This development is really strange to me. As a gay teenager, I grew up experiencing sports and sports teams, especially coaches, as homophobic, bullying, and exclusionary.

Not to mention highly toxic. Some of the most respected coaches were celebrated for screaming at and abusing their players. People thought they were awesome because they were bullies. Sickening.

And of course, at my high school, members of teams were the biggest homophobic bullies and abusers. Possibly because their coaches abused them, but I don't know. Our head football coach was famous for screaming and cursing at his players, like the famous university coaches of the day, but I don't know how his team members personally reacted to that. I know many of them were thoroughly terrible people, though.

So to me, sports metaphors are just weird. Referring to somebody as a coach in a positive way is super weird.

I don't know when the business world started using the sports metaphor so much, but I never used it in any of my businesses, and it seems to me like it's at least relatively new. I know other people don't experience it the same way I do, but when I hear about teams and coaches, I feel stressed and upset.

I also don't entirely agree with the idea that one should disregard one's own ideals and principles for the sake of a group. I think that's very dangerous, actually. So the team metaphor just doesn't work very well for me. I really don't like teams. I don't consider myself to be a member of anyone's team, because I don't like the concept of teams.

On the other hand, it's important to be able to come together for a good cause, and we queer people haven't always been great about doing that.

We have common enemies, who are implacably opposed to our rights and freedoms for quite similar reasons, despite the fact that there are important differences among us.

We members of gender and sexual minorities quite rightfully think hard about our own identities and what it is that makes us different or the same. But our enemies don't care much about that.

They only care to stifle our freedom and individuality, because they're opposed to anything outside their heteronormative, often religious, worldview.

It's distressing to see certain conservative gay people, for example, identity as LGB for the specific purpose of excluding trans people. It's also distressing to see bisexual people excluded.

People are hating on us because of things we have in common, not because of our differences.

We're stronger together. Besides that, working for individual freedom and fulfillment is important all on its own. It's beyond me why any member of a marginalized gender/sexual minority would want to exclude any queer person from that freedom.

We need to understand that we have common cause because we have common enemies.

Thanks for writing about this!