October 6, 2022 • 27 mins
It's the age of women's athletic revolution, with female athletes battling on the field for equality and respect. Nothing encapsulates that more than the 1973 tennis match between Billie Jean King and Bobby Riggs. Matt Andrews tells the story of the "Battle of the Sexes."
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Speaker 1 (00:05):
Oh, lessons from the world's top professors anytime, anyplace, world
history examined and science explained. This is one day university Welcome,
(00:26):
and we're back on the untold history of sports in America.
I'm your host, Mike Coscarelli. Today we're discussing second wave
feminism at its impact on major American sports, specifically the
story of tennis legend Billy Gene King and her battle
of the sexes against aging men's tennis star Bobby Riggs.
(00:47):
Here's Matt with the whole story. I want to return
to our discussion of the twentieth century women's athletic revolution,
and so both this time and next time we will
be exploring the women's sports revolution that was part of
the modern feminist movement of the nineteen sixties and nineteen seventies,
(01:08):
and so specifically, we will be looking at a sports
revolution that occurred within the context of what is known
as second wave feminism. First wave feminism was the activism
among women at the turn of the twentieth century. You know,
a while back we talked about how American women latched
onto the bicycle, the freedom machine in that era, and
(01:29):
we can think of this phenomenon as part of first
wave feminism. This was a wave of new modern behavior
and activism that culminated when American women gained the right
to vote with the passage of the nineteenth Amendment. In
second wave feminism refers to all the different types of
(01:50):
women's activism in the sixties and seventies. Now, this was
an era when American women were attacking the system of
gender discrimination in the United States. They were attacking the
long history of unequal opportunity and unequal pay in this nation.
They were demanding more control over their bodies. And the
world of sports was one of the battlegrounds of the
(02:12):
second wave feminist movement as well. And in fact, what
I want to argue right now is that the world
of sports was maybe the most symbolic of all the battlegrounds.
And here's why. As you know, sports were historically seen
in this nation as all male domains. You know, it's
kind of like the halls of Congress and and corporate boardrooms.
(02:35):
Sporting arenas were male dominated spaces. But sporting arenas are
different than the halls of Congress and corporate boardrooms. They
are unique. Yes, these are all traditionally male spaces, but
sporting arenas were places where male physical power was put
on display. You know, it was in the sporting arena
(02:55):
that men exhibited their physical toughness, their their prowess, their ferocity,
their martial spirit, and their muscular bodies. You know, these
were spaces where men demonstrated that they were men. So
I argue that sporting arenas were the most masculine of
the all male domains, and this is why there was
(03:19):
so much resistance to women entering and participating in these places.
And to illuminate this resistance, I want to begin with
a story from the Boston Marathon. The Boston Marathon was
first run in eight seven and it is the oldest
annually run marathon in the world. And from the beginning,
(03:42):
the Boston Marathon had been a male only event. No
women ran in it, and in fact, so commonplace was
the assumption that a woman would not run in the
Boston Marathon. There wasn't even a rule against it. That
you don't need a rule preventing something that is out
of the question, And there were a bunch of ideas
out there as to why women would not and should
(04:04):
not and could not run this grueling twenty six mile
road race. You know. First of all, there was the
belief that a woman just could not accomplish such a feat,
a belief that the female body was incapable. There were
anxieties that if a woman did try to run a marathon,
her body would be hideously transformed. You know, she would
(04:26):
develop massive manly thighs. I once read an article suggesting
that if a woman tried to run a marathon, she
would grow a mustache. There was the fear that if
a woman attempted to run a marathon, her uterus would
slip out of her body. And I'm not kidding. These
were actual theories offered by the experts. And I tell
(04:46):
you them to give you a sense of the weird
science that was used to justify the exclusion of women
in sports. Well, these theories and beliefs they received, Oh,
let's call it a swift kick to the groin. In
nineteen seven, when Catherine Switzer entered the race. Katherine Switzer
(05:09):
was a twenty year old undergraduate at Syracuse University and
she wanted to run the Boston Marathon, so she mailed
in an application. But on her application, she did not
identify herself as Katherine Switzer, but as k V. Switzer
initials only a gender neutral name, and her application was
accepted and a number was mailed to her. The race
(05:31):
organizers assumed that she was a heat Katherine Switzer shows
up on the day of the race, a cold April day,
and she's wearing baggy gray sweats, like the kind you
might wear in a high school gym class. And she
was running with her boyfriend, a burly Syracuse football player.
And I mentioned him because he comes into play in
(05:52):
just a moment. The race begins, and a couple of
miles into the marathon, the director of the race, a
sixty three year old man named Jock Simple, he saw
Katherine Switzer and he burst onto the course to stop her.
Jock Simple loved the Boston Marathon, his Boston Marathon as
(06:14):
he saw it, and he had no patience for tom foolery,
and he was known for snatching cigars from the runners
who tried to light them at the starting line. He
went after the jokers and the fat boys who showed
up dressed as clowns or wearing gorilla costumes. And now
he was about to go after Katherine Switzer because of
her tomfoolery. That tom foolery being she was a woman
(06:37):
running the Boston Marathon. As Catherine Switzer tells the story,
she was running the race when all of a sudden,
a man with his face contorted in rage, came charging
at her, screaming, get the hell out of my race
and give me my numbers. It was Jock Simple. Simple
(06:59):
grabbed onto the back of Switzer and tried to pull
her off the course, and this is when Switch her
his burly boyfriend. He charged into the side of Jock
Semple with the force of a middle linebacker. He gave
Simple a shoulder bump, and it was Jock Semple who
went flying off the course and into the grass. Switzer
was shaken, but she continued to run. She finished the
(07:22):
race in four hours in twenty minutes, the first woman
to officially run and finish the race, and for the record,
it would not be until five years later in seventy two,
that the Boston Marathon was officially open to female entrance.
I start with this story from the Boston Marathon because
(07:43):
I think it illuminates three important things about what I'm
calling the women's sports revolution. First, this story tells us
that women wanted to run in this race, so it
informs us of the desires that were out there among
women for participation in sports, in events like the Boston Marathon. Second,
(08:05):
it tells us that women could run and complete this race,
you know, So this story symbolizes the athletic capabilities of
women from this era. They demonstrate just how wrongheaded the
assumptions about female frailty were from this era. Catherine Switzer's
uterust did not slip out of her body. Third, and
very importantly, the Katherine Switzer's story demonstrates that there were
(08:29):
men who would literally try to hold women back. They
would do everything in their power to keep women from
participating in sports. And this last point is really my
overarching point today, when women made gains in the world
of sport, men often saw it as a challenge. They
saw it as a threat, and not just in sports.
(08:52):
The story of the feminist movement is not just the
story of women knocking down doors and demanding opportunity. It's
also the story of men seeing this as something that
was a problem, as an intrusion in spaces that they
believe belonged to men, and so men bought back. So
to highlight this lectures title, you know, rather than call
(09:13):
this lecture sports and the feminist movement. I'm calling it
the Battle of the Sexes because that's the story of
the women's athletic revolution in this era. It's the story
of women battling and making gains in the world of sport.
But it's also the story of men battling back after
(09:35):
the break. Do you support Billy Jeane King. I did
not come up with this phrase, the Battle of the
(09:56):
Sexes on my own, clever as I may be, this was,
as you may know, the name given to the most
highly anticipated ten this match in American history, a tennis
match that was also one of the strangest sporting events
in American history. So let me turn to that story,
to the story of the nineteen seventy three tennis match
(10:18):
between Billy Jean King and Bobby Riggs, a tennis match
that was billed as the Battle of the Sexes. Billy
Jean King was the top women's tennis player of the
era that the late sixties, in the early nineteen seventies,
and let me start right off by making a case
for the tremendous significance of Billy Jean King when engaging
(10:42):
the women's athletic revolution of the nineteen seventies. I think
you need to point to three things, three catalysts or
sources of the women's athletic revolution. You need to understand
that it occurred within the larger context of second wave feminism.
And I have told you this, and I'm talking about
this right now. You need to point to the massive
changes brought by Title nine, a piece of federal legislation
(11:05):
enacted in nineteen seventy two. And we will discuss Title
nine next time, what it says, what it does not say,
and so on. But the third catalyst of this women's
athletic revolution is Billy Jene King herself. Like Jackie Robinson
was for racial integration and like Muhammad Ali was for
black power, Billy Jene King was the face or the
(11:29):
body of the women's athletic revolution, and really more than that.
In some ways, Billy Jene King is the face of
second wave feminism. To a large degree, Billy Jene King
was the individual around Americans debated feminism. Your answer to
the question do you support Billy Jene King was in
(11:50):
many ways your answer to the question are you a feminist?
And because of this, I think you can make the argument,
I suppose a reasonable person could disagree, but I think
you can make the argument that Billy Jane King is
the single most influen lentchill athlete in American history. And
that's because through her tennis career and through this one
(12:11):
seventy three match in particular, she influenced the way that
a full half of the population felt about themselves and
began expressing themselves with regard to athletics. So let's do
a deep dive on Billy Jen King. Well, she was
born Billy Jean Moffatt born in Long Beach, California, in
(12:34):
NY three. She was a working class girl, the daughter
of a fireman, and she first started making headlines as
a high school tennis star. And when she was eighteen
years old, she was an amateur tennis player and she
was the third ranked women's tennis player in the world.
Now today, an outstanding female high school tennis player, she
(12:55):
might consider accepting a college scholarship to play tennis, but
colleges did not give athletic scholarships to women back then.
Colleges did not have women's tennis teams. Then those things
come with title nine. So after high school, she immediately
turned professional. Billy Gene Moffatt played a power game of tennis,
(13:15):
and the American press didn't quite know what to make
of her, this this strong female tennis player, but they
couldn't resist calling her little miss Moffatt, thereby infantilizing her
and linking her with that children's nursery rhyme. Let me
give you a sense of some of the ways that
the press described Billy Jeane Moffett. Here's sports illustrated in
(13:40):
Billy Jean the daughter of a long beach fireman, stands
five ft six inches tall, has brown hair, light blue eyes,
a small, impertinent nose, and a weight problem. Time magazine
called her the chunky, bespectacled little Californian. The New York
Times described her as the bespectacled tomboy. In nineteen sixty five,
(14:07):
Billy Gene Moffatt, she married a man named named Larry King,
hence her name Billy Jene King. And when she broke
through and when her first Wimbledon singles title at age
twenty three, this was in nineteen sixty six, the sports
writers did not ask her how it felt to accomplish
this feat. Instead, the first question they asked was when
(14:28):
are you going to have a children. Billy Jane King
through the question right back in the reporter's faces, telling
them she would answer that question when they asked the
same question of the men's champion. Billy Jen King made
it very clear that her tennis career was her top priority.
And Billy Jen King was controversial for many reasons, but
(14:50):
one of them was because she openly admitted to having
an abortion so she could continue her tennis career. In
nineteen seventy two, Billy Gene King was one of fifty
three prominent American women who signed a public man of
festo announcing that they had had an abortion, and this
manifesto was published in the first edition of a new
(15:11):
feminist magazine miss. Her declaration was part of a larger
movement at this time to destigmatize abortion. It was part
of a push to demand that all states repeal their
anti abortion laws, and indeed, it was the next year,
nine three, that the Supreme Court ruled that all women
possessed a constitutional right to have an abortion. Well, this
(15:36):
was a controversial move. Feminists applauded Billy Jane King for
having the bravery to tell this story. You know, they said,
this is an important step in destigmatizing this procedure, but
for many Americans this was proof that women and sports
were incompatible. Billy Jean King's desire for athletic greatness had
(15:58):
caused her to end her pregnancy and her chance to
be a mother, and for these Americans, being a mother
was supposed to be a woman's number one goal, not
winning Wimbledon, and so King was seen as evidence that
sports and womanhood were incompatible. It was a problem when
women pursued glory in the world of sports. Billy Jean
(16:22):
King guard controversy in another way. She was the player
who was most outspoken about the fact that the prize
money given at the big Grand Slam tournaments like the
US Open, the prize money was unequal. It was very unequal.
In the early nineteen seventies, men received eight times the
amount awarded to women at the major tennis tournaments, and
(16:45):
even though almost as many people paid to see the
women play as paid to see the men, and so
Billy Jene King argued that the payouts should be more equal.
This was one of the fundamental arguments of the feminist movement.
Women should be paid the same as men for their efforts,
for their labors well when the directors of the United
States Ennis Association when they heard her complaint, they refused
(17:08):
to listen, and so Billy gene King led a revolt
that we might call it the Revolt of the Female Athlete.
She convinced many of the other top female players to
form a new women's tennis league, the Virginia Slim Circuit.
It was called this because they were sponsored by the
Virginia Slim Cigarette, a slender cigarette marketed toward women, and
(17:31):
a product that advertised itself with the phrase You've come
a long way, baby. The members of the Virginia Slim
Circuit they ran their own tennis tournaments, and they threatened
to boycott tournaments like the US Open unless the payouts
were more equal, and faced with the loss of many
of the game's best female players, the major tournaments gave in.
(17:56):
They reduced the disparity between male and female prize money
because they wanted Billy gene King and these other players
in their tournaments more equal pay. This was, without a doubt,
a feminist victory, but all of this outspokenness made Billy
jene King the target of a one time great American
(18:19):
men's tennis player, Bobby Riggs. Billy jen King would end
up winning thirty nine Grand Slam tennis titles, playing singles
and doubles and mixed doubles. But the match everyone remembers
her for is her nineteen seventy three contest against Bobby Riggs.
So here's where we get to the Battle of the sexes.
(18:39):
As I said, one of the most anticipated sporting events
in American history, but also one of the weirdest. Bobby
Riggs was a one time tennis great. He had won
both Wimbledon and the US Open in nineteen thirty nine,
but then the best years of his career were interrupted
by World War Two. And now here in the early
(19:01):
nineteen seventies, he's in his fifties and Riggs is trying
to drum up interest for a men's senior tennis tour,
and one of the ways he was doing this was
by saying that even in his fifties, he could easily
be any of the top ranked women's players. Let me
say something about Bobby Riggs and what what he does.
(19:22):
Bobby Riggs was a lot like Muhammad Ali and that
he was a self promoter. I suspect that he learned
that from Ali. I mean it was the same era.
I don't know if Riggs truly believed everything that he said,
but he said what he said, and like with Ali,
I think we need to hold him to it. And
so what Bobby Riggs realized was that being a male
(19:43):
chauvinist and demeaning the athletic abilities of women, he realized
that this could pay, It could pay handsomely, and so
he broke out all the tired lines. You know, women
can't play sports, women fold under pressure, women belong in
the kitchen and the bedroom, and he said stuff like that,
and Bobby Riggs got a ten He got the attention
(20:06):
that he did. Because of all of the gender conflict
in the United States at this time, there were those
who were tired of the feminist movement. They resented the
feminist movement, and Bobby Riggs gave expression to their resentment.
Bobby Riggs was the anti feminist hero, their great male
chauvinist hope. Riggs challenged Billy Jene King to a tennis match.
(20:32):
Billy jen King said no, thank you. She was not interested.
In her mind, she had very little to gain from
playing this noisy man in his mid fifties, so she declined.
Bobby Riggs looked elsewhere. He got someone to put up
ten thousand dollars and he managed to convince Margaret Court,
who was from Australia and was one of the best
(20:52):
women's tennis players in the world at that time, to
to play him in a match. And ten thousand dollars
this is a lot of money. This was about five
times what women received for winning a Grand Slam tournament
back then. Margaret Court accepted. The match occurred on Mother's
Day three and just before the match, Riggs handed Margaret
(21:14):
Court a dozen roses, the gentleman that he was, and
then he thrashed her in fifty seven minutes. The score
was six to six one. It has forever been known
as the Mother's Day massacre. And now Billy Jean King
knew that she had to play Bobby Riggs. She had
(21:34):
to play and beat Riggs, as ideas about women's tennis
had just been set back years, maybe decades. She also
agreed though, because promoters put up one hundred thousand dollars
for a winner take all tennis match, and this was
serious cash, plus there would be hundreds of thousands of
(21:54):
dollars in endorsement opportunities. It was billed as the Battle
of the sexes, the super feminist Billy Jean King against
the male chauvin pig Bobby Riggs. And most sportswriters who
were men, they thought Bobby Riggs was going to beat
Billy jan King. Las Vegas oddsmakers they made Bobby Riggs
(22:17):
a two to one favorite. Bobby Riggs was fifty five
years old, Billy Jean King was twenty nine, But attitudes
about female athletes were so undeveloped at this time, the
sports establishment just could not conceive of a Billy Jean
King victory. On September seventy three, sixty thousand people jammed
(22:42):
into the Houston Astrodome. This was an indoor, air conditioned
stadium that had opened in nineteen six, and this massive,
futuristic stadium was itself a sign of just how popular
sports were getting in the United States, and millions of
Americans watched on TV. Billy Jean King entered the Astrodome
Cleopatra's style, carried in a chair held by four muscle
(23:06):
men dressed like Egyptian slaves. Bobby Riggs followed in a
rickshaw that was pushed and pulled by models in tight
T shirts. He called these women his bosom buddies. Before
the match began, Riggs gave Billy Jean King a giant
sugar Daddy lollipop right endorsement, chuching. He told King that
(23:28):
she was the biggest sucker in the world, just like
what Ali said to listen right before the bell of
their first fight. Right, I got you now, sucker, she
was going to lose. Billy Jane King gave Bobby Riggs
a baby pig, a pig for a chauvinist pig. So
what in the hell is going on here? Is this sport?
(23:51):
Is this amusing entertainment? Well, I mean the point is
it's both. And then the match, Billy Jan King played
the power tennis that was associated with the men's game
back then. Bobby Riggs played a game of drop shots
and labs, a style back then more associated with women's tests.
(24:12):
And Billy Jane King beat Bobby Riggs in straight sets
six four, six, three, six three. Announcing the contest for
ABC Sports was Howard Cosell, and when King won the match,
Coseell blurted into the microphone, it's over. Billy Jane King
defeats Bobby Riggs. Equality for women, Well, It's not quite
(24:39):
that easy. It was a tradition in matches like this
for the winner to jump over the net and console
the loser. Apparently Bobby Riggs really wanted to jump over
the net, so he beat Billy Jane King to it.
All right, So what just happened? This was simultaneously one
of the most significant and one of the most bizarre
(25:00):
athletic competitions in American history, and it prompts the question
what did it really prove? But it certainly didn't prove
anything about the relative abilities of the top male and
female tennis players. Everyone knew that Jimmy Connors the top
male player from this era. Everyone knew he could beat
Billy gene King. I mean Billy Jene King. She wasn't
(25:20):
saying that. But the match brought Billy gene King and
women's tennis to national attention for the first time, many
Americans saw on TV a strong, fit, aggressive female athlete.
People had to start rethinking their assumptions about the female athlete.
(25:41):
And I think the match also showed just how badly
many American men wanted Billy Gene King to lose, to
be put in her place, Because after she beat Bobby Riggs.
A slew of male tennis players started standing up and
challenging Billy Jene King, I can beat her. Remember great
white hopes, These were great male hopes. Billy jen King
(26:06):
refused all of these challenges. She had proven her point,
you know, right after the match, In fact, the very
next day, there were accusations that Bobby Riggs had purposefully
lost the match in order to win at the betting window.
And these accusations resurfaced a few years ago on the
(26:26):
fort anniversary of the match. And I don't believe this story.
And and here's why Bobby Riggs stood to make a
ton of money if he beat Billy Jane King. I mean,
first of all, he was going to win one thousand dollars,
but more than this, had he won, promoters were ready
to offer him close to one million dollars to play
(26:46):
the new darling of women's tennis, Chris Everett. Plus, Bobby
Riggs always denied that he threw the match, and he
later passed a lie detector test attesting to the honesty
of the contest. So to me, it just doesn't add
up in my mind. The persistent claims of the match
had to be fixed. I think They are indicative of
(27:08):
a culture that to this day wants to diminish the
accomplishments of female athletes, especially if those victories come over men.
That's all for now. Next time on the Untold History
of Sports in America, presented by One Day University. The
(27:29):
massive effects of Title nine
Oh, lessons from the world's top professors anytime, anyplace, world
history examined and science explained. This is one day university Welcome,
(00:26):
and we're back on the untold history of sports in America.
I'm your host, Mike Coscarelli. Today we're discussing second wave
feminism at its impact on major American sports, specifically the
story of tennis legend Billy Gene King and her battle
of the sexes against aging men's tennis star Bobby Riggs.
(00:47):
Here's Matt with the whole story. I want to return
to our discussion of the twentieth century women's athletic revolution,
and so both this time and next time we will
be exploring the women's sports revolution that was part of
the modern feminist movement of the nineteen sixties and nineteen seventies,
(01:08):
and so specifically, we will be looking at a sports
revolution that occurred within the context of what is known
as second wave feminism. First wave feminism was the activism
among women at the turn of the twentieth century. You know,
a while back we talked about how American women latched
onto the bicycle, the freedom machine in that era, and
(01:29):
we can think of this phenomenon as part of first
wave feminism. This was a wave of new modern behavior
and activism that culminated when American women gained the right
to vote with the passage of the nineteenth Amendment. In
second wave feminism refers to all the different types of
(01:50):
women's activism in the sixties and seventies. Now, this was
an era when American women were attacking the system of
gender discrimination in the United States. They were attacking the
long history of unequal opportunity and unequal pay in this nation.
They were demanding more control over their bodies. And the
world of sports was one of the battlegrounds of the
(02:12):
second wave feminist movement as well. And in fact, what
I want to argue right now is that the world
of sports was maybe the most symbolic of all the battlegrounds.
And here's why. As you know, sports were historically seen
in this nation as all male domains. You know, it's
kind of like the halls of Congress and and corporate boardrooms.
(02:35):
Sporting arenas were male dominated spaces. But sporting arenas are
different than the halls of Congress and corporate boardrooms. They
are unique. Yes, these are all traditionally male spaces, but
sporting arenas were places where male physical power was put
on display. You know, it was in the sporting arena
(02:55):
that men exhibited their physical toughness, their their prowess, their ferocity,
their martial spirit, and their muscular bodies. You know, these
were spaces where men demonstrated that they were men. So
I argue that sporting arenas were the most masculine of
the all male domains, and this is why there was
(03:19):
so much resistance to women entering and participating in these places.
And to illuminate this resistance, I want to begin with
a story from the Boston Marathon. The Boston Marathon was
first run in eight seven and it is the oldest
annually run marathon in the world. And from the beginning,
(03:42):
the Boston Marathon had been a male only event. No
women ran in it, and in fact, so commonplace was
the assumption that a woman would not run in the
Boston Marathon. There wasn't even a rule against it. That
you don't need a rule preventing something that is out
of the question, And there were a bunch of ideas
out there as to why women would not and should
(04:04):
not and could not run this grueling twenty six mile
road race. You know. First of all, there was the
belief that a woman just could not accomplish such a feat,
a belief that the female body was incapable. There were
anxieties that if a woman did try to run a marathon,
her body would be hideously transformed. You know, she would
(04:26):
develop massive manly thighs. I once read an article suggesting
that if a woman tried to run a marathon, she
would grow a mustache. There was the fear that if
a woman attempted to run a marathon, her uterus would
slip out of her body. And I'm not kidding. These
were actual theories offered by the experts. And I tell
(04:46):
you them to give you a sense of the weird
science that was used to justify the exclusion of women
in sports. Well, these theories and beliefs they received, Oh,
let's call it a swift kick to the groin. In
nineteen seven, when Catherine Switzer entered the race. Katherine Switzer
(05:09):
was a twenty year old undergraduate at Syracuse University and
she wanted to run the Boston Marathon, so she mailed
in an application. But on her application, she did not
identify herself as Katherine Switzer, but as k V. Switzer
initials only a gender neutral name, and her application was
accepted and a number was mailed to her. The race
(05:31):
organizers assumed that she was a heat Katherine Switzer shows
up on the day of the race, a cold April day,
and she's wearing baggy gray sweats, like the kind you
might wear in a high school gym class. And she
was running with her boyfriend, a burly Syracuse football player.
And I mentioned him because he comes into play in
(05:52):
just a moment. The race begins, and a couple of
miles into the marathon, the director of the race, a
sixty three year old man named Jock Simple, he saw
Katherine Switzer and he burst onto the course to stop her.
Jock Simple loved the Boston Marathon, his Boston Marathon as
(06:14):
he saw it, and he had no patience for tom foolery,
and he was known for snatching cigars from the runners
who tried to light them at the starting line. He
went after the jokers and the fat boys who showed
up dressed as clowns or wearing gorilla costumes. And now
he was about to go after Katherine Switzer because of
her tomfoolery. That tom foolery being she was a woman
(06:37):
running the Boston Marathon. As Catherine Switzer tells the story,
she was running the race when all of a sudden,
a man with his face contorted in rage, came charging
at her, screaming, get the hell out of my race
and give me my numbers. It was Jock Simple. Simple
(06:59):
grabbed onto the back of Switzer and tried to pull
her off the course, and this is when Switch her
his burly boyfriend. He charged into the side of Jock
Semple with the force of a middle linebacker. He gave
Simple a shoulder bump, and it was Jock Semple who
went flying off the course and into the grass. Switzer
was shaken, but she continued to run. She finished the
(07:22):
race in four hours in twenty minutes, the first woman
to officially run and finish the race, and for the record,
it would not be until five years later in seventy two,
that the Boston Marathon was officially open to female entrance.
I start with this story from the Boston Marathon because
(07:43):
I think it illuminates three important things about what I'm
calling the women's sports revolution. First, this story tells us
that women wanted to run in this race, so it
informs us of the desires that were out there among
women for participation in sports, in events like the Boston Marathon. Second,
(08:05):
it tells us that women could run and complete this race,
you know, So this story symbolizes the athletic capabilities of
women from this era. They demonstrate just how wrongheaded the
assumptions about female frailty were from this era. Catherine Switzer's
uterust did not slip out of her body. Third, and
very importantly, the Katherine Switzer's story demonstrates that there were
(08:29):
men who would literally try to hold women back. They
would do everything in their power to keep women from
participating in sports. And this last point is really my
overarching point today, when women made gains in the world
of sport, men often saw it as a challenge. They
saw it as a threat, and not just in sports.
(08:52):
The story of the feminist movement is not just the
story of women knocking down doors and demanding opportunity. It's
also the story of men seeing this as something that
was a problem, as an intrusion in spaces that they
believe belonged to men, and so men bought back. So
to highlight this lectures title, you know, rather than call
(09:13):
this lecture sports and the feminist movement. I'm calling it
the Battle of the Sexes because that's the story of
the women's athletic revolution in this era. It's the story
of women battling and making gains in the world of sport.
But it's also the story of men battling back after
(09:35):
the break. Do you support Billy Jeane King. I did
not come up with this phrase, the Battle of the
(09:56):
Sexes on my own, clever as I may be, this was,
as you may know, the name given to the most
highly anticipated ten this match in American history, a tennis
match that was also one of the strangest sporting events
in American history. So let me turn to that story,
to the story of the nineteen seventy three tennis match
(10:18):
between Billy Jean King and Bobby Riggs, a tennis match
that was billed as the Battle of the Sexes. Billy
Jean King was the top women's tennis player of the
era that the late sixties, in the early nineteen seventies,
and let me start right off by making a case
for the tremendous significance of Billy Jean King when engaging
(10:42):
the women's athletic revolution of the nineteen seventies. I think
you need to point to three things, three catalysts or
sources of the women's athletic revolution. You need to understand
that it occurred within the larger context of second wave feminism.
And I have told you this, and I'm talking about
this right now. You need to point to the massive
changes brought by Title nine, a piece of federal legislation
(11:05):
enacted in nineteen seventy two. And we will discuss Title
nine next time, what it says, what it does not say,
and so on. But the third catalyst of this women's
athletic revolution is Billy Jene King herself. Like Jackie Robinson
was for racial integration and like Muhammad Ali was for
black power, Billy Jene King was the face or the
(11:29):
body of the women's athletic revolution, and really more than that.
In some ways, Billy Jene King is the face of
second wave feminism. To a large degree, Billy Jene King
was the individual around Americans debated feminism. Your answer to
the question do you support Billy Jene King was in
(11:50):
many ways your answer to the question are you a feminist?
And because of this, I think you can make the argument,
I suppose a reasonable person could disagree, but I think
you can make the argument that Billy Jane King is
the single most influen lentchill athlete in American history. And
that's because through her tennis career and through this one
(12:11):
seventy three match in particular, she influenced the way that
a full half of the population felt about themselves and
began expressing themselves with regard to athletics. So let's do
a deep dive on Billy Jen King. Well, she was
born Billy Jean Moffatt born in Long Beach, California, in
(12:34):
NY three. She was a working class girl, the daughter
of a fireman, and she first started making headlines as
a high school tennis star. And when she was eighteen
years old, she was an amateur tennis player and she
was the third ranked women's tennis player in the world.
Now today, an outstanding female high school tennis player, she
(12:55):
might consider accepting a college scholarship to play tennis, but
colleges did not give athletic scholarships to women back then.
Colleges did not have women's tennis teams. Then those things
come with title nine. So after high school, she immediately
turned professional. Billy Gene Moffatt played a power game of tennis,
(13:15):
and the American press didn't quite know what to make
of her, this this strong female tennis player, but they
couldn't resist calling her little miss Moffatt, thereby infantilizing her
and linking her with that children's nursery rhyme. Let me
give you a sense of some of the ways that
the press described Billy Jeane Moffett. Here's sports illustrated in
(13:40):
Billy Jean the daughter of a long beach fireman, stands
five ft six inches tall, has brown hair, light blue eyes,
a small, impertinent nose, and a weight problem. Time magazine
called her the chunky, bespectacled little Californian. The New York
Times described her as the bespectacled tomboy. In nineteen sixty five,
(14:07):
Billy Gene Moffatt, she married a man named named Larry King,
hence her name Billy Jene King. And when she broke
through and when her first Wimbledon singles title at age
twenty three, this was in nineteen sixty six, the sports
writers did not ask her how it felt to accomplish
this feat. Instead, the first question they asked was when
(14:28):
are you going to have a children. Billy Jane King
through the question right back in the reporter's faces, telling
them she would answer that question when they asked the
same question of the men's champion. Billy Jen King made
it very clear that her tennis career was her top priority.
And Billy Jen King was controversial for many reasons, but
(14:50):
one of them was because she openly admitted to having
an abortion so she could continue her tennis career. In
nineteen seventy two, Billy Gene King was one of fifty
three prominent American women who signed a public man of
festo announcing that they had had an abortion, and this
manifesto was published in the first edition of a new
(15:11):
feminist magazine miss. Her declaration was part of a larger
movement at this time to destigmatize abortion. It was part
of a push to demand that all states repeal their
anti abortion laws, and indeed, it was the next year,
nine three, that the Supreme Court ruled that all women
possessed a constitutional right to have an abortion. Well, this
(15:36):
was a controversial move. Feminists applauded Billy Jane King for
having the bravery to tell this story. You know, they said,
this is an important step in destigmatizing this procedure, but
for many Americans this was proof that women and sports
were incompatible. Billy Jean King's desire for athletic greatness had
(15:58):
caused her to end her pregnancy and her chance to
be a mother, and for these Americans, being a mother
was supposed to be a woman's number one goal, not
winning Wimbledon, and so King was seen as evidence that
sports and womanhood were incompatible. It was a problem when
women pursued glory in the world of sports. Billy Jean
(16:22):
King guard controversy in another way. She was the player
who was most outspoken about the fact that the prize
money given at the big Grand Slam tournaments like the
US Open, the prize money was unequal. It was very unequal.
In the early nineteen seventies, men received eight times the
amount awarded to women at the major tennis tournaments, and
(16:45):
even though almost as many people paid to see the
women play as paid to see the men, and so
Billy Jene King argued that the payouts should be more equal.
This was one of the fundamental arguments of the feminist movement.
Women should be paid the same as men for their efforts,
for their labors well when the directors of the United
States Ennis Association when they heard her complaint, they refused
(17:08):
to listen, and so Billy gene King led a revolt
that we might call it the Revolt of the Female Athlete.
She convinced many of the other top female players to
form a new women's tennis league, the Virginia Slim Circuit.
It was called this because they were sponsored by the
Virginia Slim Cigarette, a slender cigarette marketed toward women, and
(17:31):
a product that advertised itself with the phrase You've come
a long way, baby. The members of the Virginia Slim
Circuit they ran their own tennis tournaments, and they threatened
to boycott tournaments like the US Open unless the payouts
were more equal, and faced with the loss of many
of the game's best female players, the major tournaments gave in.
(17:56):
They reduced the disparity between male and female prize money
because they wanted Billy gene King and these other players
in their tournaments more equal pay. This was, without a doubt,
a feminist victory, but all of this outspokenness made Billy
jene King the target of a one time great American
(18:19):
men's tennis player, Bobby Riggs. Billy jen King would end
up winning thirty nine Grand Slam tennis titles, playing singles
and doubles and mixed doubles. But the match everyone remembers
her for is her nineteen seventy three contest against Bobby Riggs.
So here's where we get to the Battle of the sexes.
(18:39):
As I said, one of the most anticipated sporting events
in American history, but also one of the weirdest. Bobby
Riggs was a one time tennis great. He had won
both Wimbledon and the US Open in nineteen thirty nine,
but then the best years of his career were interrupted
by World War Two. And now here in the early
(19:01):
nineteen seventies, he's in his fifties and Riggs is trying
to drum up interest for a men's senior tennis tour,
and one of the ways he was doing this was
by saying that even in his fifties, he could easily
be any of the top ranked women's players. Let me
say something about Bobby Riggs and what what he does.
(19:22):
Bobby Riggs was a lot like Muhammad Ali and that
he was a self promoter. I suspect that he learned
that from Ali. I mean it was the same era.
I don't know if Riggs truly believed everything that he said,
but he said what he said, and like with Ali,
I think we need to hold him to it. And
so what Bobby Riggs realized was that being a male
(19:43):
chauvinist and demeaning the athletic abilities of women, he realized
that this could pay, It could pay handsomely, and so
he broke out all the tired lines. You know, women
can't play sports, women fold under pressure, women belong in
the kitchen and the bedroom, and he said stuff like that,
and Bobby Riggs got a ten He got the attention
(20:06):
that he did. Because of all of the gender conflict
in the United States at this time, there were those
who were tired of the feminist movement. They resented the
feminist movement, and Bobby Riggs gave expression to their resentment.
Bobby Riggs was the anti feminist hero, their great male
chauvinist hope. Riggs challenged Billy Jene King to a tennis match.
(20:32):
Billy jen King said no, thank you. She was not interested.
In her mind, she had very little to gain from
playing this noisy man in his mid fifties, so she declined.
Bobby Riggs looked elsewhere. He got someone to put up
ten thousand dollars and he managed to convince Margaret Court,
who was from Australia and was one of the best
(20:52):
women's tennis players in the world at that time, to
to play him in a match. And ten thousand dollars
this is a lot of money. This was about five
times what women received for winning a Grand Slam tournament
back then. Margaret Court accepted. The match occurred on Mother's
Day three and just before the match, Riggs handed Margaret
(21:14):
Court a dozen roses, the gentleman that he was, and
then he thrashed her in fifty seven minutes. The score
was six to six one. It has forever been known
as the Mother's Day massacre. And now Billy Jean King
knew that she had to play Bobby Riggs. She had
(21:34):
to play and beat Riggs, as ideas about women's tennis
had just been set back years, maybe decades. She also
agreed though, because promoters put up one hundred thousand dollars
for a winner take all tennis match, and this was
serious cash, plus there would be hundreds of thousands of
(21:54):
dollars in endorsement opportunities. It was billed as the Battle
of the sexes, the super feminist Billy Jean King against
the male chauvin pig Bobby Riggs. And most sportswriters who
were men, they thought Bobby Riggs was going to beat
Billy jan King. Las Vegas oddsmakers they made Bobby Riggs
(22:17):
a two to one favorite. Bobby Riggs was fifty five
years old, Billy Jean King was twenty nine, But attitudes
about female athletes were so undeveloped at this time, the
sports establishment just could not conceive of a Billy Jean
King victory. On September seventy three, sixty thousand people jammed
(22:42):
into the Houston Astrodome. This was an indoor, air conditioned
stadium that had opened in nineteen six, and this massive,
futuristic stadium was itself a sign of just how popular
sports were getting in the United States, and millions of
Americans watched on TV. Billy Jean King entered the Astrodome
Cleopatra's style, carried in a chair held by four muscle
(23:06):
men dressed like Egyptian slaves. Bobby Riggs followed in a
rickshaw that was pushed and pulled by models in tight
T shirts. He called these women his bosom buddies. Before
the match began, Riggs gave Billy Jean King a giant
sugar Daddy lollipop right endorsement, chuching. He told King that
(23:28):
she was the biggest sucker in the world, just like
what Ali said to listen right before the bell of
their first fight. Right, I got you now, sucker, she
was going to lose. Billy Jane King gave Bobby Riggs
a baby pig, a pig for a chauvinist pig. So
what in the hell is going on here? Is this sport?
(23:51):
Is this amusing entertainment? Well, I mean the point is
it's both. And then the match, Billy Jan King played
the power tennis that was associated with the men's game
back then. Bobby Riggs played a game of drop shots
and labs, a style back then more associated with women's tests.
(24:12):
And Billy Jane King beat Bobby Riggs in straight sets
six four, six, three, six three. Announcing the contest for
ABC Sports was Howard Cosell, and when King won the match,
Coseell blurted into the microphone, it's over. Billy Jane King
defeats Bobby Riggs. Equality for women, Well, It's not quite
(24:39):
that easy. It was a tradition in matches like this
for the winner to jump over the net and console
the loser. Apparently Bobby Riggs really wanted to jump over
the net, so he beat Billy Jane King to it.
All right, So what just happened? This was simultaneously one
of the most significant and one of the most bizarre
(25:00):
athletic competitions in American history, and it prompts the question
what did it really prove? But it certainly didn't prove
anything about the relative abilities of the top male and
female tennis players. Everyone knew that Jimmy Connors the top
male player from this era. Everyone knew he could beat
Billy gene King. I mean Billy Jene King. She wasn't
(25:20):
saying that. But the match brought Billy gene King and
women's tennis to national attention for the first time, many
Americans saw on TV a strong, fit, aggressive female athlete.
People had to start rethinking their assumptions about the female athlete.
(25:41):
And I think the match also showed just how badly
many American men wanted Billy Gene King to lose, to
be put in her place, Because after she beat Bobby Riggs.
A slew of male tennis players started standing up and
challenging Billy Jene King, I can beat her. Remember great
white hopes, These were great male hopes. Billy jen King
(26:06):
refused all of these challenges. She had proven her point,
you know, right after the match, In fact, the very
next day, there were accusations that Bobby Riggs had purposefully
lost the match in order to win at the betting window.
And these accusations resurfaced a few years ago on the
(26:26):
fort anniversary of the match. And I don't believe this story.
And and here's why Bobby Riggs stood to make a
ton of money if he beat Billy Jane King. I mean,
first of all, he was going to win one thousand dollars,
but more than this, had he won, promoters were ready
to offer him close to one million dollars to play
(26:46):
the new darling of women's tennis, Chris Everett. Plus, Bobby
Riggs always denied that he threw the match, and he
later passed a lie detector test attesting to the honesty
of the contest. So to me, it just doesn't add
up in my mind. The persistent claims of the match
had to be fixed. I think They are indicative of
(27:08):
a culture that to this day wants to diminish the
accomplishments of female athletes, especially if those victories come over men.
That's all for now. Next time on the Untold History
of Sports in America, presented by One Day University. The
(27:29):
massive effects of Title nine
Host
Matthew Andrews
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