The High Cost of Workplace Affairs
  April 23, 2026 Greetings, Meteor readers, Absolutely everyone is talking about Yesteryear, the new novel from Caro Claire Burke about a tradwife influencer sent back to the 1800s. My local library has a month-long waiting list for a copy, with 433 people currently in line. So we have decided we will not fall victim to FOMO! Over the next two weeks, the Meteor team will be reading Yesteryear and sharing our takes. Are you reading Yesteryear, too? Reply to this email if you want to be part of our roundtable.  In today’s newsletter, we dig into the alleged affair rocking the sports world and why some of us always face more punishment than others. Plus, a very special assignment for your weekend reading. Support your local libraries, Shannon Melero  WHAT'S GOING ONNone’s fair in love and football: Yesterday, New England Patriots head coach Mike Vrabel announced that he would be missing part of this year’s draft to attend counseling. Why is a man advertising his plans to seek counseling? Step into my office. Earlier this month, Page Six published photos of Vrabel at a resort in Arizona with esteemed NFL journalist Dianna Russini. The photos were not particularly salacious—the two are seen eating, sitting separately in a pool, and exchanging an awkward hug—although a later one, of Vrabel and Russini sharing a kiss in 2020, hit the internet just today. Both parties have denied any wrongdoing, but it was clear as soon as the first photos went live who would be paying the price for an alleged consensual relationship between fully grown adults: Russini. The backlash has been swift and ugly. Russini resigned from her position at The Athletic, where she is currently under a conduct investigation. There have also been calls for the AP to investigate Russini’s NFL Awards voting history. Patriots fans on Reddit have even stooped so low as to start questioning the paternity of Russini's son, Michael, which was picked up by a sports outlet. Before we go any further, here’s my opinion on the journalistic ethics of it all: Russini, affair or not, is a rigorous and damn good journalist who has been doing the hard work of covering the NFL for years. Her work is not limited to Vrabel or the Patriots, and there’s been nothing to suggest that their alleged sexual relationship influenced her coverage. And even if you do agree that Russini made an ethical misstep, there’s no denying that she’s shouldering most of the fallout. As she was resigning, the NFL confirmed that it would not be reviewing whether or not Vrabel’s actions were a violation of conduct guidelines. There have been no calls for his resignation (at least not over this), and apart from his absence (beginning on day three of the draft), Vrabel is not expected to lose his job. This is, statistically, par for the course. Though Vrabel and Russini didn’t share a workplace, research shows that when women get involved with a coworker, they suffer more than men who do the same. “Women get half the [economic] gain of dating men with power, but pay double the costs when that relationship ends,” economist and associate professor of finance at the University of Southern California Emily Nix, who wrote a paper on the financial impacts of workplace relationships, tells The Meteor. (Think Kristin Cabot, aka the woman from the Coldplay kiss-cam.) Conversely, men see almost no change in their economic status after dating a superior or a subordinate—Cabot’s paramour Andy Byron resigned as CEO of the company and sold his house for $5 million, and is still a billionaire. Women also have a harder time bouncing back from these relationships, much like Cabot, who recently admitted that she is still looking for work. “One of the reasons women suffer such a big financial loss is because they’re the ones who end up leaving the workforce,” Nix explains. “A year after the event, they’re over 12 percentage points less likely to be employed…which persists for at least four years afterward.” That is what’s so vexing about this situation: seeing someone with the skill, expertise, and impeccable resume of Dianna Russini having her career stalled for a relationship with one out of the 384 coaching staffers in the NFL. Not to mention the blocks this could create for other women who are looking to grow in the industry. “I would not have advised her to resign,” Nix says. “I would have told her to fight tooth and nail because it’s very hard to regain your position. And we do find that women who leave one job have a harder time getting a better offer.” But hey, at least Mike is getting counseling. 🙄 AND:
 WEEKEND READING/LISTENING/WATCHING: “LEMONADE” EDITION 🍋🎶👯 EVERYONE WAS FINDING A FORMATION TO GET INTO. (SCREENSHOT VIA YOUTUBE) “Lemonade,” Beyonce’s sixth and arguably most iconic album, was surprise-released 10 years ago today. Even if you weren’t a card-carrying member of the Beyhive, it was impossible to ignore the ripple effects of this trailblazing “visual album,” whose lyrical, cinematic, and literary references to Black womanhood, history, and religion abounded. (And oh yeah, it’s a chronicle of Jaÿ-Z’s infidelity, mirroring the Kübler-Ross stages of grief.) The cameos were legion, ranging from Serena Williams to Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie to the mothers of Trayvon Martin, Eric Garner, and Michael Brown. Besides gifting us banger after banger, “Lemonade” spurred a kaleidoscope of thinkpieces, reading lists, roundtables, and entire syllabi that reflected on slavery, on Black feminist theory, on food, on witchcraft, on the supernatural, on Afrofuturism, on vulnerability, on capitalism, on marriage, on Black women’s place in rock ‘n roll, and so much more. The 1991 film Daughters of the Dust—directed by Julie Dash, the first Black woman to direct and produce a full-length, widely distributed feature film—was re-released as a result of the album’s nod to it. You could celebrate “Lemonade” this weekend by listening to it…or you could also read the myriad words of others dissecting it. Choose your own adventure!  FOLLOW THE METEOR      Thank you for reading The Meteor! Got this from a friend? |
It’s not just “violence.” It’s femicide.
  April 21, 2026 Greetings, Meteor readers, I am sending hearty applause to all of you finishers out there who hit the streets of Boston and Jersey City this past marathon weekend. I genuinely marvel at your abilities. In today’s newsletter, we try to wrap our minds around the uptick in femicides and the lack of response. Plus, a suspicious lawsuit out of California and a shred of good news for bodily autonomy. Shannon Melero  WHAT'S GOING ONCall it what it is: In 2023, historian and author Kimberly A. Hamlin wrote in the Washington Post that femicide—the killing of a woman because she is a woman—was on the rise, and that said rise is not surprising given our country’s deeply patriarchal and white-supremacist history. Her assessment rings particularly true this month, as the news of Dr. Cerina Fairfax, Celeste Rivas Hernandez, Lindha Zerpa Lara, Nancy Metayer Bowen, Ashlee Jenae, and Shaneiqua Pugh have flooded our screens. These women were murdered (aside from Pugh, who was critically injured), and men they were close or married to were named as perpetrators. Over the decade between 2014 and 2024, the number of women killed by intimate partners increased 22 percent. Men are suspects in more than 98 percent of those incidents. Yet “femicide” is not the term most commonly used to describe these kinds of killings; it appears nowhere on the CDC website. The public instead relies on terms like “intimate partner violence”: killed because of a relationship gone wrong. Or “domestic violence”: killed because of some mysterious, private matter inside the home. Neither of those phrases, though, makes clear who the target and perpetrator of that violence is. You can’t address a problem without first properly naming it. Femicide comes closer. The tradition of American femicide has its roots in our country’s history of patriarchy and violence. In her piece, Hamlin points to the exact legal mechanisms that have helped. The most enduring of these was “coverture,” the idea that women’s “legal identity was covered by that of her husband.” Under the laws of coverture, Hamlin writes, it was “basically inconceivable for a husband to be prosecuted for assaulting his wife or children,” because they were his property.  AN ANTI-VIOLENCE PROTEST IN ARGENTINA, 2019 (VIA GETTY IMAGES) More than a hundred years after coverture stopped being common practice, women are still being killed at an alarming and growing rate—and most often, according to data, by men they know. Some women are especially vulnerable: Researchers find that femicide occurs disproportionately among Indigenous, Latina, and Black women, the last of whom make up 14% of the population but, according to the CDC, a full 30 percent of intimate partner murder victims. Laws may change, but the long-term effects of men being told that all things and people are theirs to do with as they please, do not just go away. They adapt. But our response has not. The CDC lists intimate partner violence as a “significant public health issue.” So why is this administration, which purports to be protecting women from everything, stripping away resources meant to protect women from this very real threat? Why is the administration easing gun regulations when on average more than 70 women are shot and killed by an intimate partner every month? In other countries, women have taken to the streets to demand an end to these murders. We could do the same—or at the very least, begin asking candidates what they plan to do about a crisis impacting nearly half of all voters. Because this problem deserves to live not just in “intimate” and “domestic” corners, not just in lurid headlines or true-crime plotlines, but in the open air of the streets. AND:
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When The Guy is Accused of Sex Abuse
  April 14, 2026 Hey there, Meteor readers, It’s taken longer than expected, but I have finally listened to all of ARIRANG in one sitting, and phew 😮💨 if it weren’t for my spinal problems and unreliable knees, I’d be at a rave somewhere right now messing up the choreo to Hooligan.  In today’s newsletter, we’re talking about now-former-Congressman Eric Swalwell and the weight of women’s whispers. Plus, an overwhelming but positive week for the people of Hungary. Shannon Melero  WHAT'S GOING ONThe loudest whispers: Just days after accusations of sexual assault, sexual harassment, and sex with interns went public through a combination of traditional reporting and dedicated influencers, Rep. Eric Swalwell (D-Calif.) has ended his campaign for governor and resigned from Congress. (He maintains that the allegations against him are false and only that he’s “made mistakes in judgement.”) The news of Swalwell’s resignation was quickly followed by that of Rep.Tony Gonzales (R-Tx.) who also stepped down in light of an investigation into his relationship with a former aide. If one didn’t know any better, this would be a moment to celebrate the seemingly swift downfall of men who were the masters of their own destruction. But instead we’re left to assess a larger problem, particularly within the Democratic Party. Over the last few years, Swalwell, who entered Congress at 32 and is now 45, has been positioned by the Democratic Party and the media as a bridge between young voters and an aging party in need of resuscitation. In 2016, as the Dems were feathering their nests for what we all believed would be another four years of their party running the show, Swalwell was crowned the “Snapchat king of Congress” by none other than the internet queen herself, Taylor Lorenz. (Ironically, it would be that same platform he would later use to allegedly send unsolicited dick videos to women.) Swalwell was expertly using the platform to bring in new voters and show the ins and outs of Congress, becoming what Politico called a “something for everyone” kind of candidate. Up until this week, Swalwell had a strong chance of succeeding Gavin Newsom with a healthy bloc of Democratic endorsements, and the backing of at least one billionaire donor. He was, at least in California, The Guy. And yet, he was The Guy despite a years-old whisper network about his alleged behavior, which included sexting his subordinates and at least three allegations of rape. After the allegations were published last week, much of the response from political insiders on both sides was that “everyone” already knew. The same way so many people knew about Harvey Weinstein. And R. Kelly. And Jeffrey Epstein. And Donald Trump. So why didn’t this reckoning happen years ago? Well, according to a Sacramento lobbyist who spoke to Politico, part of the reason is that those in the know were “willing to delude ourselves or not ask the questions that should have been asked.”  SUPPORTERS DURING SWALWELL'S SHORT-LIVED PRESIDENTIAL CAMPAIGN IN 2019. INTERESTING THAT HIS TAG LINE INVOLVED THE PHRASE "DO GOOD." (VIA GETTY IMAGES) Some folks, however, did ask the question. Political consultant Mike Trujillo, who had been collecting stories from women about Swalwell since 2017, told Politico this week that when he tried pitching what he knew to reporters, Swalwell’s camp discredited him. Eventually, Trujillo found that after Swalwell dropped out of the 2019 presidential primary, women had “lost interest” in sharing their experiences. The rumors persisted, but the story went nowhere. That’s partly because, as a society, we’re trained not to immediately believe women. But in this particular situation, there’s another factor: the unspoken quest for the great white hope. Since the racist backlash against the Obama administration became clear, Democrats have been on the hunt for the next person who could be a one-size-fits-all savior with a magical ability to unite people of all walks. It couldn’t be Joe Biden (too old), Bernie Sanders (too left), or Hillary Clinton (too woman-y). So the party has increasingly turned its attentions to younger, maler candidates with the same popcorn quality as Swalwell: white and easily made palatable to as many voters as possible, regardless of their actual politics—as evidenced by the fawning, thirsty, sometimes horny coverage similar candidates get. These men aren’t just politicians who drew national attention by accident; they’re the well-tended, well-protected seeds of the party. Women in politics who speak up about sexual harassment and assault have long been treated like a “political inconvenience,” as journalist Grecia Figueroa writes, rather than victims of a system that protects abusers regardless of party lines. The insiders who already knew about Swalwell’s track record with women could have easily slowed down his rise or stopped it altogether. After all, this secret was so well-known that a sitting member of Congress reportedly admitted to Arielle Fodor (aka Mrs. Frazzled), one of the women who exposed Swalwell, that the rumors about him were true. But instead, legislators waited until the rumors made it onto CNN to withdraw support and virtue-signal that they really do believe women. Just not the first time. AND:Shortly after the 2024 election, writer Megan Carpentier sought advice about how to fight authoritarianism from activists who’d done it around the world. One of those activists, professor and former member of Hungary’s National Assembly Gábor Scheiring, gave his thoughts on Prime Minister Viktor Orbán’s “electoral autocracy”; at the time, Scheiring said that we can’t protect democracy by “just talking about how important it is to have a constitutional court…The overwhelming majority of people don’t really think in these terms. They are concerned about inflation and real wages and unemployment and inequality.” On Sunday, that autocracy came to an end with the landslide election of the center-right Tisza Party’s Péter Magyar and, after 16 years, Orbán’s ouster. Hungarians celebrated in the street, Americans felt a bit envious, and Carpentier emailed Scheiring to get his thoughts. He attributed Orbán’s defeat primarily to those same economic factors he listed in 2024—a relevant data point for those of us raging against Trump. “Orbán tried to reframe the election around geopolitics, parading his friendships with Trump and Putin,” Scheiring said. “But you cannot eat a foreign policy alignment, and Hungarians decided they had had enough.” While the magnitude of change under Magyar is “an open question,” Scheiring said, “at the very least, a door has been opened that many Hungarians had stopped believing would ever open.” May it open wide around the globe.  WOW IMAGINE HAVING A PARTY IN THE STREETS AFTER SUCCESSFULLY VOTING OUT AN AUTHORITARIAN...ONE DAY! (VIA GETTY IMAGES)
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Where Abby Wambach Finds Hope
 April 10, 2026 Greetings, Meteor readers, Yesterday, a historic event took place in the heart of New York City—Nona and I met for the first time in person, even though we have worked together over several years, not just here at The Meteor, but at a previous job as well. The good news is there was no frame-mogging, as the kids say, but the awful news is that our combined beauty overheated the room we were in. We will be kept separated until winter. In today’s newsletter, we celebrate the return of UNDISTRACTED with guests Abby Wambach and Glennon Doyle. Plus, the worst-kept secret in America is revealed, and a new professional sports league crowns its champions. IRLmaxxing, Shannon Melero  WHAT'S GOING ONEyes on the ball: Do you ever wonder why women’s sports feels like such a balm when everything else is…less balm-like? It isn’t just that visibility of women athletes themselves is on the rise. There’s something more to it, and soccer icon Abby Wambach—who, along with her wife, activist Glennon Doyle, was a guest this week on UNDISTRACTED with Brittany Packnett Cunningham—perfectly laid out what that something is. “It’s more than just watching women play,” she says. “It feels like something activism-adjacent.” Back in 2019, the USWNT began demanding pay equity, and Wambach was one of their most vocal advocates. Now, basketball players who were once using public restrooms to change before professional games have successfully negotiated a CBA that increased salary caps by 300 percent. And that didn’t just happen, Wambach points out—women worked together to do it, a strategy female athletes have had to employ for years. In the 1970s, “you’ve got Billie Jean King unifying a group of women to sign $1 contracts to create the Women's Tennis Association,” Wambach explains. Then “you have Title IX happening in the United States…and then you look forward, you see this boom of popularity. But what is never talked about and I think is so important is the reason why that happened was collective unity.” Wambach puts it this way: “It’s a very feminine idea that in order to have the most amount of people get the things they want out of their life, we have to figure out how to unify.” Oh, and you know what Wambach’s not feeling? The price gouging of the World Cup. “The sport competitor side [of me] is like, it's going to be such an exciting time,” she says. “But families…and fans can't go unless they pay like $10,000 for a ticket. It’s commodifying and corporatizing these things that have a beautiful essence. And I think that's why women's sports are having such a moment—because it's not totally commodified and taken over by the corporate landscape. Those people sitting in those seats…actually care.” To hear the full conversation (including Glennon on raising a boy in the manosphere) and get extremely hyped for what’s to come with women’s sports, check out the episode here or wherever you get your podcasts.  AND:
ONE MORE THING...New York friends/theater buffs/feminists lookin’ for weekend plans: These are your last few days to see “Antigone (This Play I Read in High School)” at the Public Theater. Our colleague Cindi Leive and podcast host Regina Mahone (of The A-Files) sat down with the cast and creators after a performance of the play, which reimagines Antigone as a fierce young woman who happens to be pregnant and is defying her uncle Creon’s Thebes-wide abortion ban to do what she wants. In one of the play’s best moments, Antigone (the riveting Susannah Perkins) says to her uncle, Creon (Tony Shalhoub): “These ears, these eyes, this hair, these knees, if there's anything we have in this world, that's it. Your own body is it. The conversation with yourself that never ends.” “For me, that speech really is the heart of the play,” playwright Anna Ziegler told us onstage. “It's the moment when Antigone is claiming the dignity that her body deserves.” She does, and it’s worth seeing.  FOLLOW THE METEOR Thank you for reading The Meteor! Got this from a friend? |
Is your state pro-life or pro-death?
  April 7, 2026 Good evening, Meteor readers, The coverage of Artemis II’s voyage to the moon has been pretty heartwarming, no? It’s a rare moment of unity during a politically volatile time, probably similar to how Americans must have felt in 1969—except instead of witnessing “one giant leap for mankind,” we’re seeing Christina Koch become the first woman to fly around the moon on a mission that passes the Bechdel test. A marked improvement on an already nice thing! Speaking of unity, today we’re examining what red and blue states have in common in a post-Dobbs world. Plus, the ripple effects of the Iran war, and a highly suspect reading list. Artemis is a woman, Nona Willis Aronowitz   WHAT'S GOING ONDivided states of abortion: Yesterday, I saw two news items directly next to each other in my feed: One announced a new study published in JAMA finding that abortion pills are so safe that they likely meet the Food and Drug Administration criteria for over-the-counter sale. The other covered yet another arrest, this one in Texas, of a pregnant woman who had taken the exact same pills. In that moment, seeing these two stories in my field of vision, I experienced a kind of whiplash that has become familiar to me during the nearly four years since the Supreme Court overturned the right to abortion. On the one hand, we now know that abortion pills belong in the family planning aisle of drugstores, and liberal states believe in the medication’s safety so much that many have passed laws to protect doctors who prescribe them for out-of-state patients. On the other hand, in conservative states with abortion bans, abortion doctors and the pregnant people they treat are criminals. Depending on where you live, abortion is now either basic healthcare or grounds for murder charges and extradition. When it comes to abortion, are we now living in two Americas? On a fundamental level of human rights, Reproductive Freedom for All president Mini Timmaraju tells The Meteor, the answer is yes. Simply put, women in states with abortion bans are “second class citizens” living in a “segregated society,” she says. “We should call them ‘pro-women's death states’ and ‘pro-women's lives states.’ I mean, it's that extreme…Those red states are willing to basically torture women in pregnancy and create conditions where they are actively dying.”  WOULD HAVE LOVED TO BE A FLY ON THE WALL AT THIS CONFRONTATION. (VIA GETTY IMAGES) But, Timmaraju says, the reality is more nuanced. In a sense, red states and blue states are in the same situation: They’re responding to a state of emergency—and they can learn from each other’s reactions. Some blue states are enacting shield laws, passing constitutional amendments, and funneling millions of dollars into abortion services. Democratic governors like Illinois’ JB Pritzker, Maryland’s Wes Moore, and New Mexico’s Michelle Lujan Grisham “feel a heightened sense of responsibility to their neighboring states,” Timmaraju says, and “are going above and beyond to do everything they can to not just protect abortion care, but invest in access.” These states are modeling the kind of abortion-is-healthcare approach that all Americans are entitled to—which, as the midterms approach, is a good reminder that “you can change your elected officials.” But there’s a danger in thinking of abortion bans as a red-state problem, Timmaraju warns—in part because the goal of conservatives, who now control all three branches of government, is to make those laws, and those deaths, the norm for all of us. “I do think blue-state citizens are complacent because they don't understand the reach that [the Trump] administration has,” Timmaraju says. Dobbs was never going to be the last word on abortion; as we speak, the FDA and the Department of Health and Human Services are trying to figure out how to restrict abortion pills nationwide. Last year, the Environmental Protection Agency tasked its scientists with finding detection methods for trace amounts of mifepristone in wastewater—even though other scientists say there’s absolutely no evidence of this. (Suddenly Trump’s EPA cares about water contaminants?) Timmaraju says all the studies in the world affirming abortion pills’ safety will not stop these efforts. Republicans “already know they’re safe,” she says. “It's bullshit.”  MINI TIMMARAJU TO THE SUPREME COURT: THIS ISN’T OVER. (VIA GETTY IMAGES) And in the face of this kind of federal oppression, women in more liberal states should take a lesson from those already living under it. Blue states will have to take a cue from “the resilience and the courage” of community organizations, abortion funds, and individuals in abortion-ban states “finding any way to have abortions because it's life or death for them,” Timmaraju says. Like low-income women of color and immigrants, whose access to abortion has always been restricted even before Roe fell, they’ll have to “find ways to make it work.” Ultimately, Timmaraju notes, the real divide isn’t some states versus other states anyway; it’s “governments and policymakers versus the people.” The majority of Americans support abortion rights, and have done so for decades. Even a slim majority of Republican women would be in favor of a nationwide law guaranteeing abortion access. It’s why far-right abortion extremists keep losing when abortion is on the ballot, even in red states like Kentucky. In other words, it’s only our government that’s divided. We’ve been united about abortion for a long time. AND
 WHERE CAN I GET THESE MERMAID-IN-TRAINING COSTUMES FOR MY DAUGHTERS? (VIA GETTY IMAGES)
And one more thing: April is Sexual Assault Awareness Month. If you’re a survivor or if you know someone who is (i.e., if you’re a human being), take the Survivor Justice Network national survey, to help close the data gap for survivors.  FOLLOW THE METEOR Thank you for reading The Meteor! Got this from a friend? |
A Secret School for Girls
Inside the clandestine network of classrooms defying the Taliban in Afghanistan
By Jessie Williams
A group of teenage girls and young women gather in a nondescript room with pale walls, chatting and laughing. They have just finished their classes for the week and are about to head home. But they must leave one by one, so as not to draw any attention. If someone asks them where they have been, they say they were visiting the doctor. If they think someone might be on to them, the teachers move their classes to another person’s house. They leave their books at home. They must not be caught.
These girls live in Afghanistan, where education for girls beyond sixth grade is banned by the Taliban. They attend an underground girls’ school – one of five an Afghan NGO quietly runs across the country, with 28 teachers in different provinces providing free education to around 1,000 students, ranging in age from 13 to 45.
“I was very unhappy when the Taliban closed my school,” says Ada*, 15, who was in eighth grade when the Taliban returned to power on a hot summer day in 2021, following the withdrawal of U.S. and coalition forces. “I had depression.” The secret school she attends opened in the months afterward. “I feel better [now],” she says. “When I see the teachers and girls, I have power.”
As a new school year begins in Afghanistan, more than 2.2 million girls are currently out of school. But some of them are defying the ban. Over the past few years, classrooms have emerged in the shadows—cropping up in basements, living rooms and bedrooms around the country, away from the prying eyes of the Taliban, who have informants to catch people violating their strict codes. The schools use certain tactics to evade those informants, including staggering the timing of classes, so that some girls attend in the afternoon and some in the evening. If the girls think they’re being followed, they change their route. Madrassas, or religious schools, are still allowed, so if they are caught, they say they were going there.
The schools run by the NGO, which we can’t name for safety reasons, started through a network of trusted people in different communities. They cost about $60,000 to run each year, which a grant from the Frontline Women’s Fund, an initiative that supports women’s rights activists around the world, helps cover. One class was established and then another, and before long the network had blossomed into a web of clandestine schools, turning girls into what the Taliban fears most: educated women. “An educated woman changes the world,” says Laleh, 25, who teaches English at one of the schools. “An educated mother nurtures, trains, educates her kid. The kid changes the society.”
The Meteor spoke to the teachers and students over Zoom on the condition that we hide their identities. The stakes are high; if the Taliban ever found out about the schools, the teachers would be sent to prison, while the girls themselves could also face imprisonment and beatings. Despite the risks, the educators continue to teach. “When I was a girl, I studied chemistry. My father said ‘It's not safe to study.’ But I wanted to have a voice,” says Laleh. “When I teach the girls, they have the vocabulary to talk. It empowers me. When they learn, I think that I have done something in the world, that I didn't live a worthless life.”
Without education, she says, “our people don't even know how they should live and what their rights are…When half of our society is paralyzed, how can our country move forward?”
Since returning to power the Taliban has systematically eroded women’s and girls’ rights. Education for girls over sixth grade was the first to go, followed by barring women from university and nearly all forms of employment, then prohibiting them from playing sports, and even leaving the house without being completely covered and accompanied by a mahram or male guardian. The Taliban’s latest decree permits men to beat their wives as long as they don’t break any bones or leave open wounds.
The UN says that Afghan women are facing the most severe women’s rights crisis in the world, with many activists and human rights organizations calling it “gender apartheid”—a term meaning the systemic oppression, discrimination, and segregation of a specific group based on gender.
In January 2025, the International Criminal Court issued arrest warrants for the supreme leader and chief justice of the Taliban, accusing them of crimes against humanity for the persecution of women and girls. But nothing has been done to enforce the warrants. Even worse, the international community has begun to accept and normalize the Taliban as the de facto government, despite its draconian policies—like establishing embassies in Kabul, welcoming diplomats appointed by the Taliban, and inviting them to international summits.
Meanwhile, cuts to foreign aid budgets have meant dwindling humanitarian support for Afghanistan, and while the UN has continued its operations in the country, it faces major challenges—the main one being the ban on Afghan women entering UN premises, along with a 50 percent funding gap for UN work, which makes it difficult to provide services directly to women at a time when they desperately need it.
"Maybe they will arrest me and I go to jail. But I have to do this.”
Many Afghan women feel like the world has forgotten about them. Mariam, the 30-year-old executive director of the NGO that runs the schools, was a head teacher before the Taliban swept through the country. She says the international community should be doing more. “For five years girls and women can't go to school. It’s terrible. But nobody is doing anything,” she says. “Why aren’t the UN with us?”
Mariam says there are many women who are struggling financially now that they cannot work, and girls are being forced into early marriages. At the same time, recent clashes with Pakistan and war in neighboring Iran are exacerbating the already dire economic crisis.
For these girls, the school offers a glimmer of hope in an increasingly dark world, giving them the chance to forge their own futures. Bahar, a 19-year-old with a wide smile, was in 10th grade when the Taliban closed the schools. “When I come here I feel so excited,” she says, giggling. “I feel complete and confident.” Her favorite subjects are English and math, and one day she hopes to become a psychologist. “Education is very important to me. When girls use education, they can help their family.”
All of the girls’ families are supportive of them attending the classes, despite the dangers. “I feel happy because I improve my skills in this school,” says one student, Lama, 18. She especially loves art because it allows her to express her feelings, but wants to be a doctor when she’s older. “I want to help my people, always.”
Rehan, 21, a math teacher, says when she was her students’ age, “I had these opportunities as a student and I felt great. They should become what they want; I always teach them to become stronger.” Many of her students are vulnerable, she says, and so she makes sure to focus on their mental health. “When I come to class I ask them, ‘How was your day? How are you?’ Sometimes many of them don't have a good situation at home. First, I make sure they are safe, that they don't have any mental problems. Then I start to teach what I planned. I like to make the class a safer place for them.”
As the students and teachers talk, it becomes clear: These are much more than just schools. They also seem to be sanctuaries for women and girls to connect, laugh, and dream with friends. They are like a family, and Mariam, the head of the NGO, is the matriarch. She calls the students “my daughters” and sees supporting them as her responsibility. “It's a very big challenge,” she says. “We are afraid [of the Taliban finding out]. Maybe they will arrest me and I go to jail. But I have to do this.”
Despite the constant fear, they all still try to find joy – even if it’s fleeting. They dance and sing together when no one is looking. These girls are growing hope in the shadows; they’re creating cracks of light streaming through the darkness. “Sometimes we laugh, sometimes we cry,” says Mariam. “Maybe when the Taliban go, we will get our rights [back]. We want a new generation to feel peace.”
*All names in the piece have been changed to protect the subjects’ identity.
Jessie Williams is a freelance journalist focused on international affairs, humanitarian issues, and women’s rights, with work published in The Guardian, TIME Magazine, Foreign Policy, Al Jazeera, and more. She has reported from Syria, Lebanon, Iraq, and Ukraine, among other places.
The "Birth" in Birthright
  April 2, 2026 Greetings Meteor readers, Big news! UNDISTRACTED with Brittany Packnett Cunningham has been nominated for two Webby awards! Voting is now open, and you can support us by clicking here and here, and firmly instructing your loved ones to do the same The polls are open until the 16th, so send this to your friends, your family, a neighbor, anyone with an email address. And if this celebration of UNDISTRACTED is making you miss the show, then you’re in luck: Season Four is on the way!  In today’s newsletter, we focus on the people who would be targeted the most if birthright citizenship evaporated: mothers and their babies. Plus, a quick trip to the moon. Vote for UNDISTRACTED, Shannon Melero  WHAT'S GOING ONStateless: Yesterday, the Supreme Court—and for a brief moment, Donald Trump—heard oral arguments for Trump v. Barbara, the case to determine whether or not the president’s 2025 executive order ending birthright citizenship is constitutional or enforceable. As legal experts have pointed out, the government’s argument is entirely based on openly racist notions of who gets to be an American. What Wednesday’s arguments also made abundantly clear is that Trump’s administration has been so hyper-focused on removing immigrants via all available avenues it hasn’t stopped to consider the logistics of this order, especially when it comes to the “birth” part of birthright citizenship. “Are you suggesting that when a baby is born, people have to…present documents?” Justice Ketanji Brown Jackson asked yesterday. “Is this happening in the delivery room?...Are we bringing in pregnant women for depositions?” Even most of the conservative justices seemed skeptical, including Amy Coney Barrett: “I can imagine it being messy on some applications…How would it work? How would you adjudicate these cases?” Solicitor General D. John Sauer, the man arguing on behalf of the administration, didn’t have clear answers. But he insisted that non-citizens who have children in the U.S. were “jumping[ing] in front of those who follow the rules,” as if having a child here would give those parents protection from deportation or detention. (It doesn’t.) The government may have shrugged at these questions, but we (and legal experts) are pretty sure of one thing: A ban on birthright citizenship would put enormous stress on the lives of expectant and new parents. In fact, this case only exists because of immigrant mothers who worried so much about the implications of the executive order that they sued the U.S. government. Over the last year, DHS has deported roughly 300 pregnant or postpartum women. Those who had U.S.-born children—like Heidy Sanchez, Cecil Elvir-Quinonez, and Nayra Guzman—were separated from those children by law enforcement. Under the 14th Amendment, these children are full citizens. But the government is proposing that instead of being granted citizenship, those children should provide evidence that at least one of their parents is a citizen in order to be considered for citizenship themselves. If they cannot do that, they will become, in legal terms, “stateless,” belonging to no nation and a citizen to nowhere. So where should those children go? Should we send them to jail? Or deport them? But to where, if they were born in the U.S? And how long would DHS wait after a woman gives birth to pursue a case against her—would agents show up in the recovery room at the hospital? At a woman’s six-week appointment after delivering? If a child is stateless and not subject to the “gift of American citizenship,” as Sauer put it, then are they also not protected by laws like this one, which confirms that abandoned children of unknown parentage are citizens? The end of birthright citizenship would, in the words of Samuel Breidbart and Maryjane Johnson of the Brennan Center for Justice, “create a new subclass of people lacking the full rights and protections long enjoyed by citizens.” Denied social security numbers, they would be without standard access to health care and education, and could “end up deported to foreign countries where they have never lived and where their welfare would be endangered.” All of this would create a culture of fear for everyone, immigrant or otherwise. “Under the new legal regime the order would create, everyone would be vulnerable to having their citizenship questioned,” notes Breidbart and Johnson. Even legal citizens would have to make sure they take their paperwork with them on the way to giving birth—or, frankly, to anywhere else. Think about that for a moment. If you were stopped right now on your way to the grocery store, how would you prove your citizenship? How would you prove your parents’ citizenship? Now imagine being asked those questions a woman in labor…or a five-year-old in the back of an ICE vehicle. AND:
 DON'T LET THE DOOR HIT YOU ON THE WAY OUT. (VIA GETTY IMAGES)
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Soooo We Read Lindy West's Memoir
  March 31, 2026 Salutations, Meteor readers, I cannot remember the last time I felt so betrayed by two people I don’t actually know. Summer House’s West and Amanda have confirmed their “connection” in a joint Instagram statement, and I am physically ill.  In today’s newsletter, we’re digging into another bit of online drama that has dragged almost every feminist you know into the ring. That’s right, it’s the Lindy West discourse, and The Meteor’s Nona Willis Aronowitz and Rebecca Carroll think they understand why everyone cares about this so much. But before that, let’s take a look at the news. Unwell, Shannon Melero  WHAT'S GOING ON
 Yes, We Read the Damn BookWhy Lindy West’s memoir has hit such a nerve BY NONA WILLIS ARONOWITZ & REBECCA CARROLL  LINDY AT THE PREMIERE OF HER 2019 SERIES, SHRILL. (VIA GETTY IMAGES) By now you’ve probably gotten wind of Lindy West’s new memoir, Adult Braces—which, among other things, details how millennial feminist writer West and her husband, Ahamefule Oluo, came to be in a throuple. After all, seemingly every single person on the internet has already given their two cents. So why, in our usually atomized pop culture world, is this story hitting a nerve? Is it because, amid misogyny’s comeback, we’ve become hyper-protective of our feminist heroes? Or because, as my colleague Rebecca Carroll points out below, it’s an “extraordinary confluence” of sex, gender, race, body image, and everything we’ve been debating for years? Or do we just all want to escape to a time when the latest viral Jezebel post was top-of-mind, versus, I dunno, war or the death of democracy? Eventually, Rebecca and I felt we had no choice: We had to read this book and talk about it. Nona: One thing that has irked me about this public conversation is that it’s clear much of the peanut gallery has not read the actual book. Now that we’ve both read it, what do you think? Rebecca: Two things can be true: The book can be good, well-written, and insightful, which I think it is. And the discourse around it can be messy. [One thing that the discussion about the book does get right] is that it sounds like Lindy is married to a narcissist. Early on she writes, “If there's one impressive/excruciating thing about Aham, it's that he doesn't do anything he doesn't want to do.” I mean.  WEST (RIGHT), WITH HER PARTNERS ROYA AMIRSOLEYMANI (L) AND AHAMEFULE OLUO DURING A 2022 INTERVIEW ABOUT POLYAMORY. (SCREENSHOT VIA YOUTUBE) Nona: Yeah, he doesn’t come off great. But I still believe she's telling the truth about her journey to break down her codependency and discover her sexuality, even if it’s messy. This is important with a feminist memoir, because my feminism is very much about revealing the complex truth of our lives and not squeezing them into a narrative, whether that's a conservative, socially acceptable narrative, or a narrative of what feminists think we should want. This dynamic is precisely the reason why Lindy was so afraid to be superhonest before, because her fans had her in a particular box, whether it was about body positivity or her perfect wedding. Rebecca: Yes, another thing that is very clear [from this controversy] is that if Lindy cannot choose what she wants to choose, that’s not feminism. It’s a foundational flaw of this historically exclusive movement: When people push back on its norms, there becomes a rift and a chasm. Which is why I'm very much like, “Burn it all down.” Nona: Besides the state of feminism, the polyamory element to this story has hit such a nerve. People are, for lack of a better term, so “triggered” by polyamory. They often don't accept it unless it’s a completely perfect relationship (which, of course, doesn’t exist). I am nonmonogamous and have read a ton about it, but even a casual reader can tell that Lindy’s initial desire for monogamy is extremely fear-based. She’s absorbed cultural messages of monogamy as a shorthand for being “chosen” and safe and honored. Rebecca: I don't agree. I don’t think it's fair to her instincts to say that her reasons for wanting monogamy are based solely on cultural messaging. Nona: But she herself questions why she’s terrified of nonmonogamy. She has a chapter called “Naked and Afraid”—which I have not seen cited once in the million articles I’ve read!—about her sexual repression, which she writes is “corrosive, stunting.” She’s always felt “shut like a vault,” in a “fat-girl apology cloak.” And she deeply wanted to break out of that! Polyamory, if it's done right, really respects the “unassailable separateness” of each partner, as the gawdess Esther Perel has put it. Lindy’s related conclusion—that polyamory can be an antidote to codependency—felt very earned, and very ignored in all the chatter about how this supposed feminist “let herself” be coerced into a throuple. Rebecca: And then there’s the race factor, which I think is really important. [Aham connects monogamy’s idea of ownership to slavery, which] completely preys on West’s white guilt and white saviorism that we as Black folks are always critical of. In the book, she talks about going to get this rental van, and there's this oversexualized Black woman emblazoned on the side of it. And she was like, "I can't possibly, as a white woman, drive this van into the deep South…unless the person who painted this image said, ‘Lindy, please drive my masterpiece far and wide for the culture.’" And I feel like that's essentially what Aham is saying to her: "Drive my masterpiece of polyamory far and wide,” as if he’s the one who invented the practice. Nona: Oof, yes. There are so many layers to this story! Rebecca: I think that’s why everyone is losing their minds over this book. It's an extraordinary confluence of everything that has been building in the zeitgeist over the past decade. It has gender norms and preferred pronouns and non-binary sexuality and performative millennial feminism and racial justice and body image politics. Among many other things, it’s making us look closer at the way a white millennial feminist married to a Black nonbinary male-presenting person [Aham uses him/they pronouns] continues to center herself. And the place that we’re working this out first is on the internet, on social media, where there’s this sort of default knee-jerk judgment and snark. But I feel heartened by the fact that all of these things have come together in this watershed moment. Nona: Really? To me this moment feels like backlash city; Helen Lewis gleefully pronounced millennial feminism dead in The Atlantic (and everyone from Roxane Gay to RBG caught strays). Why do you feel heartened? Rebecca: It’s an opportunity to look at human behavior while we’re still looking at, and caring about, human behavior. Apart from it playing out on the internet, it’s a wholly natural disaster involving real people with real lives, trying to figure out how to be with each other, in their bodies and emotions and identities. It’s so important to recognize that these things still matter.  FOLLOW THE METEOR Thank you for reading The Meteor! Got this from a friend? |
The Non-Secret Lives of Mormon Wives
  March 26, 2026 Salutations, Meteor readers, I’m not one for corporal punishment, but I do think the creators of “Age of Attraction” need to be taken to the town square and pilloried for a few days to think on their sins. In today’s newsletter, we unpack the ongoing Taylor Frankie Paul debacle. If you don’t know who or what that is, you have a pure heart and an uncluttered mind. Stay blessed. Plus a terrible new rule from the International Olympic Committee and a hearty slice of women’s history. Bringing tomatoes to the square, Shannon Melero  WHAT'S GOING ONThe man treatment: Last Sunday, ABC was meant to premiere the latest season of “The Bachelorette” starring the queen of Mormon messiness, Taylor Frankie Paul, the lead of the hit Hulu series “The Secret Lives of Mormon Wives” (SLOMW). Instead, the season was pulled after a disturbing video of Paul was released by TMZ that showed her in an altercation with her ex-boyfriend/babydaddy/co-star, Dakota Mortensen. In the video, which was recorded by Mortensen in 2023, Paul is seen doing a number of things, including throwing three large barstools at Mortensen. At some point, one of those chairs hits Paul’s five-year-old daughter, who was sitting on the couch during the altercation. The response to this video has torn the internet asunder, with some justifying Paul’s actions as a response to whatever happened off-camera, and others equivocating and employing their new favorite term, “reactive abuse.” There’s also been a tendency, particularly among women viewers, to over-empathize with Paul for unleashing her feminine rage on a man whom she says has also abused her. In comment sections everywhere, there are notes that Paul is being punished so harshly because she is a woman, whereas Mortensen has lost nothing for his as-yet-unknown role in the 2023 incident (or for any of his alleged abusive behavior). I hate to be the naysayer in the group, but I have to call balderdash.  THE CAST OF SLOMW LAST YEAR AT THE PREMIERE FOR SEASON FOUR. ON THE HEELS OF THE PAUL/MORTENSEN VIDEO, HULU HAS PAUSED PRODUCTION ON SEASON FIVE. (VIA GETTY IMAGES) The reality is that Paul is receiving the kind of treatment a man would in this situation. Let’s examine the facts. ABC knew from the start that Paul had pled guilty to aggravated assault in 2023—it was literally a storyline on SLOMW, and the police bodycam footage of Paul’s arrest was part of an episode. Yet they still chose to cast her in “The Bachelorette.” Hulu still had Paul star in subsequent seasons of SLOMW, where some of the other cast members alluded to Paul and Mortensen being abusive towards each other in front of Paul’s children. And we all watched, just like we watch abusers in the NFL. Compare this to former “Bachelor” Colton Underwood, who was accused of stalking and harassing his girlfriend in 2020. What was his punishment? Some negative online chatter, a 2021 documentary about his life, and appearances on not one, not two, but four reality TV shows. So when folks say, This would never happen to a man, what exactly is the this? Because what does happen to men is a lot of rah-rah about getting canceled and all of us yelling from atop the moral high ground to little effect. Similarly, when the news of Paul’s investigation first dropped, bachelordata reported that she gained 80,000 new followers. TMZ announced yesterday that despite three investigations into domestic violence incidents, Paul will receive her full paycheck for filming “The Bachelorette.” She also still maintains 50/50 custody of the child who was struck. While the two experiences are very different, the same thing that shielded Underwood now shields Paul: whiteness. As many people have been pointing out, the abuse we’re seeing does not occur in a vacuum, which is why Paul and Mortensen being young, white, and allegedly attractive need to be taken into consideration when we talk about their treatment. If Paul weren’t white, she would have immediately lost her job, as we’ve seen with other reality stars who have done less and gotten fired. And far worse can happen after incidents like this to women who are not rich and famous, like permanently losing custody of their children. As for Mortensen, he hasn't incurred the same scrutiny because he's positioned himself as the noble victim, a character that only works for white men. Taylor Frankie Paul may be in a freefall, but there is a golden parachute attached to her back—one that does not exist for regular women, especially women of color. The one thing we can agree on in this jambalaya of opinions is that we should all be held to the same standards when it comes to wrongdoing, regardless of race, gender, finances, or follower counts. We cannot allow a warped idea of feminism to trump the fact that harm was done to a completely innocent party—Paul’s daughter. We don’t know how much that child has seen, but what we do know, from watching the footage, is that she was silent until she was struck by the chair—which shows us that she has likely heard this kind of screaming and seen this kind of argument before; it’s been normalized. Children who absorb this behavior grow up to be adults who accept it or, at the very worst, act it out on others. When it comes to children witnessing or experiencing abuse, I am always Team Child. AND:
 SLICE OF WOMEN'S HISTORY 🍕Akasha Gloria Hull, a foundational Black feministBY REBECCA CARROLL Throughout Women’s History Month, we’ll be featuring women (or women’s movements) that aren’t on the typical media lists we see every March.  HULL AT A BOOKSTORE EVENT IN 2015. (FAIR USE) The Combahee River Collective, founded in 1977, looms large in the field of Black feminism, and rightly so: The organization was part of a movement and moment that would change the way we talk about social justice in America. Many people familiar with the group know its bigger names: founding members Demita Frazier and twin sisters Barbara and Beverly Smith, along with Audre Lorde, an icon far beyond her association with CRC. But there’s an unsung heroine who isn’t celebrated as much as she should be: Writer, poet, and spiritual warrior Akasha Gloria Hull, whose life’s work is a love letter to Black feminists. Born Gloria Theresa Thompson in Shreveport, Louisiana in 1944, she changed her name to Akasha Gloria Hull after an illuminating trip to Ghana in 1992. Then, around the same time she was Xeroxing passages from Zora Neale Hurston’s Their Eyes Were Watching God for her friends and coworkers—a practice that would lead to a revival of Hurston’s work—Hull, then a professor of women’s studies, was invited to join the newly convened Collective (CRC). The group was formed out of the “absolute necessity for autonomous Black feminist analysis,” wrote Frazier and the Smith sisters in a letter to her. “We think that this chance to meet will be politically stimulating and spiritually regenerating.” She accepted the invitation, and a few years after joining CRC, she co-edited the seminal 1982 work All the Women are White, All the Blacks are Men, But Some of Us Are Brave with Patricia Bell-Scott and Barbara Smith. It was the first Black feminist anthology of its kind and widely considered to have laid the groundwork for Black women’s studies. After that, Hull went on to publish a number of scholarly books, but her nonacademic work is where she gave herself the most freedom to explore the depths of her spirituality and imagination, thanks to the spiritual regeneration of CRC’s mission. From her 1989 collection, Healing Heart: Poems 1973-1988, she writes, in an untitled poem: “we love in circles/ touching round / faces in a ritual ring/ echoing blood and color/ nappy girlheads in a summer porch swing/ belligerent decisions to live/ and be ourselves.” And in Soul Talk: The New Spirituality of African American Women—which combines narrative storytelling and interviews with Black women writers and friends, including Alice Walker, Lucille Clifton, and Toni Cade Bambara—Hull offers a meditation on a wide range of spiritual practices through a Black female lens, while also making a personal statement of becoming. Her work evolved from the undeniably life-changing connection with CRC, as she recalled in a 2004 interview with Monterey County Now: “That was one of the most exciting periods of my life,” Hull said. “United with others, zealous. … We really changed the map, changed the face of things.” Akasha Gloria Hull’s papers and photographs are available to the public at the Schomburg Center for African American Research in Harlem.  FOLLOW THE METEOR Thank you for reading The Meteor! Got this from a friend? |
"The system is not set up for men to live their truth."
Heated Rivalry showed us what could be—but for gay men at the top levels of pro sports, that’s still just romantasy
When Heated Rivalry star Connor Storrie performed a portion of his Saturday Night Live opening monologue flanked by players from the men’s and women’s U.S national hockey teams, they formed a perfect pop culture panoptic. All at once, we had queer joy, the resolution of national sports beef, comedy, political commentary, and just a dash of pettiness for seasoning. While the moment bore the weight of so many things, that weight was shouldered entirely by sport, and where we as fans stand in our relationship to it.
For all the good that sports has given us, historically, it’s also been used as a tool of exclusion, with women, LGBTQ+ people, and athletes of color having to fight to exist in the courts, fields, and pitches they now enjoy. While there has been progress, it’s been slow and uneven. Over the last five years, 27 states have passed laws banning trans students from sports, and last summer, World Athletics mandated sex testing for women’s sporting categories—all in the name of “protecting” athletes from an amorphous queer menace.
At the same time, women’s sports have never been bigger, and incredible trans athletes, lesbians, non-binary Olympians, and bisexual baddies are all over our television screens.
But what about queer men? As Uncloseted Media wrote last year, there are “zero” gay or bisexual men actively competing at the highest professional levels of U.S. baseball, basketball, football, and hockey. That stat remains unchanged, but the success of Heated Rivalry and the current generation of queer athletes has many revisiting the age-old question: Why aren’t men coming out while active? When will we see hot hockey players kiss each other IRL? (I must note here that there have only ever been two hot men in hockey, Henrik Lundqvist and Martin St. Louis. They are both retired and, sadly, straight.)
“There’s so much performed masculinity that’s tied to men athletes,” explains Steve Granelli, Ph.D., a teaching professor of communications studies at Northeastern University. “It’s all rooted in this really toxic, very old understanding of gender roles.” That understanding is at the core of America’s Big Four—the MLB, NBA, NFL, and NHL—which have long played a major role in shaping our collective idea of what it means to be a man.
In the 150-year history of American professional sports leagues, only two men have come out while still actively playing. The first was the NBA’s Jason Collins in 2013, who announced he was gay in an article for Sports Illustrated, while signed to the Washington Wizards, and was widely supported by the league and the fans. (The loudest voice of dissent came from sports broadcaster Chris Broussard, who called homosexuality a sin on air.) Eight years later, the NFL defensive end Carl Nassib shared that he was gay in a social media post. In an interview with Good Morning America, Nassib said he was met with “nothing but love and support” by his teammates and his organization. He continued in the NFL until 2023, retiring as a Tampa Bay Buccaneer.
Since Collins, gay and bi men have slowly begun to take up space, just not while playing in the Big Four. Athletes across different sports have come out in retirement or after career-ending injuries, and it’s slightly more common to see queer men in a solo sport like tennis. Luke Prokop, an active player in the development league, the AHL, came out last summer. Earlier this year, inspired by Heated Rivalry, hockey player Jesse Korteum announced that he was gay and walked away from the sport when he was 17 because he didn’t think he would be accepted. In Japan’s B.League last year, Joshua Scott, an American basketball player who was a darling of the NCAA during his time at the University of Colorado, Boulder, came out publicly as bisexual.
Scott tells me that although he would “hear some off-putting stuff about what it was to be LGBTQ” in “a lot of locker rooms,” he never felt biphobia directed at him back in Colorado. That wasn’t entirely the case when he transitioned to the pros in Japan. “There was a season where, because there were different rumors tied to my sexuality, I received zero offers to play for a team,” he says. Not yet out of the closet, Scott felt he couldn’t combat the rumors publicly without doing more damage to his career. “The system is just not set up to help men be able to live their truth, and that starts at the youth level.”
Still, “being out and playing has been one of the most rewarding experiences,” he says. Scott announced that he was bisexual on social media, intentionally choosing to skirt Japanese media, which leans conservative. Since then, “I’ve gotten to almost have it all in a way I didn’t even think was possible four or five years ago.” Part of “having it all” has been success on the court, with Scott being one of his league’s top five players in rebounds and averaging a 62.4% field goal percentage. He also learned he “wasn’t alone,” he says. “There are a lot of people within the industry that are searching for a way to have both their truth and to be able to just do their sport.”
So far, that search has not borne fruit within the Big Four, where even straight players feel a pressure to hew to traditional roles. Granelli, who specializes in the study of sports culture and fandom, cites NFL player Caleb Williams, who is straight, as an example of just how little room men are given to express themselves outside the “acceptable” constraints of masculinity. “Williams comes into the NFL, and there’s such a focus on him painting his nails,” Granelli says. Williams, who is now a quarterback for the Bears, received a lot of negative feedback and questions for his personal style, which included themed nail sets; rapper Lil Wayne commented, “We just lost a playoff game to a [expletive] w purple nails we fkn suck” after the Packers lost to the Bears in January. “When men challenge the expected presentation of an athlete in any way, there is immediate backlash,” Granelli says. Fans eventually came around to Williams and his nails, but only after he’d put on a winning display of masculinity on the field.
Conversely, women athletes have created an entirely different space. “There’s a strong understanding [in women’s sports] that there’s a huge spectrum in terms of player sexuality,” says professional soccer player Tierna Davidson. A center back for Gotham FC, Davidson has been an out lesbian for her entire career and married her former teammate Alison Jahansouz in 2024. She says that women’s soccer specifically “has fostered a safe and welcoming environment for queer people”; sexual orientation was “never something I was worried about.” Davidson also gives some of the credit for this openness to fans. “If you look at the birth and nurturing of women's soccer in the U.S., there were so many strong, queer characters in that story,” she says. Women’s soccer “attracts fans that feel seen and represented, and it helps make our environment more open and welcoming. We don’t always get it right, but fans definitely see it and want to be part of it.”
On the men’s sports side, that fan-player relationship is just as key in determining how an athlete is received. “It only takes one moment, one small thing, for fans to feel a certain disconnect with a player and turn against him,” Granelli explains. “I mean, look at Josh Allen.” Allen, the beloved (straight) quarterback of the Buffalo Bills, had long been considered by fans as “one of us,” but upon his marriage to actress Hailee Steinfeld, a small subset of the Bills Mafia started calling him a sellout. “Dating someone from Hollywood is what makes him not like us?” Granelli, a lifelong Bills fan, groans. “He’s never been one of us! He’s 6’5” and has more talent than we’ll ever understand. But that’s all it takes for some people: One moment of not being able to identify with a player.”
Reimagining men’s sports to be more inclusive then becomes a chicken-and-egg quandary. Whose openness—an athlete’s, a fandom’s, or an organization’s—must come first to secure the openness of the other in a system that is built to be symbiotic? We are meant to see our most aspirational selves in athletes, and they, in turn, are made to feel secure and valued by our love. But too often the love of a fan does not extend to the fullness of an athlete’s persona, and if an athlete knows he cannot be fully himself and still receive that love, then why should he risk it? Women and trans athletes have more room to negotiate that risk because it is ever-present—they open their eyes in the morning, and that risk looms over them. But for men, who are shielded from bias by their athleticism and an assumed idea of masculinity, coming out means asking them to give up the one shred of safety they may feel they have.
Scott is hopeful that, eventually, that will all change. “There’s that adage that real men don’t cry,” he says. “But the beautiful part about sports is the passion, the anger, the disappointment, the tears and, yes, sometimes crying…[when I was closeted] I didn’t want to be exposed or have others think I was weak. But since coming out, I find myself stronger for walking in my truth.”
