Hannah Botterman And Georgia Evans Are The Queer Rugby Power Couple Of Our Dreams
They’re just two rival rugby players in love, dealing with travel, trolls, and everything in between.
Featured images: L: Georgia Evans by Karl Bridgeman via Getty Images; R: Hannah Botterman by Karl Bridgeman via Getty Images
Women’s rugby is having a defining moment in the UK, and two of its most visible queer players are shaping what that evolution looks like. England prop Hannah Botterman and Wales lock Georgia Evans stepped onto the World Cup pitch as rivals, but away from the game they share a relationship and a commitment to being out in a sport that has long welcomed queer women.
Botterman still talks about England’s recent World Cup win with awe. “It was honestly one of the most insane experiences I’ve ever had in my whole entire life,” she recently told Dazed. She remembers the energy of the sold-out final and the feeling of winning in front of a home crowd. “It wasn’t just the day itself. We had such a good time throughout the whole journey to then win it at the end, at home in front of a home crowd was just honestly insane.”
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Part of what made the experience powerful for her was feeling connected to a larger shift in women’s sports. “I think something that’s so special about women’s sport is that it’s so intertwined and everyone champions everyone,” she said. The support she felt from other athletes, especially as an out queer woman, has meant a lot. “This tournament, I’ve received so much love, like so much love,” she said. “Seeing someone that looks like me being celebrated so openly, that’s pretty important for the younger generation.”
Botterman’s masculinity has also made her a target for online harassment. “I just get a lot of, I don’t even know if you can even call it hate. But you know, ‘I thought this was the women’s team,’” she told Dazed. Even something as simple as going to a public bathroom can bring unwanted assumptions. “I’ve had some not particularly nice experiences going into women’s toilets because people assume I’m a man for some reason,” she said. Still, the rugby environment remains one of the most accepting spaces she has known. “Within the rugby community, anything goes. It literally doesn’t matter who you are, how you present, no one cares.”
Evans has faced her own wave of negativity, though hers was aimed at her femininity. Her big pink bows and on-pitch makeup became subjects of mockery during the tournament. “There was just troll after troll after troll talking about what I looked like,” she said. But after she addressed the comments publicly, she was met with an outpouring of support at Wales’ next game, where fans of all ages wore matching bows. “I don’t get emotional very often but I got off the bus and I just couldn’t stop myself from shedding tears.”
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For Evans, femininity is not an accessory but a part of her identity. “The bow for me, represents my femininity, being in such a male-dominated sport and keeping that part of me shining,” she said. “A lot of the time you get comments, ‘You play like a girl’. I don’t understand what playing like a girl means, because to me that means that I am doing something really cool, really strong,” she added. She is clear about what she wants young athletes to see in her. “There can be femme lesbians, and you can be however you express yourself.”
Both athletes have appeared in a new campaign for SLT Studio, known for its Dyke rings. The shoot plays with the contrast between Botterman’s masc presentation and Evans’s femme expression, and the ease with which they inhabit their identities.
What connects them, beyond rugby, is a shared belief that visibility can change the landscape for someone coming up behind them. Whether it is a young queer person who sees herself in Evans’s bow or in Botterman’s cropped hair and confidence, the message is the same. As Evans put it, “There’s always gonna be space for her.”
