Lesbian Jock

"And not all basketball players are lesbians — just the ladies."

— Michael Buckley, What The Buck?

Much like the Navy, as well as all other military branches in general where women are involved, women's sports are really, really gay.

The Lesbian Jock — as her name would suggest — loves sports and also loves the ladies. Usually, this trope either takes the form of lesbian characters playing sports, or other people assuming (correctly or incorrectly) that a female character is a lesbian because she enjoys sports.

There seems to be a sliding scale of which sports are acceptable for girls without questioning their femininity, and which are not. Performance-based sports like gymnastics, figure skating, diving, and cheerleading are all "okay"; most competitive sports like softball, volleyball, track, swimming, soccer, tennis, basketball, field hockey and in some cases, depending on how the other men view them, combat sports such as boxing, kickboxing, wrestling, and mixed martial arts are roughly 50/50 in that they can swing either way; but "masculine" sports like ice hockey, American football, rugby and, strangely enough, golf are almost a sure bet.

Her rough Spear Counterpart could be considered the Gym Bunny. However, the lesbian jock is usually into sports because she's a tomboy, while the Gym Bunny is usually into physical fitness because he's a narcissist. The counterpart of that trope is Lipstick Lesbian.

From the standpoint of interest in said sport indicates "gender nonconformity," the Spear Counterpart would be Performance Artist, where certain performance arts are "reserved" for women and that any man who choose to partake in them are automatically more "feminine" (and thus in turn inclined to homosexuality) than those who don't. The same logical fallacy applies.

One common Sub-Trope in works with a school setting is the Butch Lesbian girls' P.E. teacher.

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Examples:

Anime & Manga

• Gargantia on the Verdurous Planet zigzags it like crazy with the Pirate Queen Lukkage. While she certainly shows regard for her crew, she personally takes raiding like a sport. She actually keeps lesbian cohorts on chain leashes (who fight just as hard as she does when not at play), but seems to show true affection to a male expatriate of Gargantia.
• Haruka Tenou/Sailor Uranus from Sailor Moon is Michiru Kaiou's girlfriend, a Bifauxnen, a Sailor Senshi (as well as one half of a Battle Couple with Michiru/Sailor Neptune) and a gifted athlete. Seiya from the last arc also fits, being that she is an Expy of Haruka, though the anime plays with this somewhat as Seiya is also a Gender Bender.
• Subverted in Nyan Koi!. Nagi Ichinose is the captain of the school track team, a Bifauxnen who induces Viewer Gender Confusion and plays the part of a Chivalrous Pervert around the other girls. However, she comes to develop a crush on the male main character... While still ogling every other girl in sight.
• Nagisa of Futari wa Pretty Cure tends to get a bunch of love letters from female classmates and underclassmen; it's at least implied that they like her because she's one of the school's star athletes. She wishes she could get letters from boys instead, but there are a lot of instances in which her relationship with Honoka is implied to be a Pseudo-Romantic Friendship, likely to please the Yuri Fan Periphery Demographic.
• Stop Hibari Kun: Jun Ōtori, the volleyball club's captain, becomes obsessed with proving herself better than the effortless-athletic Hibari. It's blatantly implied Jun's infatuated with her, something Jun's crossdressing mother is quit to pick up on.
• Yukka from Kanojo ni Naritai Kimi to Boku was one of the best runners on her track team. After her Love Confession to one of the other runners, she quit because of the trouble from the other girl telling the entire team.

Comic Books

• Monique Swetlik, one of the supporting characters from Cherry Comics. She is essentially a lesbian version of the Gym Bunny.
• Crossed: Upon hearing that Miranda is a rugby player, Shaky comments that based on every pub anecdote he's heard, that means she's a guaranteed lesbian. Shaky's First-Person Smartass narration may not have meant that seriously, although Miranda does seem to get along with Camp Gay man Jamie.
• Upper-class variant from Y: The Last Man when up until then nerdy Dr. Mann grabbed a sword after being confronted by a Ninja.
  I'm an Ivy League Lesbian, bitch! [sword flourish] You honestly don't think that I've ever fenced before?
• Kate Kane is one in multiple universes:
  • In the main Prime Earth continuity, she played soccer in middle school, was an international-level gymnast in high school, and boxed as a West Point cadet, where she's implied to have won an Academy championship against her girlfriend, Sophie Moore. She's also been implied or outright stated to like baseball, basketball, and football.
  • In DC Comics Bombshells, she's a professional baseball player and was an amateur boxer at some point in her past.

Fan Works

• In Total Drama Legacy, Jo, who was shown to be a Passionate Sports Girl in canon, is portrayed as a lesbian and in a relationship with Anne Maria.

Films — Live-Action

• But I'm a Cheerleader:
  • The film has Jan, a softball player who says "I like balls" when asked for the root of her homosexuality, although she later turns out to be straight. She's just a really, really butch straight girl.
  • Conversely, there's Megan, who uses the fact that she's a cheerleader as proof of her heterosexuality. Subverted once again, as she's actually a lesbian in denial.
• Used as a running joke in DodgeBall: A True Underdog Story, where Patches O'Houlihan assumes that Kate is a lesbian because she's good at sports. Turns out that she's actually bisexual.
• The assumption is made in Bend It Like Beckham by Jules' mother but Jules and Jess are both straight. After her mother makes a massive public scene of confronting them about being lesbians Jules snaps that her interest in sports and Tom Boy dress sense doesn't automatically make her a lesbian.
• The Butch Lesbian P.E. Teacher subtrope turned up in Scary Movie, in the form of Miss Mann. Subverted in that she has a huge and visible pair of balls.
• According to Word of God, Betty Buckley played Miss Collins as this in the 1976 version of Carrie. However, instead of being a Butch Lesbian like many versions of this trope, she has a very feminine appearance, and the bulk of her interaction with Carrie is complimenting her looks and giving her beauty tips. She also mentions having taken the captain of the basketball team to her own prom, although this doesn't rule out her being closeted what with her prom taking place in the 60's (of course, she could also be a bisexual).
• In the short film Size 'Em Up, the teenage soccer player Sam (played by Lindsay Felton) is heavily implied to be a lesbian.
• In Stardom, main character Tina Menzhal (Jessica Pare) mentions that she had been with girls before. Her friend is surprised, but Tina says that it's not really unusual because she played softball in school, and uses the phrase "dykes on spikes" to describe the phenomenon.
• G.I. Jane: Jordan O'Neal isn't but she's suspected of being one because she's the first woman to subject herself to the US Navy's Combined Reconnaissance Team. In this case her detractors are trying to discredit her for apparent fraternization.^note At the time the movie was made, the US army had the "Don't Ask, Don't Tell" policy that prevented openly LGBT people from serving in the army, but allowed closeted ones.
• When Evil Calls: Molly and Kirsty, the same-sex couple, both play on the girls' basketball team (though Molly's really bisexual, but Kirsty's likely unaware of that).
• Princess Cyd: Cyd is shown to like sports early on in the film. She's later seen to be bisexual.
• Alena: Alena is a lesbian who likes lacrosse. She's quite good at it, joining the school team over Filippa's vehement opposition. One girl in Filippa's gang (composed of other lacrosse players) is also a possible example as Felippa says she "likes pussy" (however it isn't clear if that's true).
• What Keeps You Alive: Jules tells Jackie, her wife, that she played baseball, in fact being the only girl there on her team.
• The Archer: Lauren is a lesbian and a champion archer. At one point while talking with Rebecca Lauren claims that she started it to meet girls (but this comes off as a joke). Her friend Emily is another lesbian or bi archer, as they nearly hook up.
• Implied in Austin Powers: The Spy Who Shagged Me. Frau Farbissina introduces her (very) butch lover Unibrau, explaining that they met on the LPGA tour.
• Maggie & Annie: Maggie and her lesbian friends play on a softball team together. Annie (who it turns out is bisexual) played before in college, joining them.
• Crush: Gabby and AJ both compete on the school track team, which Paige gets onto pursuing the former. Another lesbian girl at the school who Paige doesn't want to date is really into riding horses too.
• Feast of Love: Kathryn meets Jenny while the two play baseball together. They start a relationship.
• Signature Move: Butch Lesbian Zaynab works out a lot, then she starts growing even more into one after she's learned to wrestle, then competes at it.
• My Animal: Jonny is a figure skater while Heather tries out to play hockey, while she works out often already. Both also fall for each other.
• The Novice: Alex is totally committed to rowing. She hooks up with a guy in the film early on, then dates Dani, a Butch Lesbian, for longer.
• Blue Jean: Jean, a Butch Lesbian, teaches PE. One girl in her class, Lois, is a lesbian. Her classmate Siobhan later kisses Lois as well.
• Wrong Turn 4: Bloody Beginnings: Sara is a lesbian runner who practices during the film.
• Sheroes: Ryder is a Butch Lesbian who turns out to be very skilled at skateboarding and in martial arts. Diamond also says she's into sports in general, keeping very fit as a result.

Literature

• Bakemonogatari gives us Kanbaru Suruga, a bike-shorts-wearing, very out basketball player with a mean left hook. Played With because she has a vague love/hate relationship with Araragi, so she might be bisexual instead.
• In Melody Carlson's Christian Fiction novel Bright Purple, the main character's best friend Jess comes out as a lesbian. Both girls are on the varsity basketball team. Several characters, including the protagonist, discuss the lesbian jock stereotype in relation to Jess and the possibility that there may be other lesbians on the team.
• In Girls FC, it isn't stated outright, but it's pretty heavily implied near the end of book 8, when Tabinda asks her coach Hannah if she ever gets afraid of anything. Hannah replies that she wanted to tell her parents something about herself, but was afraid to. When she finally did, they told her, "Oh, we've known that for ages".
• Grand Admiral Rae Sloane from the Star Wars: Aftermath trilogy is bisexual and was a boxer as an Imperial naval cadet. She still trains in the sport.
• In Dinoverse, Patience's athletic ability, harsh attitude, and general disinterest in making herself feminine leads to bullies taunting her with this trope.
• Tales of the Pack: All of the lesbians from the Pack are into sports, though Hazel (soccer) and Mitch (hockey) are described as the most athletic. Mitch is later shown to be a trans man however.

Live-Action TV

• Dana Fairbanks from The L Word is a professional tennis player, and season four introduces the character Papi, who plays basketball and admits that she likes to go to games to pick up girls.
• Lesley Tangaroa, the P.E. teacher in Seven Periods with Mr Gormsby, was a lesbian.
• In Boston Public, there was a short controversy in the school when the rumor got out that the girls' PE teacher was lesbian, and had choreographed the cheerleading routine for her personal entertainment (and, admittedly, the entertainment of any bi or straight male viewers).
• The Golden Girls had several references to lesbians and tennis. Rose also mentioned a "very confused female PE teacher" being a customer at her kissing booth.
• In a flashback on Friends, Ross gushes that his girlfriend Carol, later his lesbian ex-wife, plays on both the lacrosse team and the golf team.
  Ross: [enthusiastically] She plays for both teams!
• This bit from the 2002 best of part of The Glass House:
  Wendy: What exactly are you saying?
  Dave: Look... well, we know that all female cricketers are lesbians.
  (Crowd goes wild).
  Corinne: Every single one of them, Dave. The whole lot of them. You know, I touched a cricket bat once and I had lesbianitis for three weeks. The whole lot of them.
  Dave: Uh... well... could we just move on?
• In an episode of The West Wing C.J. has to contend with rumors that she's gay. The "evidence": she played basketball in high school. Yes. So what if she's incredibly tall?
• Glee: Coach Shannon Beiste references this trope, explaining specifically that she is NOT a lesbian. Despite the fact that she looks like a Butch Lesbian she is explicitly heterosexual and gets married to a football recruiter named Cooter After being a victim of domestic violence, Beiste divorces Cooter. In the 6th season Beiste comes out as transgender and undergoes gender confirmation surgery, renaming himself Sheldon Beiste.
• Law & Order: Criminal Intent: There are several hints that an African-American female lacrosse player has a crush on her friend and later the detectives ask her father which would be worse for him, her being a lesbian or a murderer (he doesn't respond and she's not a murderer. A little overzealous in defending her friend's honor, but not a murderer).
• Harry's Law: An athletic high school student is Driven to Suicide after another student, a popular blogger, gets the entire school to harass her out of the closet. The blogger's justification is that A) there are gay students who are comfortably out and B) she just didn't think about her victim's feelings or that her family/friends outside school/church might not be as accepting as the school. It works, she's found not guilty of murder.
• While Robin from How I Met Your Mother is straight, Lily jokingly questions her sexuality by bringing up her time on her high school field hockey team, after Robin kisses her to fulfill Lily's desire to experiment with lesbianism before getting married.
• Jane of Degrassi was accused of being a budding lesbian because she was changing in the girls' locker room for football.
• Pretty Little Liars:
  • Emily definitely fits the lesbian part. She's a swimmer, but her girlfriend Maya has called her a lesbian jock on occasion.
  • Paige is a lesbian and a swimmer and a field hockey player. She even has a penalty named after her. She doesn't actually qualify as a Butch Lesbian though.
  • Shana is a swimmer who had a fling with Paige and is in love with Jenna.
  • Sydney is Ambiguously Gay and also on the swim team. Are there any straight members on that swim team?
• On The Drew Carey Show, Drew recalls the time his dad made him go to golf camp for the summer, claiming he'd meet girls there. "Thanks a lot, Dad. My first kiss was with a 14 year old lesbian!"
• On One Big Happy, Lizzy's friends play "Gay or Nay" to determine if her crush Kate is a lesbian. She tells them that she played soccer in high school ("Yay!") but she wasn't very good ("Nay."), and she prefers tennis (which throws the others for a loop).
• On Beverly Hills, 90210, several of Donna's sorority sisters makes snide comments along this line about a female basketball player that Donna has nominated to join the group. Donna blasts them for their ignorant assumption and homophobia.
• Schitt's Creek: Ronnie, the town lesbian, gets into a fierce baseball rivalry with the town's resident Straight Gay, Patrick.
• Lip Service: Fin, who's on a whole football team with many more examples.
• Almost Family: Edie meets an entire kickball team made up of lesbians, and joins it.
• The Wilds: Toni is gay, and was captain of the school basketball team.
• Pitch (2016): Discussed, as the guys on the team had a bet about whether Ginny is a lesbian. She's straight, but her single-minded focus on playing means she'd not dated much, although she does go out with a couple guys during the series' events, and an ex-boyfriend of hers also gets introduced.
• Just Shoot Me!: Kelly, a female boxer whom Finch dates, is a bisexual example. Also her ex-girlfriend Maria, a rather Butch Lesbian who's also a boxer.
• The Sex Lives of College Girls: Whitney's teammate Willow on the soccer team is a lesbian. We later learn Coach Woods is too, and she's married to a woman.
• The Mick: Sabrina dates Alexis, a star women's soccer player, in "The Juice".
• Hacks: The lesbian cruise is mentioned as having multiple Olympic athletes onboard. Ava also jokingly says her bisexuality is partly caused by the American National Women's Soccer team. Deborah seems to tell a lot of these jokes in general based around this stereotype.
• Yellowjackets: Van and Taissa, two of the title Yellowjackets (a girls' high school soccer team) are both lesbians who have a relationship.
• A League of Their Own (2022): Many of the Peaches, an all-female baseball team, it turns out are, along with Max and Esther. It's also estimated by one that around 35% of the league are lesbians overall. This was Truth in Television, according to actual players from the league.
• Amazing Stories (2020): In "The Heat" Tuka and Sterling both turn out to be queer girls, confessing their love for each other, while also being passionate track runners.
• Power Rangers Dino Fury: Izzy Garcia, the Green Ranger, is not only the most athletically inclined of the Rangers, but she's also begun a relationship with a girl she met during a meet named Fern.
• The Rising: Neve is a skilled motocross racer who had a boyfriend. She also becomes attracted to her boyfriend Joe's cousin Alex as well (a woman), so a bisexual jock.
• Special Ops: Lioness: Cruz was a star athlete in high school, and it turns out she's bisexual.
• Wild Cards (2024): A suspect in "Show Me Murder" is a queer female athlete who'd been an equestrian and now races dirt bikes.

Professional Wrestling

• Downplayed with Sonya Deville, who plays up her MMA background and has a much tougher and tomboyish image than most of her contemporaries (who although a lot of them are tomboyish, they usually have a girly streak too). She's also the first female performer to be open about being a lesbian while working for WWE.

Roleplay

• Reiko Ishida, of Survival of the Fittest, is a rare example of one of these that does ice skating. Despite the fact that, as noted above, it tends to be seen as "girly", she is masculine enough (and, well, the obvious) to count as being played straight.

Web Comics

• BOO! It's Sex: Lindsey and her eventual girlfriend Melanie are both athletic. Lindsey has a muscular physique and is shown lifting weights, and Melanie works at a rock climbing gym.
• The sister Jock in Boyfriends. plays for her school's women's basketball team, is highly competitive against her brother, and has not one, but three girlfriends.
• Anaiis from Curvy is a softball player who loves the ladies.
• Ashley in El Goonish Shive likes boys and girls and plays soccer. She wouldn't call herself a bisexual jock because she doesn't like labels, and this trope is implied to be part of the reason why.
  Voice in Ashley's head: Girl soccer player? That explains a lot.
• Ennui GO! occasionally features a roller derby team full of these, including a Giant Mook somehow bigger than Darcy.
• Subverted in Red String. Maya gives off all the right clues: awesome athlete, tall, tan, has a close friendship with both Fuuko and Karen. Then it turns out (after a scandal, a friendship split, and a lot of soul-searching) that feminine and frilly Fuuko is gay, but sporty jock Maya is straight.
• Sun Jing from Their Story is a lesbian and an extremely gifted basketball player.
• Lisa from Venus Envy. Later on, it's revealed that the rest of the girls' soccer team is gay as well, except for one girl who nervously admits that she might be straight.

Video Games

• Resident Gay Option Judy from Cyberpunk 2077 will reminisce about how, when she was a child, she used to play street hockey with other kids in her neighbourhood during her personal quest "Pyramid Song". She's also shown enjoying going diving.
• Deltarune: Noelle Holiday is on the school's track team, and also has a blatantly obvious crush on Susie.
• Tracer from Overwatch is quite sporty, with the summer games event giving her a track-and-field skin and highlight intro.
• Possibly subverted by Violet in The Walking Dead: Season Four. During the card game in episode one, she will say that baseball is "lame" if Clementine will bring up that she met a baseball player called Javier Garcia in the past. Violet is a lesbian and a potential romance option for Clementine.
• Yandere Simulator: Bisexual Jock in Asu Rito's case. Asu is the president of the sports club and the top athletic student in the region, and she also swings both ways, as she will pursue a relationship with either a male or female Senpai.

Western Animation

• The Simpsons:
  • During the episode where Homer became a gay-marriage minister, Marge's sister's lesbian fiance was a pro-golfer. Then it turns out that "she" is really a "he".
  • When Lisa is tempted by a full-ride scholarship to any one of the "Seven Sisters" women's colleges, she has a dream sequence where an avatar of each of them speaks to her. Smith College is represented by a Butch Lesbian in a Lacrosse uniform that tells her "Come to Smith... and experiment."
• This was used as a throwaway gag on The Critic - Jay had a Dream Sequence where he imagined the first girl who kissed him - who later became a lesbian on the women's golf tour.
• In the American Dad! episode "LGBSteve" Steve and Hayley join a Roller Derby team that's entirely made up of lesbians. They allow Steve to join after he's Disguised in Drag, believing him to be transgender, and when he reveals himself to be straight they're disappointed that he can't stay in the women's league but like him enough to let him stick around for one more match.
• Family Guy:
  • Meg's gym teacher instructed her students to get in the shower and bounce around, like it was a normal thing. She is officially confirmed to be lesbian in a later episode, where she is seen at the sperm bank with her partner.
  • Peter and the guys are playing softball, and a woman steps up to bat from the other team. Peter orders his teammates to move in, then a woman in the stands calls out to the batter and calls her "babe", and the catchers move back out.
• Harley Quinn (2019): Harley is shown to have been a competitive gymnast as a teenager and was quite skilled at it (she was a potential pick for the US Olympic women's gymnastics team before her father forced her to throw a match because of his gambling debts). She's bisexual rather than a lesbian and in a relationship with Poison Ivy at the end of season 2 and doesn't clearly fall into being either butch or lipstick.
• Korra of The Legend of Korra is bisexual, not a lesbian, but otherwise fits the trope: she is tough, strong and a former professional athlete.
• Adora from She-Ra and the Princesses of Power is not necessarily an athlete, but she is still very competitive and athletic. It's best seen when she interacts with Sea Hawk, who she easily beats at arm wrestling, or Huntara, a fellow Horde defector and built as a brick house.
• Lainey from The Loud House is one of Lynn's roller derby team and dates a girl named Alice.
• Amity from The Owl House has a massive crush on Luz and is also the former captain of the school's Grudgby team (she had retired from the role after her showboating got one of her teammates hurt). Also, a rare example of this trope who is also a Lipstick Lesbian.

Real Life

• As an example of an actual Lesbian Jock politician, the previous leader of the Scottish Conservative Party (yes, their Conservative party. Scotland is an interesting place), Ruth Davidson, is a lesbian, and one of her hobbies is kickboxing.
• Also see the Wikipedia category for prominent sportswomen who are lesbian.
• US Representative Sharice Davids(D-KS 3) was an MMA fighter prior to her political career, and had a fairly impressive record in the ring as well, and was the first LGBTQ+ member of Congress from Kansas.
• Actual legitimate article headline: Team USA and Team Canada Women's Hockey Players Keep Marrying Each Other
• Fitness personality Jillian Michaels has had two serious female partners.
• There are a couple of prominent gay couples in the UFC; One between WMMA GOAT Amanda Nunes and the retired Nina Ansaroff (now Nunes), the other between Raquel Pennington and Tecia Torres.

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