Rapinoe rips Green’s scolding of women: ‘Not acceptable at all’
Oh, yes, Megan Rapinoe saw Draymond Green’s recent 12tweet thread scolding women athletes to stop “complaining” about equal pay and mansplaining how to grow women’s sports.
And she has thoughts. “Stirring up the s—,” Rapinoe said when I asked her about it during a virtual Olympic media summit Wednesday.
Green stirred it up when he delivered a sermon to the women doing the hard work, tagging Rapinoe’s partner Sue Bird and other WNBA players in his thread. The women Green tagged, like Rapinoe, have been on the forefront of the fight for equity in women’s sports for well over a decade. That includes the U.S. women’s soccer team’s quest for equal pay.
“When we talk about equality in women’s sports, we always talk first about investment and funding and resources and marketing and branding and investing in the support staff and the coaching and in media,” Rapinoe said. “Anyone who follows us or has skin in the game knows that is what we talk about first. If all those things are done, then we will most likely require a higher salary than we’re at.
“That’s what I have to say about Draymond Green. It’s really unfortunate, having all the resources he has, he has the ability to have a much more educated opinion. And then he just dragged all these other people in by tagging them. And speaking about it during the NCAA Tournament when we saw the lack of investments and lack of resources and lack of funding.”
Rapinoe appeared at the media summit, along with teammates Crystal Dunn and Becky Sauerbrunn, to discuss the upcoming Tokyo Olympics. The team is in Sweden preparing for a match but followed the exposure of inequities back home between the NCAA men’s and women’s tournaments.
“It’s time for someone in power to think about the value you’re missing out on,” Rapinoe said of the NCAA. “I’ve always said equality in general is a good business proposition.”
Green addressed his statements at a news conference four days after his Twitter rant and reiterated his belief that female athletes need to stop “complaining” about the pay gap and take more wellplanned actions to effect change.
Rapinoe was frustrated by Green’s comment, which seemed to show a lack of knowledge of the battles women have been fighting and the conversations they’ve been having for years.
“He showed his whole a—,” she said, “and then he doubled down a few days later.
“We all know that people who are marginalized, whether by race or gender or sexuality, it is not just their job to fight oppression. We need all the other people as well. So, to have someone who does know what it’s like to be oppressed to heap that all back on female sports is disappointing.”
In October 2019, Rapinoe and Bird were honored by the Warriors at their annual LGBTQ night. Rapinoe thinks Green should have a conversation with some in his organization.
“There’s a lot of amazing people that I know personally who work in the Warriors’ organization and who I’m sure are very happy to sit down with him,” Rapinoe said. “That was really disappointing, especially for someone who has such a big platform. That was not acceptable, at all.”