LJno1fan

LJ has been subject to abuse since she was a kid. You can find articles going back to when she was a teenager about it. Casey Stoney has said in an interview that when LJ went to Manchester United (LJ was 16 when she went to United), she had already experienced so much abuse that she was used to having to deal with it. That is heartbreaking and horrific.

And it's also the fact that it is so pervasive from all angles.

She gets abuse from fans of rival domestic and national teams, whenever she plays well, scores on them, picks up a card during a game or commits a foul, or does something else the fans don't like.

She gets it from fans of her own domestic and national teams, if they don't think she's trying hard enough, they've decided to make judgements about her body because she wasn't able to perform as well, she makes a mistake, or she doesn't manage to put in a world class performance every game.

She gets abuse from fans of the men's game who never watch women's football but have taken issue with something Reece James has done. When Reece got a red card last season, people were in LJ's posts having a go at her and making nasty comments about them and their family.

And she gets abuse from random people like these FC24/25 players, from people who saw a photograph or an article about her, because something she does trends on social media.

She gets racist abuse, misogynistic abuse, homophobic abuse, body shaming, sexualised abuse; she gets abused if she's too confident because that's arrogance and she gets abuse if she's her default fairly introverted seeming self because that's also arrogant, apparently.

And to clarify the comment about homophobic abuse, to be clear LJ's never spoken about her sexuality as far as I know, but under posts if she's photographed being close to a woman there are people sending disgusting messages about what will happen to her if she's "another one of those gays". I've seen people say Nigel James would "beat it out of her" if she was gay which is so horrifying I can't imagine how someone ever thought to write it down let alone post it.

LJ has deleted a number of posts on Instagram in the last few years and while I don't know what prompted the deletion, I wouldn't be surprised if some of the awful things in the comments section may have played a part. For example, she posted a photo of herself last summer when she was in rehab from her injury and there were hundreds of comments sexualising her body and making judgments about her current or past body shape. She deleted the post within a few days. It's certainly possible the comments played a part.