Herland Sister Resources

Out lesbian tennis player Amelie Mauresmo became the number one female tennis player in the world .  Mauresmo, a French citizen, has been public about her sexual orientation since she nonchalantly came out to a French newspaper in 1999 and told reporters she was in love (with then-girlfriend Sylvie Bourdon, a nightclub owner) and that her relationship with Bourdon improved her tennis.
Mauresmo was unprepared for the media attention she received around this disclosure of her sexual orientation, or the flurry of homophobic comments made by fellow women’s tennis stars. Among the most inflammatory was Martina Hingis’s statement that Mauresmo was “half a man.” The remarks were just as quickly retracted, but players continued to comment on Mauresmo’s aggressive game on the court and muscular physique, which challenged their more conventional notions of how women present themselves and play tennis. Regularly Mauresmo was said to play like a guy.
At the same time, the Williams sisters were tearing up the courts with a style very similar to Mauresmo, but they were not being compared to men (although they did face an equal amount of derision for not being feminine enough).