Now that we’re a week removed from what happened at the US Open’s Women’s Single Final, I find that my feelings are pretty much the same. The Serena Williams “situation” was some kind of Rorschach test for a lot of people, and some of those people were absolutely racist and sexist about it. What was interesting though is that maybe half of the commentary around the situation was very nuanced and thoughtful, which was greatly appreciated. You can say that Serena could have done better, that she made a bad situation even worse. You can also say that the umpire, Carlos Ramos, could have done better and he also made a bad situation even worse. Both things can be true at the same time. All I know is that I felt for Serena and I genuinely believe she was punished and coded in ways she wouldn’t have been if she had been someone other than a black female icon.

Anyway, it turns out that Abby Wambach had a lot of feelings about everything that went down too. Wambach is easily one of my favorite athlete-advocates – she’s a soccer star here in America, she’s out and proud and a great LGBTQ activist, and she’s also spoken out a lot about racial justice, including Colin Kaepernick and more. Well, Wambach was asked about Serena, and here’s what she said:

“Here’s the thing — so, there’s many different subtle ways of being discriminated against. And Serena is dealing with a whole bunch. She’s the best in the world, so she’s going to get scrutinized the most; she’s a woman of color; she’s a woman; [and] she’s just coming back from having a baby. She is a literal walking, breathing science experiment at how the world relates to people that are perceived as less than or marginalized. What Serena got herself into, and what the world has witnessed, and what this guy, this umpire, has put out into the universe was just a microcosm of what’s been happening in our culture.”

Wambach adds Williams “stood her ground” and Wambach is “proud to know her…I’m proud to have been on the sports section alongside of her through my career. She does get to have an argument in this. Because when you talk about the way that men treat their umpires, when you talk about the way men are revered for the way they battle in sport and how women are then called all these kinds of names: bitchy, or throwing a fit or losing it or whatever. All of that is just proof that what the world needs is strong women to lead the charge, to figure out new rules of how things need to go and to lead everyone else behind because the old ways of doing things, the old ways of the world, they’re gone.”

“First of all, she’s a competitor, she was upset and felt like she was being wronged and was sticking up for herself, then it gets to opinions of the U.S. Open. The way you saw that whole thing go down, every human being makes an assessment about what their thoughts were. If you’re a man appalled at seeing Serena Williams stick up for herself in a sporting event you need to check yourself. You have to figure out, you have to go to the base of it because this woman, who is strong and powerful, was talking to a man in a certain way. Did it make you feel different? Did it make you feel scared, or ‘Oh, gosh, she can’t do that!’ It’s like The Handmaid’s Tale.”

[From People]

Yep, everything Wambach said and more. I think Abby also makes a great point about the “marginalization” that happens to Serena being three-fold: it’s not just that Serena is black and a woman, it’s that she’s a relatively new mother (Olympia turned 1 year old during the US Open.) There are a lot of people who judge Serena for being a “working mom” and for coming back to play after she had a baby, and you have to add that into the mix too.

Here are some photos of Serena speaking at the Digital Retail Conference ‘Shop.Org’ in Las Vegas on Friday. She didn’t talk about the US Open controversy.

Photos courtesy of WENN.