want to talk about it to the media. In fact, I had already alluded to being gay a couple of days before the SI interview, when I spent time with a USA Today reporter on draft day for a story about bringing change to the WNBA. We had the same ground rules as I did with Sports Illustrated , so when I mentioned âcoming outâ to my parents in high school, USA Today didnât make a big deal of it, because it was part of a larger point about the importance of being authentic. If you go back and look at the article, which ran a day before the SI video, I actually said a lot more to USA Today than I did to SI , but people didnât jump all over that ânewsâ and try to say I just came outâwhich goes to show you itâs all about how the story is framed. And when it comes to dealing with gay athletes, the media still has a long way to go. As athletes, as people, we want to show who we are and how we think and what makes us tick, but far too often we get reduced to a headline. Itâs no wonder more athletes donât come out.
I was still annoyed by the whole thing a few days later, especially when I scrolled through Twitter and Instagram. The trolls were saying all the usual crap, but with a new twist: âHow can she be a lesbian if sheâs a man?â and âOf course she likes girlsâshe has a penis!â I have a love-hate relationship with social media. On the one hand, it provides a sense of community and support; on the other hand, it gives a megaphone to people spouting cruelty and hatred. Like many things in life, the bad comes with the good. And there was plenty of bad, nasty stuff online after the SI video hit.
But then I started hearing from more and more people who were telling me, âHey, youâre doing a good thing.â It really clicked for me when I was back in Waco about a week later. President Obama spoke during a memorial service on the Baylor campus, for victims of the fertilizer plant explosion in West, Texas. There were EMTs and firefighters all over town that day, coming to pay their respects. And the EMTs from West happened to be right in front of my apartment complex. When I went outside, I was spotted immediately, and they all wanted to take pictures with me. One of the stations seemed to have a number of gays and lesbians on staff, and a man came up to me and started thanking me. He was almost crying. He told me my âcoming outâ was going to make things better. He also told me there was a local church that was giving them a hard time for being gay. He said they hadnât smiled in weeks, and yet here they were, smiling ear to ear while talking to me.
That moment touched me. I thought, Okay, what Iâm doing really does matter. Iâm helping in some way . By the time I sat down for my big on-camera interview with ESPN a few weeks later and the editors put me on the cover of their magazine, I didnât care that some people were still tweeting stuff like âBrittney Griner just came out to ESPN.â Iâll come out over and over again if itâs a positive thing for gay kids who are struggling with the same stuff I struggled with when I was younger. Because every voice matters, and being different is a good thing. Who wants to be the same as everybody else?
Not me. When I pulled on my Phoenix Mercury uniform before my first game as a pro, looking at those tattoos that everybody was about to see, I thought about how far I had comeâand how different everything would be going forward.
THE TRUTH ABOUT BACON
M y first three days in Phoenix were rough. I can laugh about it now because it seems like a little hiccup in hindsight, but I wasnât laughing at the time. I was a big pathetic lump in the middle of the desert, feeling out of place. Everything had been moving crazy fast for me, and thenâ bam!âit all stopped, and I was stuck in a holding pattern, looking around at unfamiliar surroundings and thinking,