Gold Coast Sun Tori Groves-Little on coming out as non-binary ahead of AFLW pride round

In October last year, Gold Coast Sun Tori Groves-Little posted a short message to Instagram:

«Normalise checking gender pronouns, mine is they/them!»

With one simple sentence, Groves-Little officially became the first out, non-binary player in the AFLW competition.

For those unfamiliar with non-binary gender identity, Groves-Little has a simple explanation:

«Non-binary for me is I don't fall into male or female,» they told ABC Sport.

As in their Instagram post, they also use «they/them» pronouns, as opposed to «she/her» or «he/him».

But, they stress, this doesn't mean that all non-binary people have the same understanding of non-binary gender identity, or pronoun preferences.

«I'm only one non-binary person compared to a lot of others,» they said.

«So we all have different opinions, how we feel and how we want to express that.»

Just a couple of months after Groves-Little's post, Darcy Vescio — 2021's leading goal scorer — received an outpouring of support from the AFLW community for an emotional video in which they too announced that they identified as non-binary.

Given the timing, one could be forgiven for thinking the two had coordinated their announcements.

«It definitely wasn't coordinated,» laughs Groves-Little.

«I [had] told my closest friends, and a lot of them had been a part of the journey as well.

»But the more people I told, the more confident I felt, and then it was just like, I just wanted to scream it and tell it to the whole world.

«So by the time I posted on Instagram, people were like 'oh my god, I'm so proud of you' and stuff, and I was like 'oh yeah, that's old news.'»

Groves-Little was, however, chuffed to get a message from Vescio after their post.

«I'm no big name football player at the moment… [so] for Darcy