A lesbian couple from Mexico has spoken to the New York Times about the prejudice they faced in their home country for being openly gay athletes.
Bianca Sierra and Stephany Mayor both represented Mexico on the women’s national soccer team and have been in a relationship since 2013.
While the couple were open with their teammates and families about their sexuality, their coach Leonardo Cuéllar targeted the pair during a speech about the importance of abstaining from alcohol.
He then added: “I don’t care if you are girlfriends or not, but I don’t want to see you holding hands or pulling any stunts,’” Mayor recalls.
“It hard to imagine something like that happening in the United States,” Sierra says. “Just think, when the US team won the World Cup, Abby Wambach kissed her wife on the field. It is something normal.”
When the players publicly came out in a Twitter post last year, the backlash was swift, with people leaving homophobic comments such as: “You disgust me, in my neighbourhood, we would have set you on fire.”
“I didn’t think so many people would care,” Mayor says. “We are not doing anything. You feel sadness and anger that they are saying all these things.”
“There are a lot of taboos about sexuality in Mexico,” she says. “There are things that are not spoken. It is cultural; you cannot be open about your relationship.”
Claudia Pedraza from the National Autonomous University of Mexico and specialises in studying gender and sports says: “For a woman to come out as a lesbian in Mexico is even more complicated because she faces double discrimination.”
“First, because she is a woman. And then, second, because she is assuming a homosexual identity.”
The couple has since moved to Iceland, where they both play for the Thor-KA soccer team and have been welcomed into the Akreyri community.
Thor-KA’s coach Halldor Jon Sigurdsson has praised both women, describing Sierra as a “machine” and Mayor an “unbelievable football mind”.
“And if Fany is with the person she loves,” he says, using Mayor’s nickname, “she’s obviously going to feel absolutely fantastic.”
