I am a full-time freelance sportswriter and your support allows me to continue doing this work. I use paid subscription money to hire an editor for my reporting, and I’ve recently acquired legal support through beehiiv. I am about 50 paid subscribers away from being able to reliably fund travel to report more stories for the newsletter, as well as purchase a media insurance policy to allow me to do more investigative journalism here.

I always swore I’d never do a Pride Month sale because we are gay year-round here, but fuck it. If you purchase a paid subscription from now until the end of June, you’ll get a lifetime 20% discount on your subscription. You can upgrade here:

A paid subscription also supports the community that we are building here, which includes events like the Out of Your League Book Club (this month we are reading BREAKOUT YEAR by KD CASEY) and our (very active) paid subscriber Discord server.

On Wednesday, the New York Liberty went to Chicago to face the Sky. The Liberty ended up winning that game 96-95, and the Liberty socials found someone they apparently believed to be a Stewart fan in the crowd at Wintrust Arena and posted a photo of them to socials. The fan was holding a sign that had a trans flag on it and said, “Other Books 4 Stewie.” Some of the options given were This is How You Lose the Time War, Parable of the Sower, and Small Things Like These. It was captioned by admin, “A few suggestions for the Book Club Baddies.” The photo was deleted about 30 minutes after it was posted, likely once admin realized that it was not the positive sign they first thought it was.

If you’ve been here a while, you’ll be well-versed in Breanna Stewart’s love affair with Harry Potter. But in case you’ve not heard, the Harry Potter books meant a lot to Stewart at one point in her life and to commemorate that, Stewart has released two different pairs of Harry Potter-inspired shoes with Puma—the Stewie 3s in 2024 and the Stewie 4s in 2025 (the Out of Your League Discord community calls Stewart “TERF Shoes” or "TS” for short).

When the Stewie 3s were announced, fan backlash to the collab was fast and furious. Stewart has identified herself as an ally to the trans community and many fans were hurt that she would choose to partner with J.K. Rowling, whose transphobia is well-documented. At the time, I spoke to fans who were upset about the Stewie 3s. Before the release of the Stewie 4s last summer, Stewart gave an interview to The Next where she talked about how difficult it has been for her to reconcile her love for HP with Rowling’s transphobia, and how surprised she had been at the strong pushback on her pair of HP shoes.

“How can I have a world where I can do both, where I can talk about my shoes of Hedwig and [Nagini], but also continuing to actively show support in the transgender community and making it so these shoes are a direct reflection of that, to counterbalance everything that J. K. Rowling has done and said,” Stewart told The Next. “There should be a platform where people from all communities, LGBTQ+, transgender communities, can also love Harry Potter and stick up against J. K. Rowling and her peers.”

Stewart also said that the proceeds from Stewie 4s would be donated to a trans organization, though she hadn’t identified which one yet. Out of Your League reached out to Stewart’s team to ask if that donation had happened and, if so, which organization had received the money. As of the time of this writing, OOYL has not received a response to those questions. I will update this story if I get an answer.

I reached out to K.H., the Sky fan with the sign, to find out more about why they brought it and what the reaction has been to seeing it posted on the Liberty’s socials.

Out of Your League: Why did you want to go to the game with the sign?

KH: It was actually a follow-up sign to the one I brought last season, which just said “read another book!” The Liberty game last year came right on the heels of one of the news stories about the Harry Potter shoe collaboration, so that was what inspired it originally. The reason I decided to do another one this season is that I was talking to a friend recently about what Stewie had said regarding donating the profits from the shoe deal or maybe doing something charitable with them, but we never got any follow up. It made me feel like she was hoping she could just say that and it would go away, and I wanted her to know that it isn’t going to.

OOYL: How you feel about Stewie’s HP shoes?

KH: Extremely negative!! I’m sure legally this isn’t how it works but of course I delusionally hoped that she would see all the backlash and realize that she should try to find a way to get out of the deal. In reality though, she gave that milquetoast non-response about donating the money and then we never heard anything else after that, so I can only react to what she’s given us.

OOYL: What the reaction was at the game?

KH: Really positive! We even had a couple Liberty fans come up to us and say they liked it, which was cool. Everything with Stewie is even more of a bummer since New York is such a wonderfully queer place, so you would hope that one of the marquee players for their WNBA team would be a representative for the city’s values.

OOYL: What did you think when you saw the sign posted to the Liberty’s socials?

KH: Mostly I was shocked and confused, my friend and I were debating whether they’d just completely missed the point or if their social media admin was a secretly based ally. I remember the guy who took my photo, I just assumed it was for the video board or the Sky’s page, but then someone tagged me on Bluesky and asked if I’d seen the Liberty’s IG page, and I realized things might have spread beyond what I anticipated. My notifications kind of blew up and it was pretty overwhelming, but ultimately I’m happy that people are vibing with the sign and liked it. I’m sure there is negativity out there, but no one has expressed any to me yet. My only goal was to ensure that people hadn’t forgotten about the issue, so that was achieved even if it came with the cost of having to be perceived for a few hours.

I obviously didn’t expect any of [last night] to go the way it has but it seems like the net impact is going to be positive even if the end of the game felt specifically designed as a torture mechanism for Sky fans.