WNBA star says she was bullied for being straight, 98 percent of league gay
Candice Wiggins, formerly of the Minnesota Lynx, left professional basketball last year, and now, she is claiming that the reason for her departure was that she was being bullied over her sexual orientation over the course of her eight-year career.
“Me being heterosexual and straight, and being vocal in my identity as a straight woman was huge,” Wiggins told the Union-Tribune. “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.”
She then went on to describe what she called a highly-competitive environment in which all the players were “fighting for crumbs.”
“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 added. “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.”
Still, she said, she had no ill will toward the WNBA players and didn’t want to scare other women away from the league.
“I want you to understand this: There are no enemies in my life,” she said. “Everyone is forgiven. At the end of the day, it made me stronger. If I had not had this experience, I wouldn’t be as tough as I am. I try to be really sensitive. I’m not trying to crush anyone’s dreams or aspirations, or the dreams of the WNBA. I want things to be great, but at the same time it’s important for me to be honest in my reflections.”
