Billie Jean King: Battle of the Sexes impacted all women | Forward Progress

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0:56I-O, let's go! Hey, it's Thursday, which means we're coming at you with a short, feel-good story from a past guest. Hope you enjoyed the clip. This week, Billie Jean King.

1:13Battle of the Sexes. When you took on Bobby Riggs, obviously it captivated the nation. What a lot of people don't know, though, or fail to remember, is that he actually played another female tennis player prior to you in Margarit Court and beat her. Explain how, when I guess she originally decided to play Riggs, you had a conversation with her. I know exactly. It was in the elevator at the Virginia Slums of Detroit. and she announced to me that they're playing, that they're gonna play this match. And I go, Margaret, do you know what you've done? I tried to explain to her what it meant about social change.

1:59But you gotta understand this elevator discussion. We're going down to get a car to go back to the hotel. And we weren't in the same cars when we went back. So I had to talk pretty fast. I said, whatever you do, please win. You have to win. You have to win. Because all I could see was the tour going bye-bye after all this work. Right. You know, just putting just people saying, why should we even care about the women? And I was just seeing all these things that could happen. I was just mortified. I was petrified. And then she loses. As soon as I heard that she lost, I go, I'm going to have to play him now.

2:29It's exactly what I said. I'm going to have to play him now. Because you just didn't want that. Oh, I knew that I had to I had to turn people's thoughts around about us, that they had to think that we can do things, that we can actually walk and chew gum at the same time. And I wanted to make sure the tour continued. And I knew we were going to get humongous exposure. I knew it was going to just touch the hearts and minds. I knew people were going to go crazy. They did. I mean, I knew they were going to get crazy, and they did. They were making bets. You're too young, but they were making bets.

3:00It was like a Super Bowl. It was worse. When you apparently secluded yourself for a while leading up to the match, because I guess you wanted to make yourself comfortable with just beating a man. But what do you recall from that actual match? Not a lot because I was in the zone. What do you remember? I was so nervous when we first announced it. But what happens with me with everything is I get really nervous and I get calmer and calmer and calmer and calmer as I get closer. Now, I don't remember this, but two people said to me, Rosie said she came in 20 minutes before the match in the locker room because she had to announce.

3:39So she wanted to know where I was at, you know, mentally and emotionally. And I told her I was going to win. She told me that years later. What were your emotions going into the arena that night? I had to stay calm. Everything, I had to be absolutely in the zone, one ball at a time. In the beginning, I was going to play my game. I was going to serve volley. I was going to be real aggressive. But what I decided to do, I was going to hit the ball slowly as I could, as softly as I could. and then I was going to run him at least five points. Whether I won or lost a point didn't matter. I was going to run him into the ground.

4:11And I'd already made that decision when I got to the umpire's chair, so I walked out to the baseline. We started hitting, warm up, and I'd made my decision, and I stuck to it. After you end up winning the match, Sports Illustrated's Frank DeFord said, and this is in the couple years that followed, you'll likely go down as the most significant athlete of the century, more significant than Babe Ruth, Muhammad Ali, even Jackie Robinson. And another article said your closest cultural kin are not athletes, but people like Martin Luther King Jr., Hugh Hefner, and the Beatles, people associated with a movement that affects great change because of the impact that match had on the women's movement.

4:54But how did women react to you after that match? Well, actually, men and women have reacted fantastically well. Well, the women come up to me, and what it did for them is it gave them courage and self-confidence to ask for what they want and need, for instance, let's say a raise. For the men, I get men coming up to me in their late 40s, 50s, 60s, and they were young when they saw this. And they started getting tears in their eyes because they go, that match really affected me as a young boy. They go, I have a daughter now, and I want my sons and my daughters to have equal opportunity. And when they say that to me, I am so happy.

5:31When people forget getting back to the women, 1973, and I was shocked to learn this, women couldn't even get credit cards without the signature of a man. No, of a male, yeah, we had to co-sign with someone. So Rosie says if you lost, that she believes it would have set women back 20 years. I totally agree. No. Oh. I mean, that much? Oh, see, you're so young, you don't know what was, you can't get the flavor of what was going on. There were marriages that happened because of that match. There was 100 million people in the world. That was a lot in those days. How concerned were you about its impact on Title IX had you lost?

6:06Very. In fact, I was more worried about that. Why? Because I wanted the hearts and minds to start. You can have legislation, but if people don't believe it in their hearts and minds, they'll get around it. And they're still trying to get around it. Okay? Girls high school today, right today, it's exactly where the boys were in 1971 and 72. Okay? People think we've caught up. We're not caught up. We're not even close. We're at 75. I told you, 77 cents on the dollar. When I played Bobby Riggs, we're at 59 cents on the dollar. Women of color even make less than that, okay? I think women of color are at 59 cents right now.

6:40That was 1973 for white women. So it's just, we're not even close. But it just shifted. I wanted the hearts and minds and people to match up with the legislation. that I don't want a boy or a girl to be discriminated against because of their gender ever, ever, ever. And we still are, and I don't like it. I don't like it when anyone is discounted, any human being is discounted for whatever, whether they're of color. I don't want a boy discounted. Anyone, I want a girl discounted. I don't want somebody that has challenges, physical challenges, whatever. I don't want them discounted ever. You know, because you don't do that.

7:20Just think if you were discounted. If every person would think about, if I'm discounted, how would I feel? Right. And you don't like it, so don't do it to others. Treat them the way you want to be treated. So this is really not brain surgery. This is so simple if people would just stop and take a beat and say, how would I want to be treated? The golden rule is my parents were huge on that. Always think about how would you feel if you treated someone like that? So if I screw up, because I have a hot temper, and say to them, I better go apologize, but I better not do it again. either because you know some people keep doing over or say oh I'm sorry I'm sorry no no no you can do it once you can't keep doing it we'll be back with another positive story from a past interview next Thursday and we'll pull it from our highest performing clips according to our digital community head over to youtube.com slash Graham Bensinger to join us thanks again for listening you can't reason with the sun trust us we've tried this summer it's time to put that angry ball of fire on mute.

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