Photo Credit: Candace Wiggins Instagram
Society often thinks of WNBA players as butch lesbians, so when a player like Skylar Diggins or Candace Parker comes along, they are catapulted in celebrity, getting more attention, endorsements etc. Those ladies also happen to be GREAT basketball players, but even if they weren’t it wouldn’t really matter. Candace Wiggins is a more “feminine” basketball player as well, but she says her feminity and heterosexuality, led to her being bullied and mistreated in the league.
via the San Diego Tribune:
“I wanted to play two more seasons of WNBA, but the experience didn’t lend itself to my mental state,” Wiggins said. “It was a depressing state in the WNBA. It’s not watched. Our value is diminished. It can be quite hard. I didn’t like the culture inside the WNBA, and without revealing too much, it was toxic for me. … My spirit was being broken.”
“Me being heterosexual and straight, and being vocal in my identity as a straight woman was huge,” Wiggins said. “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.
“There was a lot of jealousy and competition, and we’re all fighting for crumbs,” Wiggins said. “The way I looked, the way I played – those things contributed to the tension.
“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 said. “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.”
Wiggins was chosen as the No. 3 overall draft pick out of Stanford in 2008. She played eight seasons in the WNBA and is retired at just 30-years-old. She now training to become a professional volleyball player, citing that it’s fun for her.
“It’s really the culture I’m signing up for. This is really who I am,” said Wiggins.
