by Victoria A. Brownworth
On Sept. 20, 1973, in their so-called “Battle of the Sexes,” tennis star Billie Jean King defeated Bobby Riggs in straight sets, 6-4, 6-3, 6-3, in the Houston Astrodome. It was the first time a woman had played against a man in such a venue and it was an historic event with much media hype and an astounding amount of betting in Las Vegas with the odds in Riggs’s favor.
Billie Jean King will make history again as the first female athlete to be awarded a Congressional Gold Medal after the House passed bipartisan legislation in favor of granting her that honor on Sept. 17. The 80-year-old lesbian tennis legend will receive the nation’s highest civilian honor in recognition of King’s “lifetime of work fighting for Title IX, and women’s and LGBTQ+ equality on and off the tennis court,” per a House statement.
The measure has already passed in the Senate and will now head to President Joe Biden’s desk for a signature. King also received the Presidential Medal of Freedom in 2009 from President Barack Obama.
Rep. Mikie Sherrill (D-N.J.), a co-sponsor of the bill, said in a statement: “King’s lifetime of advocacy and hard work changed the landscape for women and girls on the court, in the classroom, and the workplace.”
Co-sponsor Rep. Brian Fitzpatrick (R-Pa.) said in a statement that the bill getting signed into law cements King’s “legacy as both a champion of tennis and equality whose impact will continue to inspire and empower future generations.”
King said on X following the Sept. 17 vote that she is “deeply humbled and honored.”
King, one of the greatest tennis players of all time, has 39 Grand Slam titles, including a record 20 titles at Wimbledon. She held the world #1 ranking in women’s tennis for six years from 1966 through 1975.
King also created the Women’s Tennis Association and as a result of her advocacy, the U.S. Open became the first major tournament to offer equal prize money to both sexes—something that women in other sports are still struggling to achieve.
The King-Riggs match was a huge moment in and for women’s sports. What no one knew at the time—and now, 51 years later as King is receiving the honor she deserves in this regard as well—was that it was also a huge moment in lesbian history.
We don’t think of sports as being an historical space, but it has long been an arena where the closet has been as essential as team uniforms. Sports defines the binary for men—there is no definition of masculinity that is more declarative than football, baseball, soccer, hockey or basketball players. And to date, few men in sports are out. Sports remains a society largely closed to openly gay and bisexual men.
Which makes the role of lesbians in women’s sports all the more historic and surprising. While King’s epic match with Riggs ranks as a great one for lesbians in sports, in the 51 years since the 29-year-old King tore up the court, humiliated Riggs, proved women were as-good-as-men at a game they claimed as their own, lesbians have not just come out in sports, they have come to rule in many ways. King was the first female professional sports figure to come out publicly, but she has not been the last.
There are names as synonymous with women’s sports as the iconic King: Martina Navratilova is such a well-known figure in women’s tennis that she is referred to largely by her first name only. Brittney Griner is an icon of women’s basketball, the Olympics and the WNBA. Megan Rapinoe and Abby Wambach are nationally known figures from women’s soccer and both have revolutionized their sport and like King, drew attention to the pay inequities for women over men.
LPGA (Ladies Professional Golf Association) golf is such a lesbian event that the Dinah Shore Golf Tournament began in Palm Springs in 1972 and quickly became a major lesbian event. There are jokes that the L in LPGA stands for lesbian. While pro-golfers Patty Sheehan, Muffin Spencer-Devlin and Mel Reid may not be household names like Martina and King, their coming out was a defining moment in that sport.
Well before King was outed in 1981 by a palimony suit by Marilyn Barnett, a 32-year-old former hairdresser, who said her seven-year relationship with King entitled her to share in King’s earnings, sports icon Babe Didrickson Zaharias was known to be a lesbian. The Olympian track and field star and pro-golfer was in a long-time relationship with golfer Betty Dodd until her death from colon cancer at only 45 in 1956.
These lesbian couplings in sports have become another aspect of LGBTQ+ history. There are numerous histories chronicling lesbian partnerships in the arts, but there are a plethora of such couplings in women’s sports as well, like Rapinoe and her fiancé, WNBA star and Olympian Sue Bird. The two were even featured in Sports Illustrated and Rapinoe made the cover in the swimsuit edition.
Breanna Stewart—the lesbian forward for the New York Liberty is married to former WNBA player Marta Xargay. Diana Taurasi and Penny Taylor: The former WNBA teammates married in 2017 and have two children together. These lesbian power couples in sports have only served to expand the perspective that women’s sports is a safe space for lesbians as well as an historic home for them.
That was not always true. King received a great deal of backlash over the palimony suit with Barnett and it threw the Women’s Tennis Association into a crisis. In 1981, the closet was still firmly entrenched and while it may have been a well-known and not-so-well-kept secret that lesbians were in every sport, it was still not “allowed” for them to be out. Struggling against the claim that all women in sports were lesbians while many were was a constant fight. The backlash over feminism and lesbians as evidenced by the lesbian purge in the National Organization for Women was indicative of the fear associated with lesbians “infiltrating” groups and possibly both redefining them and also “scaring” straight women away from feminism and tainting the importance of the political venue and messaging.
Sports, particularly team sports, has long been a safe space for lesbians but the fear that sports would be “tainted” as lesbian has always been a side issue. The significant number of out lesbians in professional and amateur soccer, basketball, volleyball as well as golf and tennis has played a significant role in lesbian history in the past half century since Billie Jean King won that match with Bobby Riggs and that has brought its own backlash. Coaches like Rene Portland had strict “no lesbian” policies.
Forging the path for many was Martina, whose coming out in 1981 was a significant event for women’s sports. Martina was the brave face of lesbians in sports for decades. She will always be the figure in women’s sports who allowed other women the path to being out. By coming out and staying in her sport, where she became a world champion, Martina literally changed the play. Her activism as a lesbian sports figure was defining in opening up not just tennis, but other sports to out lesbians. (All of which crucial activism has made her statements about keeping trans women out of women’s sports and relegating them to a separate venue all the more disappointing.)
For years, Martina was a singular target for anti-gay bias in women’s sports, with Australian tennis star Margaret Court charging her with tainting the sport and turning it lesbian. And there is no question that Brittney Griner was targeted by Vladimir Putin as a political prisoner because of her international cachet.
The role of lesbians in women’s sports is significant and it reaches down to the grassroots of team sports in high schools and colleges. The openness of women like King and Martina allowed a crack in a closet door that made space for other women in both tennis and other sports.
But Martina’s bravery was not without consequence. While her frequent combatant, Chris Evert, received myriad endorsements and was referred to as tennis’s sweetheart, Martina did not receive similar offers. The financial impact was huge. And a marked difference from today’s endorsement deals lesbian soccer star Rapinoe has enjoyed, from Subway to Victoria’s Secret lingerie. Brittney Griner was the first openly gay athlete to sign with Nike.That’s an extraordinary shift and indicative of how accepted lesbian sports figures have become.
Lesbians and gender nonconforming women have long been drawn to sports, which may be why lesbians came to dominate golf and tennis and now soccer and basketball.
Olivia Records spoke to this with Meg Christian’s “Ode To A Gym Teacher” in 1976. The gym teacher—sometimes a closet lesbian—was a figure who welcomed lesbian players and gave them someone to look up to and emulate.
The work lesbians have done for women’s sports cannot be discounted and are themselves historic. Lesbian basketball players have won a plethora of Olympic medals as have lesbian volleyball and soccer stars. Rapinoe led the battle for equal pay for women’s soccer, filing an Equal Employment Opportunity Commission (EEOC) complaint in 2016 on behalf of the U.S. Women’s National Soccer Team (USWNT). The U.S. Soccer Federation settled the lawsuit for $24 million, and the agreement included a pledge to equalize pay for the men’s and women’s national teams.
The lawsuit gained international attention, and fans chanted “Equal Pay!” when the U.S. won the Women’s World Cup final in France in 2022.
This role lesbian athletes have played in women’s sports history, from King’s win against Riggs to Rapinoe’s class action suit highlight what an impact lesbians have had on women’s sports—and what these sports icons have had on LGBTQ+ history.
