7 times Megan Rapinoe won more than a soccer game during her long career

PrevNext Shutterstock LYON, FRANCE – 7 JULY, 2019: Megan Rapinoe of USA waves after the 2019 FIFA Women’s World Cup Final match between USA and Netherlands.

Out soccer star Megan Rapinoe has announced that she will retire at the end of the 2023 season. This year’s World Cup will be her last. But Rapinoe hasn’t just dominated on the field. She’s also championed women’s and the LGBTQ+ community’s rights off the field.

“I have this incredible privilege and platform and hope that I can turn that into rocket fuel for the next phase of everything,” Rapinoe told TIME Magazine for this week’s cover story. “I want to make the world a better place. And I will pull that lever slowly, relentlessly, and ruthlessly, forever.”  

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From leading the fight for equal pay for female soccer players to proudly standing against attacks on the LGBTQ+ community, Rapinoe’s most significant contribution to America may be her unwavering commitment to solidarity with marginalized people. Whether it was taking a knee in support of Colin Kaepernick in 2016 or defending trans athletes in 2023, here are seven times that Rapinoe has been a true champion.

Click through to recap her extraordinary career both on and off the field.

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PrevNext Shutterstock Megan Rapinoe

Rapinoe dedicated her speech at the Time Women of the Year Gala to thanking the trans community earlier this year.

“I am only here because of them,” Rapinoe declared, blasting the “attempted genocide” and “erasure” of trans people currently taking place in state legislatures across the country.

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PrevNext Shutterst East Hartford, CT – July 29, 2018: Megan Rapinoe (15) of USA prepares corner kick during Tournament of Nations game against Australia at Pratt & Whitney stadium

She has stood up for transgender athletes repeatedly. Including in a TIME Magazine cover story published this week.

“We as a country are trying to legislate away people’s full humanity,” she said. “It’s particularly frustrating when women’s sports is weaponized…Oh, now we care about fairness? Now we care about women’s sports?… And show me all the trans people who are nefariously taking advantage of being trans in sports. It’s just not happening…We’re putting this all through the lens of competition and winning. But we’re talking about people’s lives. That’s where we have to start.” 

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PrevNext Shutterstock Megan Rapinoe of USA celebrates after scoring during the 2019 FIFA Women’s World Cup France group F match between USA and Thailand

She pushed (and won) equal pay for women’s and men’s soccer teams. The disparities not only in pay, but also in facilities and support, were striking.

“She’s demanded that women’s sports no longer be treated as a sideshow to men’s sports,” Sen. Elizabeth Warren (D-MA), pointed out. “It echoes everywhere. When Megan stood up and exposed what was going on in women’s soccer with unequal pay, she told 13-year-old girls all around the world that they didn’t have to accept second-class citizenship.”   

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PrevNext Kyle Robertson/The Columbus Dispatch via AP United States’ Megan Rapinoe, second from left, kneels during the playing of the national anthem before the soccer match against Thailand, Thursday, Sept. 15, 2016 in Columbus, Ohio. Rapinoe did not start the game against Thailand at Mapfre stadium. She knelt from a spot near the bench while the fellow reserves around her stood.

She took a knee during the national anthem for racial justice in solidarity with Colin Kaepernick as rightwingers raged. She was the first white professional athlete to join the gesture, leading other athletes across sports to do it too.

Asked why she did it, she blew off the question, insisting that she not be centered in his story. “It felt like this is what Colin was asking for,” she simply said.

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PrevNext Shutterstock Megan Rapinoe celebrates after winning the 2019 FIFA Women’s World Cup France Final match between The United State of America and The Netherlands at Stade de Lyon on July 7, 2019 in Lyon, France.

She testified before Congress about gender pay inequality and how even world-famous athletes still experience it.

“One cannot simply outperform inequality or be excellent enough to escape discrimination of any kind,” she said.

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PrevNext Associated Press Sue Bird and Megan Rapinoe

Rapinoe and her wife, Olympic gold medaling basketball player Sue Bird, were among a group of professional athletes who signed on to a brief filed in Jackson Women’s Health Organization v. Dobbs, the Supreme Court case challenging Mississippi’s new ban on abortions after the 15th week of pregnancy, well before the 24-week line established in Roe v. Wade. The subsequent ruling ended women’s right to choose in many states.

“Athletic prowess depends on bodily integrity,” the brief stated. Women in sports “depend on the right to control their bodies and reproductive lives in order to reach their athletic potential” and “the physical tolls of forced pregnancy and childbirth would undermine athletes’ ability to actualize their full human potential.”

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PrevNext LGBTQ Nation composite/File Caitlyn Jenner (left) and Megan Rapinoe (right)

She isn’t afraid to speak up and point out when someone is being stupid.

When NBA player Draymond Green said he was tired of hearing female athletes “complaining” about being paid less than men, Rapinoe schooled him during a press conference with Team USA.

“It’s really unfortunate that in the position he’s in, having all the resources that he has and the ability to have a much more educated opinion, that he just hasn’t,” she said. “Really frustrating. Obviously, he just kind of showed his whole ass in not understanding what we talk about the whole time.”

In an appearance on The Cooligans, an online podcast in the Fubo Sports Network, Rapinoe commented on Caitlyn Jenner’s run for governor in California. The conservative trans former Olympian made a gadfly attempt to win as a Republican.

“You were an exceptional athlete. You’re not an exceptional politician,” Rapinoe said. “I probably could be a representative of some kind, win a district here or there, but am I really the best person to be doing that? Maybe I can just talk about the person who is actually the best person to be doing that.”

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