As part of our Pride Month celebrations, we had a chat with England under-23 midfielder/attacker, Bea Webber, to get her thoughts on Pride Month, identity, and what it’s like to be a member of the LGBTQ+ community within lacrosse.
With June being Pride Month, Bea, who identifies as gay and uses the pronouns she/her, reflected on her views of pride celebrations and how her outlook has changed over the years, believing it’s more important than ever to keep holding Pride events all over the world.
“At first, I wrongly thought that celebrating Pride didn’t need to be such a big deal; I didn’t like the huge parades that drew attention to us as different and I was sceptical of the sincerity of shops, banks, and other businesses participating in Pride Month.
“This is likely due to my easy coming out in which I never really came out and instead just started dating girls instead of boys.
“I didn’t want my sexuality to be the defining feature of who I was, and I didn’t identify with the people I saw at Pride who felt proud in a way I didn’t yet.
“As my family and friends barely reacted when I came home with a girl, I didn’t think I needed Pride to feel accepted”.
However, after a negative experience with Bea’s girlfriend experiencing severe homophobia when she came out to her parents, it was around then that she understood and appreciated the importance and necessity of Pride.
“Pride demonstrates that homophobia and discrimination will not be tolerated in the public sphere; being in a Pride parade feels incredibly welcoming and exciting as people are unapologetically themselves and are surrounded by others who vehemently support them. The parade has a liberating effect that I would recommend everyone participates in if they can, regardless of sexuality.
“I am a firm believer of strength in numbers, so continued public support of the movement is paramount. Pride is about being brave for yourself and for others and working towards creating a more inclusive society within which we all have the possibility to thrive”.
In the lacrosse world, the 21 year-old Oxford University student and former Wycombe Abbey School pupil feels that seeing other players who identify as LGBTQ+ within the England women’s teams, she found it quite easy to be out as part of the England set-up.
“I’m pretty certain the first women I knew of who were gay were England lacrosse players or other female athletes.
“The first regular conversation I ever heard about two women dating, getting married, or having children was in a lacrosse context; the normality with which the girls spoke about the same sex relationships of older England players played a huge part in normalising being gay to myself as these were sportswomen I massively looked up to as a young lacrosse player.
“It was in my first year of university that I started to properly consider myself as gay both publicly and privately. The Oxford lacrosse team assumed I was straight after a few freshers’ week anecdotes about past boyfriends, which I likely resorted to as a means to fit in.
“I thought I was the only gay girl in the lacrosse team but it became obvious that in the tolerant and largely liberal university environment, no one really cared what gender you were interested in and frankly it wasn’t really anyone else’s business!
“And once I knew there were other girls who liked girls within the team, I never worried about it again. Being comfortable with being openly gay varies from situation to situation and, so far, I have experienced it as a developing process as opposed to a sort of ‘on-off’ switch”.
When it comes to receiving and experiencing homophobia within a sporting context, Bea acknowledges she’s been really lucky to not have the same difficult experiences that some people in the LGBTQ+ community have had.
“There was always the schoolgirl insult that if you were very sporty you were a lesbian but hopefully now, with increased visibility of some really badass gay sportswomen, the connotation won’t be seen as a negative in the future and sporting ability will lose its strange and somewhat unfounded connection to sexuality”.
If sport, and lacrosse in particular, is to make itself truly inclusive to people from the LGBTQ+ community, Bea thinks the same principles that we apply to wider life should be used and she acknowledges there’s still a lot of work to be done.
“Whilst UK society is becoming increasingly inclusive in many ways, it would be an injustice to assume the fight is anywhere near over.
“Whilst I am more than happy to tell people I’m gay and be relatively comfortable with my sexuality, I still fear holding my girlfriend’s hand in the street or kissing her in public as changes to laws haven’t necessarily penetrated wider society beyond the liberal student bubble.
Bea (#13) pictured with the England Under-23 Squad on the 2018 Japan tour.
“Helping LGBTQ+ people feel more comfortable on an institutional level will require consistency and persistency with public support of LGBTQ+ matters and the upholding of a zero-tolerance policy of discrimination or harassment amongst anyone associated with your group.
“On an inter-personal level, in my opinion, less is more in terms of bringing attention to someone’s homosexuality. Remember that we are all people before we are gay and we have massively diverse life experiences that may have had nothing to do with our sexuality and separate us on totally different lines. Whilst we band together to make ourselves stronger as ‘the LGBTQ+ community’, it is important to listen to individual experience and appreciate its variation.
“Also, making efforts to be more proactive as an ally, whether that be in discussing LGBTQ+ related news with friends and family, or perhaps resorting to Google before asking potentially uncomfortable questions to your LGBTQ+ friends.
“I am convinced most questions come from good and inquisitive intentions; however, a particular personal pet peeve for me is being asked if I am a lesbian or bi-sexual or any other label that requires an accurate pinpointing of something that is considerably more abstract and complex.
“We are all just people trying to live our lives freely and authentically and whilst labels are lifesavers for some they don’t fit right for other people. That might not bother any other LGBTQ+ people but again, we are all different!”