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Here's what Megan Rapinoe & Sue Bird have to say about WNBA rookie Angel Reese's take on bullying
The power couple talk about Angel Reese's new anti-online harassment campaign & we are NODDING along!
Soccer It Couple Megan Rapinoe and Sue Bird are praising rising WNBA star Angel Reese for speaking out against the bullying women in sports face every day.
On yesterday's episode of their podcast, A Touch More, the two former star soccer players talked about Reese's recent appearance in a video for her team's #PostUpPositivity campaign, aimed at making social media a safer space for female athletes.
Rapinoe praised the rookie Chicago Sky player for using her "really big platform" to talk about how much hate women in sports have to contend with.
"They're saying awful things in there about you personally, and that's just unacceptable," Rapinoe said. "Like, we're playing sports. This is just a game. And we need to be kinder to each other. So I love Angel for this. This is really cool. Using her really big platform to combat it."
In the Chicago Sky's #PostUpPositivity video, Reese is on her phone and then playing basketball while hateful comments swirl around her, like, "She is actually awful," and "If 'Unlikeable' were a person it would be her."
The ad campaign then reveals that a staggering 87 percent of female athletes experience online harassment and that the team has partnered with The Net, a mental health network for women in sports, to solve this problem by using AI to block toxic comments on social media.
Reese is a fitting spokesperson for the new initiative because she's faced an avalanche of racist and misogynistic comments since being drafted by the WNBA.
"Our developers were shocked at the level of hate that Angel receives. It's alarming and heartbreaking," said Rony Castor, the creative director for BarkleyOKRP, who designed the new AI tool that has reportedly already blocked 454 posts on X, Sportskeeda reported.
Bird and Rapinoe also talked about how much harassment and hate Reese has gotten in just the short time since she went pro. "The racism, the sexism, the homophobia, all of it in there for female athletes is crazy, so this is really cool from Angel," Rapinoe said.
It's great to see female athletes supporting each other!
The full podcast episode is below.
Ariel Messman-Rucker is an Oakland-born journalist who now calls the Pacific Northwest her home. When she’s not writing about politics and queer pop culture, she can be found reading, hiking, or talking about horror movies with the Zombie Grrlz Horror Podcast Network.
Ariel Messman-Rucker is an Oakland-born journalist who now calls the Pacific Northwest her home. When she’s not writing about politics and queer pop culture, she can be found reading, hiking, or talking about horror movies with the Zombie Grrlz Horror Podcast Network.
