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

Serena Williams has taken a swing at the Kansas City Chiefs kicker Harrison Butker, saying women “don’t need” him after he controversially railed against Pride month, working women and abortion rights during a May graduation speech.

The 23-time tennis grand slam winner took aim at Butker while she was speaking on stage at the Excellence in Sports Performance 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 segment by urging the audience “to go ahead and enjoy women’s sports like you would any other sports – because they are sports”.

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

With Butker in attendance, Brunson added: “At all, like ever.”

Butker earned widespread criticism – except among adherents to the US’s political right – over his 11 May commencement speech at Benedictine College, a Catholic private liberal arts school in Atchison, Kansas. He dismissed Pride month – which each year in June celebrates LGBTQ+ achievements – as a “deadly sin” and argued that some Catholic leaders were “pushing dangerous gender ideologies on to the youth of America”.

During the roughly 20-minute address, the three-time Super Bowl champion also claimed that the “most important” role for a woman to assume was being a homemaker.

Addressing the female graduates, Butker said: “Some of you may go on to lead successful careers in the world. But I would venture to guess that the majority of you are most excited about your marriage and the children you will bring into this world.”

Butker also said access to abortion – which most Americans favor despite the US supreme court’s elimination of it as a nationwide right in June 2022 – resulted from the “pervasiveness of disorder”.

The 28-year-old’s speech sparked a backlash that prompted the NFL to issue a statement distancing itself from his comments, saying they ran contrary to the pro football league’s “commitment to inclusion”.

Butker’s superstar teammates Travis Kelce and Patrick Mahomes publicly said they did not agree with him.

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

Nonetheless, amid the fallout from his speech, US conservatives rallied around Butker and helped his jersey become one of the most sold at NFL.com.