{"id":547201,"date":"2026-03-17T23:51:09","date_gmt":"2026-03-17T23:51:09","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/547201\/"},"modified":"2026-03-17T23:51:09","modified_gmt":"2026-03-17T23:51:09","slug":"aflw-homophobia-moana-hope-targeted-by-retired-player","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/547201\/","title":{"rendered":"AFLW homophobia: Moana Hope targeted by retired player"},"content":{"rendered":"

Moana Hope has revealed she was the target of a homophobic slur from a recently retired AFLW player.<\/p>\n

The former footballer said the hurtful message <\/a>was sent to her on Instagram when it appeared to be intended for someone else. She has since reported it after outting the incident to her social media followers.<\/p>\n

\u201cI didn\u2019t think homophobia had a place in AFLW<\/a>, but apparently I was wrong,\u2019\u2019 Hope said.<\/p>\n

\u201cA player and someone who is connected to a Victorian AFLW club thought it was appropriate to share this photo with a homophobic caption and laughing emojis.<\/p>\n

\u201cSo in light of that behaviour, I figured I\u2019d put it on the grid myself. If they\u2019re going to share my photos, it might as well assist with my Instagram numbers and views.<\/p>\n

\u201cOn a serious note, I am reporting her. There is no place for homophobia in this world. Gay love is love and there (is) nothing wrong with being gay and being exactly who you are.\u201d<\/p>\n

Hope elaborated that when she replied to the woman she deleted the message.<\/p>\n

She said it related to slurs she receives almost daily \u2014 about being more masculine.<\/p>\n

\u201cWhat I am going to tell you is what was said to me,\u2019\u2019 Hope said on her Instagram stories.<\/p>\n

\u201cThe reason why, is if this girl messaged me last night and said I F…ed up and I did something I shouldn\u2019t have done, it was hurtful, disgusting, I am completely utterly sorry and I\u2019ll do the work. I would have on my kids life deleted all the posts.<\/p>\n

\u201cInstead she doubled down on it.<\/p>\n

\u201cWhen I played AFLW even up to this point of my life there were two main sledges, I get this stuff almost every day, I\u2019m just really good at blocking and deleting it now. I\u2019ve been in media long enough to know how to deal with it and protect my mental health.<\/p>\n

\u201cThe fact that I\u2019m a woman. Get back in the kitchen, you need to get a penis in you, you need to retract back to the woman\u2019s role and that\u2019s not footy. <\/p>\n

\u201cThat\u2019s one and the other thing is anything and everything with me being a lesbian, with me loving women, having been with women and me having brought kids into this world <\/a>as a gay woman.<\/p>\n

\u201cI\u2019m not sexist but 99 per cent of the time it\u2019s from men. This is the first time it\u2019s been from a woman.\u201d<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Moana Hope has revealed she was the target of a homophobic slur from a recently retired AFLW player.…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":547202,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[9],"tags":[64,63,270909,270912,270908,270906,12413,270907,246047,270910,59030,270903,270905,270904,270911,158309,85,239424,100132],"class_list":["post-547201","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-sports","tag-au","tag-australia","tag-being-gay","tag-brendan-beckett","tag-gay-love","tag-gay-woman","tag-homophobic-slur","tag-hurtful-gay","tag-jackie-epstein","tag-kids-life","tag-moana-hope","tag-retired-female-player","tag-retired-player","tag-secures-rehab-spot","tag-shock-assault-charges","tag-social-media-followers","tag-sports","tag-star-hits","tag-tony-gough"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/547201","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=547201"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/547201\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/547202"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=547201"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=547201"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=547201"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}