Thank you, as always, for being here. Paid subscriptions allow me to dedicate more time to this newsletter. It’s not just the time I spend writing, but the time I spend planning, researching, and reporting that is supported by upgrading. You also get access to our (very active) subscriber Discord server, as well as events. You’ll also help me continue to provide coverage that is by us, for us. We deserve trans voices covering the issues that impact us, and I’ve been doing it for nearly a decade.

You really should consider coming to hang out with us. We have an established enough community that people in the Discord are dressing up as inside jokes from the Discord for Halloween.

Before I get to this little celebratory shitpost of a newsletter, I want to shoutout the Valkyries beat writers who have been there since day one. Marisa Ingemi, who writes the Valkyries Beat newsletter, has covered the team since its inception and is so trusted and beloved by the players and staff that coach Natalie Nakese made sure to give her the first question at the postgame presser. And Maya Goldberg-Safir, who writes the Rough Notes newsletter, brings the most important queer perspective to the Valks and Bay Area women’s basketball. Please read and subscribe to both if you do not already. They put in so much work to cover this team and what they do is important.

Also, shoutout to Nakese, who shook the hand of every single media member before leaving the postgame press conference.

There are a ton of retrospectives you will read on the Valkyries second season, the one that resulted in the fastest championship for franchise in the history of North American sports. There will be plenty of time for those, and they will be better than this newsletter. But for right now, I just want to talk about why this championship matters for The Gays.

Las Vegas Aces player Kierstan Bell and soccer lesbian Megan Rapinoe confirmed that we should all be rooting for everybody gay before the game, in case anyone was unclear on how things work around here.

2026 was a season when the culture wars came for the WNBA, even more fully than they had before. The 2024 season was the first time right-wing bad actors really began to sink their claws into a league that had largely been immune from the worst of it, but this season brought it out in full swing. And while the racist narratives had followed the league for a while, the transphobes and homophobes reallyyyyyy tried it this year.

The Valkyries championship is significant for so many reasons—Natalie Nakese built a team of “role players,” she scouted internationally, she focused on defense. But the Valkyries—the coaches and players, and Ballhalla itself—refused to turn away from the gays. The Game 7 anthem was sung by the Glide Memorial Church choir—a church that prioritizes “radical inclusion” and has a rainbow logo (are those American flag colors or trans flag colors surrounding them on the court? Unclear…).

The Valkyries championship is a win for inclusion.

When so many arenas banned signage, the Chase Center didn’t. When so many coaches talked around the issue of inclusion, Nakese didn’t. And when so many players avoided the question or actively turned against the trans community, Gabby Williams refused.

The Valkyries won, as Williams said, for the gays. Ballhalla came alive, as the Valks socials made clear, for the gays.

The WNBA was built by and for queers, both on the court and off. A Valkyries championship affirms that the queers aren’t going anywhere.

This is our fucking league.

Here are the very best (and gayest) moments from the Valkyries’ WNBA championship: