Yes, it’s the month I meld into my couch. I’ve been intimate with Women’s March Madness for 21 years. Every “spring”, as winter on our bigLake refuses to give up center court, demanding another round of celebrity, reminding us who last/every year’s climactic champion is in wavy, drama-queen kind of ways, I watch. Embrace sweaty ESPN-flavored enthusiasms. And watch and watch.
One big whOooOoOoop for the rest of the cuntree/world finally catching on. You betcha, fer cute, yah!!! women’s ball is where it’s at. So while everyone is riveted by one CC (Caitlin Clark- yes her play is pleasure inducing), I’m contemplating another CC. Competition and compersion. Can they co-exist?
Competition we all know. Even the queerest of us are by-products of a culture dripping in appreciation for self involvement, achievement, and individualistic endeavors/success. So in this season where the “W” (win) is centered, I revisit compersion and get curious again about how it expands my body, heart, cunt.
Def. (n)- compersion is “finding joy in the joy of others.” In other words, being happy because your beLoveds are happy, when the source of their happiness isn't necessarily you. It's possible to feel compersion in platonic relationships, in non- platonic relationships, in other-kin relationships, in relationship with place, art, pleasure, and in familial relationships too.
Hmmmm, is it possible to feel on the court?
With my newly held CC curiosity, I welcomed external, risky creative examples of compersion and competition co-existing. As a writer queering relationship/love scripts on the page (insert SiMC routine literary geekery here), I highly recommend Anita Kelly’s How to Get the Girl which I devoured in the four game-less nights between the women’s elite eight on 3/31 and April 5th’s final four. Smart, sexy, queer, fun AF. YummmMmm! She uses sport and love as invitations to “practice” instead of win, define, or score.
Kelly’s book confirmed the CC intersection is possible -and an important one to question. Why not, like sport, make a season of it? Explore CC every year during the tournament as an easy, ritualistic reframing of learned ways of engaging, loving, playing, claiming.
Are others doing this? Watching Caitlin be celebrated for her skill, shot, and supaCompetitiveness, I began wondering about the co-existence of compersion and competition in her body and in my own. As an athlete from age 7 to the present, I see I’ve dribbled up and down the CC spectrum most of my life. I reframe it now (even thinking about it as a CC spectrum is queer) in delicious, wild ways and wonder about young athletes’ (especially those of us AFAB) capacity to do the same.
I was a competitor- on the soccer field and basketball court. As a sprinter on the track. Even in community kickball leagues and romantic relationship. I was taught to do sport and love (both centering the self or the self’s desire’s) in competitive ways. As in, if I’m playing a game or dating/loving/fucking someone, there’s only one “winner”. There’s only one way to find pleasure, satisfaction, ascension. I finally have examples of (more sporty+ book magic- yes to Hanif Abdurraquib’s There’s Always Next Year ) queerer options.
Never though at the Caitlyn Clark level. Way too poly even in college, I overFlowed with Love for multiple, delicious realities choosing to unfocus, not singularly be bound by external definitions of loving one person, endeavor, place, path. I wanted to taste it all- intensely. I still do.
Now, though, my daily practice is to challenge colonizer mindset/settler sexuality/normativity as a polySolo person and notice pleasure. This allows me to constantly queer the ways I think about power, physicality, and relationship. With this explosion of interest in women’s sport, I’m excited to watch others explore CC in new ways too. Surrounded constantly by the influence of gatekeepers’ definitions of “winning”, queerly coupling competition with compersion is a game changer.