"women can be sexist, too:" a conversation with Dr. Nef Walker
on WNBA Draft fashion, queer expression, Caitlin Clark, and sexist organizational structures
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For the past few weeks, every time I see a really smart point about the current state of women’s sports it’s come from the same person: Dr. Nefertiti Walker.
Nef Walker is a professor of sport management at the University of Massachusetts and one of my favorite people to talk to about women’s sports. She has a new book, Slaying the Trolls! Why the Trolls are Very, Very Wrong About Women and Sports, co-written with the brilliant sports economist David Berri, which will be publishing in the next few weeks.
We first connected when I was reporting a story for Global Sport Matters about homophobia in collegiate basketball. Walker played Division I college WBB at both Georgia Tech and Stetson and is a queer woman and hella smart academic, so she had a lot of great insight to provide.
“Looking at [WNBA] athletes and how they’ve evolved in how they present themselves from draft night to a year out to two years out is indicative of the oppressive culture of college athletics,” Walker told me at the time. Courtney Williams always strikes me as a good example of that side-by-side comparison:
I called Walker up last week to talk about WNBA Draft fashion, queer expression, Caitlin Clark, and sexist organizational structures. This conversation has been edited for length and clarity.
Out of Your League: You said on X that the diverse expressions of gender and the use of fashion makes the WNBA “the most inclusive sport organization in the world.” I was wondering if you could tell me a little bit more about why that is and what you mean when you say that?
Nefertiti Walker: Obviously, this is my opinion. But we have conducted some research on this that's coming out. There was a [2022] WNBA draft and I was watching it and I had this tweet that went sort of viral, because it just hit me in the face—and I'm saying this as a queer-identified person—how you had these people presenting masculine, presenting feminine, presenting a mix of both having a short haircut that is more masculine, like a fade, with some red lips. The way that people expressed their gender for the draft was like no other draft that I had seen.
And it was interesting because right after that, Major League Baseball had a major moment and it was just so boring. Everyone was dressed how you would expect them to be dressed according to traditional gender norms, there was no space for femininity (and one should call tight pants ‘feminine’). It was all very traditionally masculine-presenting. And the NBA had their draft and it was the same thing—very masculine-presenting. I then watched the NFL Draft—that was the one that sparked my interest in this, which then sparked the paper.
It was over-the-top traditional, heteronormative gender roles and gender expression. You know, all the way down to it had to be a man, presenting masculine, presenting with the family and the girlfriend, who was presenting very feminine. And when his name got called, he had to go kiss the girlfriend and it was just so, in my opinion, boring. And then you look at the WNBA draft and it's not that. This year wasn’t as ‘in your face’ with the level of gender diversity, but it was definitely there.
OOYL: This was also the first year that I saw discussion on social media about how the WNBA draftees were allowed to wear high fashion, whatever that meant for them. I always attributed some of the rough looks that we've seen in past WNBA drafts to a combination of players who weren’t out and weren’t necessarily comfortable expressing their gender, and the ‘low budget’ aspect of it (2012 No. 3 pick Devereaux Peters told Front Office Sports that it gave the vibe of players looking like “the most athletic accountants you’ve ever seen”). I had never seen chatter about players having been required to wear business casual looks to the draft. Is that something you came across in your research?
NW: I don't know that for a fact. And [some of] the people that I've heard say it, it would be a very good excuse for them being closeted as long as they were. I have been on panels with Sue Bird, I'm a fan of Sue Bird’s, I’m a fan of Diana Taurasi. They are athletes of my generation. At the same time, I loathe how long it took them to come out, because as someone who came out playing college basketball [at Georgia Tech and Stetson], that was very difficult and it would have been nice to have someone at that level who was very out and expressive. Not only regarding gender expression but also who they choose to be with. But again, it was a different time. There's no judgment, I just I think it's different now.
I haven't heard anything officially from the WNBA [about a dress code]. I haven't been able to find anything in writing, but that doesn't mean that it wasn't an informal expectation, which is just as good as a written policy in my eyes.
I also think that we're just at a different place than we were in 2001 or 2002 when the older generation of queer superstars in the WNBA were going to the draft. Even style-wise, it was different. People weren't rocking the stylish Nikes and kicks in fashion, so I think that was part of it as well.
OOYL: I remember noticing a shift in 2020. I saw Rent the Runway was tagged on all the draft Orange Carpet photos, but I couldn't find a press release or anything. And I emailed Rent the Runway to ask and they said they had dressed most of the draftees, but it hadn't been announced or really pushed anywhere. I had tried to pitch story about it to fashion pubs and no one would take it. And then this year, you saw all the draft fashion coverage, which was really interesting.
NW: In 2022, which is the draft we wrote our paper about, I don't have that insider information to know [about where they got their fashion]. But it wasn't like this year where they're like, ‘oh, this person is wearing Prada’ and ‘this person has red bottom Louboutins.’ It was just people dressing very fashion forward, and in very gender fluid ways.
OOYL: So for context, I’m looking at the 2022 draft lineup. You had players like Destanni Henderson—who the W basically made the face of that draft—and also Emily Engstler, NaLyssa Smith, and Kierstan Bell all drafted that year, alongside players like Shakira Austin and Lexie Hull.
NW: I tweeted about it, because I thought it was really in-your-face. And the tweet went viral, because I think everyone was watching thinking the same thing. Like, this is so powerful. And also something that we write about in our paper is the fact that not only do you see this expression, but what we really are talking about in the paper is how the WBA has allowed for his very inclusive online community. The people that are talking in the W Twitter/X space, they're very inclusive.
You have woman-identified people hitting on some of the woman-identified athletes, and you have man-identified people hitting on some of the woman-identified athletes or even hitting on some of the more masc-presenting athletes. You have all this gender fluidity between how folks are hitting on the athletes and looking at them, but it is done in a very respectful way. They're not sexualizing them, they are thirsting after them in a very positive, empowering way. And again, you don't normally see that, right?
OOYL: A good example of this is the kind of thirsting that comes from, say, Autostraddle’s coverage, which also exists alongside the recent semi-viral thread of men who wanted to be WNBA husbands or side pieces—which was well-received by many of the players.
But I think something else that is important, that you also were mentioning, is it's not just queer aesthetics that are being celebrated here. It's Black aesthetics, and it's Black queer aesthetics. Can you talk more about the visibility of that specific aesthetic that we see?
NW: It's the Black aesthetics, but it's also the AAVE, right? You see a lot of African American Vernacular English being used in a very positive way by lots of different races. And it's being used in the ways that it's been used in the Black communities. So like, ‘Yasss, queen,’ has been adopted by queer communities and is being used in this space by queer folks and straight folks in ways that are used to both admire and romanticize players, but also be respectful and call out the beauty in what they're doing. So it's this really cool blend of African American culture, both in the fashion forward ways that they're presenting, but also in the language that we're using.
All of this stuff is certainly deeply embedded in the African American community and Black culture. But I think also it's now been very much adopted—and in most times a respectful way—by the queer culture. So you see this online space that is incredibly inclusive, incredibly queer, but also straight. Very Black, but also lots of white folks, and lots of different races and ethnicities. And I can't find an online community, let alone a sport community, that is more diverse and inclusive at the same time.
Even cisgender, straight, white men are very comfortable in the WNBA community expressing themselves and feeling included, despite the fact that they're not the center of that community. And I think that's very different, too, because with baseball, football, [men’s] basketball, they are the center of that community so of course they feel comfortable, when everyone else is forced to bend to their cultural norms, or feel very uncomfortable. And this is a space where everyone can feel comfortable within this space and I just don't think that happens very often.
OOYL: This is the perfect segue to talk about the other incident you provided really great commentary on this past week, which was the viral interaction between Caitlin Clark and the male sports reporter for the Indy Star. One of the takeaways I’ve been thinking a lot about was one I read from Clinton Yates, which said, “bottom line here is that… dudes aren't really ready to just not matter at all in the [women’s sports] space.”
This is something you touched on, as well, related to the research that you have done about how sexism is embedded in the culture on an organizational level. Could you tell me a little bit more about that?
NW: For anyone who's been in sport for any amount of time, that moment was just very normal and that's the bad part about it. But people reacted because we're in a different culture right now, where people are trying to push the norms and change the standard. But the behavior itself is very normal. Sexism is as embedded in the culture as going to a baseball game and eating peanuts or popcorn, it's what you come to expect.
And the research that we've done—we did a study where we looked at women working in professional hockey—and the point was to have them journal their experiences every two weeks to understand what are some of the things that they're dealing with around the topic of sexism. And it showed up constantly, every single day they were dealing with sexist comments, the structure of the organization was sexist, how they got paid was sexist, the tasks that they were given were sexist. Everything about their job was rooted in sexism and rooted in the fact that they were treated differently. Despite having more experience, despite outperforming their man-identified peers, they were still treated differently and treated less-than in their organizations.
So for us, it's nice to see how frustrated people got and I hope that this reporter is reprimanded in some way by the institutional professional organizations just to show that it's not okay anymore. But the reality is, this is exactly what folks that aren't heterosexual, straight, cisgender, white men have to deal with every single day, and particularly those who identify as women have to deal with constantly in the sport world.
OOYL: And we're seeing that as women's sports increases in popularity and power, the organizations aren't necessarily built to keep up with that shift.
NW: The sexism is built into the structures—the organizations are gendered themselves. There is this idea that organizations are totally neutral and you have gender inside of them because people come in and they bring their gender[ed ideas], but the gender doesn't exist in the organization itself. But what I argue is that the organization itself was gendered from the very beginning. It started when someone said, ‘I want to start the NBA.’ That moment started with it being gendered and the gendered piece of it only became more deeply-rooted into the identity of the organization over time.
The world is changing, people’s acceptance of overtly sexist, in-your-face behavior is decreasing every day. And organizations inherently want to make money but they can't keep up with the rate of change because it's hard for organizations to change. Institutions don't change overnight because it's embedded in the structures, in the policies. Women are across the board are underpaid compared to their male counterparts, and overworked. The amount of work that women are expected to do in sport organizations that isn't even tied to their position description—all of this extra labor is incredibly sexist and keeps women from doing things that men get to do like sit and think about how they're going to make a pitch to a big sponsor. Women don't have that time to sit and think because they're constantly tasked with this unpaid labor.
Even Caitlin Clark—she is essentially the best basketball shooter in the world right now aside from Stephen Curry, according to her stats. Yet in her very first week of work, she's publicly embarrassed. So that's where we are. What about that institution is going to change to assure that that doesn't happen to the next Caitlin Clark, or just the next person coming in trying to do their job? There's so much work to be done in the everyday life of sports organizations and institutions to get us from where we are now, to a place to where a woman can come into the workplace and expect to not be harassed in the same way that men are.
OOYL: Something I think about a lot is that people often think that hiring women into these organizations will fix the problem. But we can see the WNBA just had two pregnancy discrimination complaints last season, against teams with women coaches. This question to Caitlin Clark happened at a WNBA press conference, in a league with a female Commissioner. So just putting women in the position of power doesn't necessarily fix a lot of these systemic issues.
NW: I think the reason why is because institutions and organizations outlast people. People come and go and if they're a good leader, then they have some influence over the institution or organization that they're leading so that they can change the structure in ways that are more inclusive or are to the advantage of employees, etc. But typically, the institutions outlast the people and the institutions have both written and structured policies, norms, handbooks, position descriptions that dictate how the institution functions. And those things are inherently sexist because they were created at a time where sexism was the norm. They're inherently sexist because the people that were building them were inherently sexist themselves.
So even if you put women in these positions, women can be sexist. I don't think people acknowledge that, either. Most women default to sexism because they still come from a very sexist society. So I think putting people in positions and expecting that because they are of a particular identity, it can undo decades of historical mistreatment and decades of discrimination and decades of institutionalized sexism that has been embedded in the culture is absolutely ridiculous. It's just not going to happen.
I loved this interview!
Excellent interview!