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Japanese Soccer Player Comes Out to Encourage Tokyo Olympic Athletes
She wants to help promote inclusion in the 2020 Tokyo Olympics.
Japanese soccer player Shiho Shimoyamada has come out in the hopes of inspiring others to do the same.
“Once you share your feelings with the company you keep, sports will become even more fun,” she said in an interview with The Asahi Shumbun.
The Olympics are set to be held in Tokyo in 2020, and Shimoyamada wants to help “normalize the LGBT presence in Japan’s sports community” before then.
Undoubtedly, this is at least partially in reaction to the Winter Olympics being held in anti-gay Sochi back in 2014, where athletes and fans alike were concerned about having to hide their sexuality for fear of some form of retaliation.
The organizers of Tokyo Olympics, on the other hand, are attempting to promote diversity within the event. But Shimoyamada thought an out Japanese athlete would make that effort feel more authentic.
“It will be powerful if an actual LGBT athlete sends a message,” she said.
So she decided it was time to come out to the world.
“They don’t perceive a LGBT player as special,” Shimoyamada said of her teammates. “I can play just as a soccer player here, and I feel comfortable in such a relationship.”
She currently plays for SV Meppen in Germany, and does not know if she will be participating in the Olympics herself, but she will be participating in a campaign by Pride House Tokyo to encourage any athletes — whether they wind up at the Olympics or not — to feel free to be themselves.
Rachel Kiley is presumably a writer and definitely not a terminator. She can usually be found crying over queerbaiting in the Pitch Perfect franchise or on Twitter, if not both.
Rachel Kiley is presumably a writer and definitely not a terminator. She can usually be found crying over queerbaiting in the Pitch Perfect franchise or on Twitter, if not both.
