pwhl drafts transphobia, happy pride!
the minnesota team has managed perhaps the biggest milkshake duck of all time
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The PWHL had a massively successful inaugural season, with nearly 400,000 regular season fans attending games and millions more watching from home. They’re also fresh off an exciting Finals that went to a must-win Game 5, in which PWHL Minnesota was crowned the first ever winners of the Walter Cup. General Manager Natalie Darwitz missed her induction into the IIHF Hall of Fame to watch her team win the cup, and the franchise was on top of the world. There were a ton of eyes on the league going into the draft this week.
Then, seemingly all hell broke loose for Minnesota. I’ve never seen a franchise go from league darling to most hated in such a short span of time. It’s impressive, actually. It started just before the draft, when it was announced that Darwitz would not be returning next season “amid rumors of a feud between her and head coach Ken Klee, with ‘veteran players’ backing Klee,” according to The Victory Press. The decision came seemingly out of nowhere, on the heels of a championship season, and resulted in a lot of confusion.
(This situation is not actually the kind of mess I like but this gif kept playing in my head while I was typing this up so here you are.)
The Draft Pick
Then came the draft, which took place in downtown St. Paul, Minnesota and should have been a triumphant homecoming-of-sorts for the championship team. According to reporting from both The Victory Press and the Star Tribune, Klee was booed when he walked up to the stage and there were fans present with signs expressing support for Darwitz. Then, PWHL Minnesota chose Britta Curl in the second round, a forward out of the University of Wisconsin. Curl has a history of social media activity that espouses homophobic, transphobic, Zionist, Covid-denying, pro-life propaganda.
As recently as last summer, Curl tweeted her solidarity with U.S. Olympic gold medal hockey players Jocelyne and Monique Lamoureux after the twins expressed support for USA Powerlifting’s ban on trans women competing. At the time, the Lamoureux sisters were on the board of the Professional Women’s Hockey Players Association (PWHPA) and there were calls to remove them following their transphobic statements.
“Females protecting female players on the female players association board?” Curl wrote. “Thank you @ LamoureuxTwins.”
Some of Curl’s politics are her own prerogative, of course, but drafting a player who has publicly endorsed homophobic and transphobic views is a major problem for a league that has large numbers of queer (and potentially trans or gender-expansive) players, as well as fans. PWHL Minnesota has two players on their team who are dating each other, Michela Cava1 and Emma Greco.
The blowback on social media was immediate and in the post-draft press conference, Klee seemed completely ill-prepared to answer any questions about the draft choice—or about the decision to part ways with Darwitz.
“I talk with players, with coaches,” Klee said when asked by Karissa Donkin of CBC Sports whether he had spoken to anyone from the LGBTQ+ community before deciding to select Curl. “I’m not…that’s tough to answer for me. I spoke to a lot of different people… I was told she’s a great teammate, a great person and she’s obviously a great player. So for me, we have people in that community, and obviously [assistant coach] Mira [Jalosuo] making the selection for us, I think that speaks volumes for us.”
Jalosuo is queer and married to a woman. “The pick was actually announced by St. Paul mayor Melvin Carter,” writes Zoë Hayden at The Victory Press. “It's unclear if Jalosuo herself selected Curl, though she was onstage for the pick with Carter, and Klee did not come to the stage for this particular pick.”
The Fallout
Harrison Browne, the first player to transition while playing women’s pro hockey, immediately spoke out against Curl’s selection. “Women's hockey was my safe space as a trans person,” he wrote on X. “Super disappointing to see someone enter the league that would make my community feel anything but welcome. Trans people belong in sports. Trans women are women.”
Fans also flooded PWHL Minnesota’s social media to express their disappointment, with some threatening to refund their season tickets if Curl is on the team. After Ian Kennedy at the Hockey News published a piece about the LGBTQ+ community’s response to Curl being drafted, the anti-trans sports crowd came out swinging2.
“It’s pretty disappointing @ TheHockeyNewsW allows a man to continue to write hit pieces on female athletes who support Women’s sports,” the Lamoureux twins wrote on X. “Nothing like a man ‘mansplaining’ how female athletes should think and act.”
Fox News’ resident “anti-trans women in sports” talking head and fifth place NCAA swimmer Riley Gaines also chimed in, which is how you know things have gotten to the Bad Place.
What Happens Next?
Just because Curl was drafted does not mean that she will make the roster. A recent example of fan blowback to a draftee that was so strong that the team ended up not signing them was in 2022, when the Portland Thorns drafted Sydny Nasello, a forward with a history of racist, homophobic, and transphobic social media activity. Nasello blamed the liberal political views of Portland, Oregon for “stripp[ing]” her of her “dream.” Meanwhile, the USWNT still plays Korbin Albert, despite fans and her own teammates condemning her homophobic views.
But this pick comes at perhaps a pivotal moment for the PWHL. Ahead of the first season, the league promised that it would be putting a gender inclusion policy in place but still has not. That delay has raised questions about how inclusive this new league will be, and at least one media outlet said that it requested a pronunciation guide and list of pronouns for each player but was only given the former and not the latter. The Premier Hockey Federation, the league that the PWHL purchased and absorbed, had one of (if not the most) inclusive participation policies in pro sports. Billie Jean King, the most visible owner of the PWHL, has gone on the record as being supportive of trans athletes’ ability to compete in women’s sports. These things bode well but the lack of explicit comment regarding the PWHL itself is cause for concern.
A lack of an inclusion policy isn’t necessarily a bad thing. The WNBA does not have one and trans players in the league have been a non-issue because the league and its players have chosen not to make it one. Without a policy, there’s nothing that can be violated.
However, the sport of women’s hockey has had some trans-exclusionary rumblings happening beneath its surface for a while. In 2021, NWHL/PHF’s Toronto Six coach Digit Murphy came under fire for being a supporter of Martina Navratilova’s anti-trans lobby group, the Women’s Sport Policy Working Group, and had to issue a public apology after distancing herself from her association with them. Some people are understandably worried that if trans athletes aren’t protected up front, the league could be vulnerable to a reactionary and exclusionary policy.
There has already been a trans woman who has played pro women’s hockey—Jess Platt of the CWHL’s Toronto Furies. There were no issues with her playing, and she has said that her teammates embraced her and told her they were proud of her. The fear-mongering over what could happen if trans women play women’s sports is not based in any reality or even the lived experience of the trans women who have already played.
This is the moment when the PWHL needs to decide what kind of league it wants to be. It can choose to stand with its queer and trans players and fans—during Pride Month, no less—or it can choose to abandon them. The league has made its logo into a trans-inclusive pride flag on social media for the month of June but that may turn out to be an empty gesture (worth noting that PWHL Minnesota’s account also has a rainbow logo but does not appear to have a Pride post on its grid).
Will the PWHL choose to be on the right side of history? I sure hope so.
I think Cava should have been Finals MVP, personally, but no one asked me.
When the entirety women’s hockey is defending Ian Kennedy, you know things have gotten bad.
Your article assumes that all queer women support trans acceptance when in fact that is not the case. You mention Navratilova and her pissy hatred. There’s an ugly TERF strain that exists - a strain that harms EVERYONE.