11/04/2025
What truth might you be the first to embody? What traumas stand in the way? Has anyone gone before you to pave your path at all?
https://www.facebook.com/share/p/14QsQu9PrSj/?mibextid=wwXIfr
Her sponsors said "deny it or lose millions." She walked into that press conference knowing the truth would cost her everything—and told it anyway.
May 1981. Los Angeles. Billie Jean King woke to a nightmare.
Marilyn Barnett—her former secretary, former lover, former carefully guarded secret—had filed a lawsuit claiming she was entitled to half of Billie Jean's Malibu beach house and lifetime financial support.
A palimony suit.
Which meant their relationship—the relationship Billie Jean had kept meticulously private—was about to explode into headline news.
Within hours, reporters camped outside her house. Her phone rang endlessly. Sponsors panicked. Agents strategized.
Everyone had the same advice: Deny everything.
Say Barnett was delusional. A disgruntled employee. Making it up for money. Lie convincingly enough and maybe—maybe—you survive this.
Billie Jean was 37 years old. The world's most famous female athlete. An icon who'd fought her entire life to reach this pinnacle. And in one afternoon, it could all disappear.
She sat with advisors, lawyers, her team. They laid out options. They showed her the numbers—millions in endorsements at stake. Her entire career hanging by a thread of plausible deniability.
Then Billie Jean King made a decision that would cost her everything and change sports history:
"I'm going to tell the truth."
Three days later, Billie Jean walked into a press conference.
Lights blazed. Cameras clicked. Microphones thrust toward her face. The room packed with reporters who'd come to watch a scandal unfold, a legend crumble.
Billie Jean looked straight into the cameras and confirmed it: yes, she'd had a relationship with Marilyn Barnett.
She became the first major female athlete to publicly acknowledge a same-sex relationship.
The silence in that room lasted perhaps three seconds before questions exploded.
What about your husband Larry? (Still married, still together, trying to work it out.)
Are you gay? (I don't know what I am. I'm still figuring it out.)
What about your sponsors? (That's up to them.)
Within 48 hours, nearly every major sponsor dropped her.
She lost endorsements worth approximately $2 million—roughly $7 million in today's dollars.
Overnight, Billie Jean King went from one of America's most marketable athletes to virtually unemployable as a spokesperson.
She'd chosen honesty. It cost her everything.
But Billie Jean King wasn't new to choosing hard paths.
Born Billie Jean Moffitt in 1943 in Long Beach, California, she came from working-class roots—her father a firefighter, her mother a homemaker. They taught their kids to work hard and speak up.
Billie Jean fell in love with tennis at age 11. She was talented—extraordinarily so. But tennis in the 1950s was a country club sport. Elite. White. Wealthy.
Billie Jean wasn't wealthy. She wore hand-me-downs. She played with borrowed rackets.
Tennis officials told her she'd never make it because she didn't "look right"—code for "not wealthy enough, not refined enough."
So Billie Jean decided: if they won't let me in, I'll force my way in.
By 18, she was winning tournaments. By 20, ranked #4 in the world. By her mid-twenties, the best female tennis player on earth.
But women's tennis prize money was insulting. In 1970, men's champions at major tournaments won 12 times what women's champions won—for playing the same sport, at the same tournament, to the same crowds.
Billie Jean and eight other women threatened boycott. They founded their own tour—the Virginia Slims Circuit. They demanded equal prize money.
Tennis officials laughed. Said women's tennis wasn't worth watching. Nobody cared.
Then came Bobby Riggs.
Bobby Riggs was a 55-year-old former tennis champion turned professional hustler and showman.
He started making public statements: women's tennis was boring, women couldn't compete with men, even an old guy like him could beat the best women players.
He challenged Billie Jean to a match. Winner-take-all. Prove once and for all whether women belonged on the same court as men.
Billie Jean initially refused. She didn't want to be part of a circus. This wasn't about tennis—it was about ego.
But then Riggs played Margaret Court, the #1 ranked woman in the world, and destroyed her 6-2, 6-1. He crowed about it. Called it proof that women were inferior.
Billie Jean realized: if she didn't accept this challenge, Riggs would use it to undermine everything she'd fought for.
So she said yes.
September 20, 1973. The Houston Astrodome.
The "Battle of the Sexes" match became the most-watched tennis match in history. Ninety million people worldwide tuned in.
Riggs came out carried on a throne by models dressed as Roman goddesses. He wore a "Sugar Daddy" jacket (his sponsor). He played to the crowd, hamming it up.
Billie Jean came out carried on a gold litter like Cleopatra by shirtless men. If this was going to be spectacle, she'd own it.
Then they started playing.
Riggs expected Billie Jean to play aggressively, to try overpowering him. Instead, she played smart. She made him run. She hit to his weaknesses. She wore him down.
First set: Billie Jean, 6-4.
Second set: Billie Jean, 6-3.
Third set: Billie Jean, 6-3.
She didn't just beat him. She dominated him.
Ninety million people watched a woman dismantle a man's ego and his arguments. She proved—on the biggest stage possible—that women athletes were legitimate, skilled, worthy of respect.
It wasn't just a tennis match. It was a cultural earthquake.
And Billie Jean King became a hero.
By 1981, Billie Jean had spent nearly a decade as the face of women's sports. She'd co-founded the Women's Tennis Association. She'd fought for equal prize money—and won it at the U.S. Open in 1973.
She was married to Larry King (since 1965). But she'd also had relationships with women—most notably with Marilyn Barnett, who'd been her secretary and then her lover.
The relationship ended in 1979. It was messy, painful, complicated.
Then came the lawsuit. And the forced outing.
Billie Jean could have lied. She could have destroyed Marilyn's credibility. She probably would have survived professionally.
But she'd spent her whole life fighting to be seen as legitimate. To be respected. To be heard.
How could she ask for honesty from the world if she wasn't honest herself?
So she told the truth.
And it destroyed her career. Temporarily.
The months after the outing were brutal.
Sponsors dropped her. Tournaments were awkward. Fellow players didn't know what to say. Some were supportive. Many distanced themselves.
The media was vicious. This was 1981—years before Ellen came out, years before any major athlete was openly gay, years before society had language for sexual fluidity. Being outed as queer was career suicide.
Billie Jean's marriage to Larry was strained but held together (they divorced in 1987). She struggled with her identity. Was she gay? Bisexual? She didn't have language for it yet.
All she knew was that she'd told the truth, and the truth had cost her millions.
But she'd done it.
And other athletes noticed.
Martina Navratilova came out as bisexual later that year. She said Billie Jean's courage made it possible.
Other LGBTQ+ athletes, in later years, said the same: Billie Jean showed them you could survive being honest.
Not unscathed. Not without cost.
But you could survive.
Billie Jean slowly rebuilt her career. Not the endorsements—those were gone for years. But her reputation as a fighter, an advocate, a truth-teller.
She kept working for equal pay in sports. She kept mentoring young players. She kept showing up.
In 1998, at age 54, Billie Jean King publicly identified as a lesbian for the first time. It had taken 17 years since the outing to fully claim that identity publicly.
But she'd lived honestly, even when it cost her everything.
In 2009, President Barack Obama awarded her the Presidential Medal of Freedom—the nation's highest civilian honor.
In 2020, the Fed Cup (the premiere international team competition in women's tennis) was renamed the Billie Jean King Cup.
Today, at 81, she's still fighting for equality in sports. Still advocating. Still refusing to be silent.
Here's why Billie Jean King's 1981 press conference matters:
She was the first. The first major female athlete to acknowledge a same-sex relationship publicly.
She didn't come out voluntarily—she was outed. But she chose truth over denial.
She lost millions immediately. Nearly every sponsor dropped her within days.
But she never backed down, never recanted, never pretended to be someone she wasn't.
She paved the way for every LGBTQ+ athlete who came after: Martina Navratilova, Jason Collins, Michael Sam, Megan Rapinoe, Brittney Griner, hundreds more.
She proved you could be honest and survive—not easily, not without cost, but survive.
And she'd already proven herself as someone who fought impossible battles and won.
Battle of the Sexes: everyone said she'd lose. She won.
Equal prize money: everyone said it would never happen. It happened.
Coming out in 1981: everyone said it would end her career. It did. And she rebuilt anyway.
Billie Jean King once said: "Pressure is a privilege."
In 1981, she lived those words.
The pressure of that press conference. The privilege of telling truth. The cost of honesty. The long-term impact of courage.
She could have lied. She would have kept her endorsements. She would have been comfortable.
She told the truth. She lost millions. She changed sports forever.
Remember her name: Billie Jean King.
Remember that she was outed in a lawsuit and chose honesty over denial.
Remember that she lost nearly everything and rebuilt anyway.
Remember that every openly LGBTQ+ athlete today walks a path she cleared—at enormous personal cost.
Remember the Battle of the Sexes—but also remember the battle that came eight years later, when she faced not an opponent across a net but the entire world's judgment.
She won both battles.
Not without cost. Not without pain.
But she won.
Because Billie Jean King doesn't back down.
Not from Bobby Riggs. Not from sexism. Not from homophobia. Not from truth.
Pressure is a privilege.
And Billie Jean King has earned every bit of hers.
