Latest news with #BaesFC
South China Morning Post
19 hours ago
- Sport
- South China Morning Post
Finally, a London football club for Asian women and non-binary and trans folks
It was 2013 when Kiran Dhingra-Smith decided she'd had enough. Opening the sports cupboard at her local football club, she cast her eyes around for anything the girls' squad she was coaching could practise with. Advertisement For the umpteenth time that season, barely anything remained after the boys' teams had picked it clean. Naturally, they'd been given an earlier slot on the pitches. 'Sometimes I would email and be like, 'Can we at least make sure we have balls?'' she recalls. 'And it would just get ignored.' Baes FC offers a space for women, trans and non-binary people of Asian heritage to play football. Photo: Bella Galliano - Hale The final straw came a few months later, when she was coaching an East London under-15s team. A male coach had been put in charge of bringing the equipment to the pitches but was always late, openly admitting his boys' team took priority, and repeatedly left the girls waiting out in the freezing cold and rain. So Dhingra-Smith flagged it to her boss, who sent the coach an email telling him to do better. The following week, he arrived on time, but immediately took her aside to put her in her place. 'You don't know me,' he said menacingly. 'You don't know what I'm capable of.' 'I was 17 at the time,' she recalls, still incredulous. Advertisement Half Indian, half English, a now 30-year-old Dhingra-Smith laughs as she reflects on the sheer effort she's been forced to expend just trying to exist as a woman in football over the years.
South China Morning Post
2 days ago
- Entertainment
- South China Morning Post
This week in PostMag: a queer-friendly football team, Innsbruck and Michelin
Throughout my life, I've been lucky to feel like I belong – at least as much as anyone can hope to. I grew up on the central coast of California, where ethnic ambiguity didn't raise any eyebrows. I was never made to feel different or like an outsider. 'People saw me as white, so that was how I felt,' wrote my colleague, and fellow half-Asian, Shea Driscoll, in a recent essay exploring his own evolving sense of identity. That hit home. And though I didn't explicitly think of myself as white, I certainly was never forced to think of myself as 'different'. I could just be. It was a privilege I didn't realise I had until I moved to the United States' East Coast. There, where the racial demographics are different from California, I started getting the question, 'But where are you really from?' for the first time. I met friends who looked like me but had spent their lives feeling like they didn't fit in. This issue's cover feature brought these memories flooding back. At its core, it's a story about making a space yourself when the world won't allow you one. Sarah Keenlyside spends a day on the pitch with Baes FC – a women- and queer-friendly football team in London founded by members of the Asian diaspora off the back of discrimination at other clubs. They've made a home and community for people who felt like outsiders elsewhere. There are so many ways a sense of home can be created. Off the pitch and inside three very distinct Hong Kong flats, Peta Tomlinson investigates the trend of wood as a way for interior designers to evoke a sense of warmth. It's a transformative effect on the city's usual cold, characterless residential spaces. As Michelin continues its march towards world domination, Gavin Yeung explores what it means to be the only Michelin-starred restaurant in your region as he stops at two establishments in Thailand in a delicious adventure. The Old World beckons to Peter Neville-Hadley as he finds himself wandering Innsbruck's history-laden streets in Austria. In what is mostly known as a ski destination, he discovers excitement off the powdered slopes in the city's palaces, churches and treasure-filled museums. For our loyal readers of Then & Now, I regret to inform you that this will be the last for a while. After more than two decades of columns, our dear Jason Wordie will be taking a (much-deserved) break. We look forward to his return – but until then, we'll miss it dearly as I expect you all will, too.
