By opening up wrestling to girls, coaches can share the best sport in the world with the other half of the population. Some of the technologies we use are necessary for critical functions like security and site integrity, account authentication, security and privacy preferences, internal site usage and maintenance data, and to make the site work correctly for browsing and transactions.

Women who wrestle professionally have had more than their fair share of sexualization over the past two decades. To enable personalized advertising (like interest-based ads), we may share your data with our marketing and advertising partners using cookies and other technologies. Now a 16-year old junior wrestling at 145 pounds, she is ranked as one of the Top 10 Girl's High School wrestlers in the country.Parker was also the first Black woman ever to win a major title in Japan, as well as the first out lesbian woman to be a world champion wrestler. Now, decades later, the defiant spirits embodying that openness and desire for visibility among wrestling’s lesbian community refuse to keep their identities in the shadows. And while it could be argued that these storylines brought some type of lesbian representation into the industry (mostly for the wide-eyed baby gays watching WWE alone at home with the babysitter while their parents are out), not all press is good press for the queer community. But the truth is that just because you are a woman who enjoys wrestling with other women, competitively and otherwise, doesn’t necessarily mean you are a lesbian. While none of this is to say that lesbian representation is anywhere near where it needs to be in the industry, but queer women are continuing to break barriers and continue building on the rich lesbian history of wrestling.

Sue “Tex” Green began wrestling in 1969 and had to keep her lesbian identity a secret throughout her career. I wish it was that way when I came out, or whenever I started because I would have never had to hide who I was.Charlie Morgan’s promo in which she came out publicly in the ring at a Pro Wrestling EVE event is forever immortalized for its raw reality and ability to usher new LGBTQ fans into a welcoming wrestling space. Obviously, it isn’t too hard getting women who work together to spend time together, and so cameras caught Paige and Mendes hanging out on many occasions. Part of the reason why so many women were (and are) closeted in the wrestling business is because of the hyper-feminized pressure and heterosexual undertones in the industry’s culture.

The match ended after the two teams exchanged near falls, leaving an opening for Green to hit her Unpretty-Her finisher followed by Deville hitting a running knee and securing the pinfall victory. Taking it a step further than the usual random lesbian experiences seen in wrestling, El and England were both in bikinis and wasted no time in falling to the floor, going all out and doing whatever it took to get that job. For all the talk this list has been doing about how WWE in particular is horrible at handling lesbian issues with any sort of class, there’s also the feud between Trish Stratus and Mickie James. It worked to destigmatize lesbian relationships while giving Deville herself a vehicle to hold nothing back in her expression of who she is. That said, the fact many of these companies operate in the Southern United States could be a small obstacle, which Taeler Hendrix knew when accepting a lesbian stalker angle while working for Ohio Valley Wrestling, which despite the misleading name, is actually based in Kentucky.Names like Susan Green and Sandy Parker defied women’s wrestling gatekeepers like The Fabulous Moolah that did their best to outlaw LGBTQ wrestlers’ public expression of their identities within their stables.

Given that the entire point of being a lesbian is that a woman has no romantic interest in men, this seems a little counterintuitive, and yet in the world of popular culture, semantics like these are a little bit less important. Hirsch is also signed to All Elite Wrestling (can you say ally) and appears in AEW’s sister promotion Ring of Honor.We are a part of this community that is so diverse and we’re giving the mainstream fans a different aspect of wrestling.