retractable roof for Centre Court, but it won’t be ready until 2009.)

The official Wimbledon site has live updates, a daily podcast, and all the other usual whizzy online accoutrements. Since this is a parenting site, though, I’ll also point out the U.S. Tennis Association and British Lawn Tennis Association’s resources for parents interested in getting their kids started with tennis.