Women ‘don’t need’ Harrison Butker after controversial speech, says Serena Williams | Serena Williams

Serena Williams has taken a swing on the Kansas Metropolis Chiefs kicker Harrison Butker, saying girls “don’t want” him after he controversially railed in opposition to Satisfaction month, working girls and abortion rights throughout a Might commencement speech.

The 23-time tennis grand slam winner took goal at Butker whereas she was talking on stage on the Excellence in Sports activities Efficiency Yearly (Espy) awards ceremony on Thursday alongside her sister, Venus Williams – the seven-time tennis grand slam winner – and the Abbott Elementary actor Quinta Brunson.

Venus Williams wrapped the section by urging the viewers “to go forward and revel in girls’s sports activities such as you would some other sports activities – as a result of they’re sports activities”.

Serena Williams then chimed in: “Besides you, Harrison Butker. We don’t want you.”

With Butker in attendance, Brunson added: “In any respect, like ever.”

Butker earned widespread criticism – besides amongst adherents to the US’s political proper – over his 11 Might graduation speech at Benedictine Faculty, a Catholic non-public liberal arts college in Atchison, Kansas. He dismissed Satisfaction month – which every year in June celebrates LGBTQ+ achievements – as a “lethal sin” and argued that some Catholic leaders had been “pushing harmful gender ideologies on to the youth of America”.

Through the roughly 20-minute deal with, the three-time Tremendous Bowl champion additionally claimed that the “most essential” function for a girl to imagine was being a homemaker.

Addressing the feminine graduates, Butker stated: “A few of you might go on to steer profitable careers on this planet. However I’d enterprise to guess that almost all of you might be most enthusiastic about your marriage and the kids you’ll convey into this world.”

Butker additionally stated entry to abortion – which most People favor regardless of the US supreme court docket’s elimination of it as a nationwide proper in June 2022 – resulted from the “pervasiveness of dysfunction”.

The 28-year-old’s speech sparked a backlash that prompted the NFL to concern an announcement distancing itself from his feedback, saying they ran opposite to the professional soccer league’s “dedication to inclusion”.

Butker’s celebrity teammates Travis Kelce and Patrick Mahomes publicly stated they didn’t agree with him.

The placekicker later stated he had some regrets about expressing his views, saying: “If it wasn’t clear that the timeless Catholic values are hated by many, it’s now.”

Nonetheless, amid the fallout from his speech, US conservatives rallied round Butker and helped his jersey grow to be probably the most bought at NFL.com.