"The more people come out, the less it will be an issue"
About this Quote
The subtext is a rebuke to the closet’s logic. Silence is often sold as safety, professionalism, or “not making it political.” Navratilova flips that: secrecy is what keeps the topic charged, what allows stereotypes to survive unchallenged. If people you respect, compete with, buy tickets for, or cheer alongside are openly gay, the category stops feeling exotic and starts feeling ordinary. Prejudice thrives on abstraction; visibility forces specificity.
Context matters because Navratilova wasn’t speaking from a safe perch. As an elite athlete and a high-profile lesbian for decades, she embodied the cost of being known in institutions built on conformity, sponsorship calculus, and locker-room masculinity. Her own career demonstrated the paradox she’s naming: the individual risk can be real, but the collective effect can be to make that risk rarer. It’s activism tailored to a sports worldview: repetition, exposure, and numbers change outcomes.
Quote Details
| Topic | Equality |
|---|---|
| Source | Help us find the source |
| Cite |
Citation Formats
APA Style (7th ed.)
Navratilova, Martina. (2026, January 16). The more people come out, the less it will be an issue. FixQuotes. https://fixquotes.com/quotes/the-more-people-come-out-the-less-it-will-be-an-115194/
Chicago Style
Navratilova, Martina. "The more people come out, the less it will be an issue." FixQuotes. January 16, 2026. https://fixquotes.com/quotes/the-more-people-come-out-the-less-it-will-be-an-115194/.
MLA Style (9th ed.)
"The more people come out, the less it will be an issue." FixQuotes, 16 Jan. 2026, https://fixquotes.com/quotes/the-more-people-come-out-the-less-it-will-be-an-115194/. Accessed 22 Feb. 2026.





