Articles & Letters
 
Press Release: US Open Protest Against "Sexist" Tennis Matches 
Anthony Nazzaro, Max Freedman, 1994

With women demanding equality in even the most physical of roles--including the "Ultimate Competition" of military combat--it is preposterous to maintain sex-segregated tennis.

A protest will be held at the Flushing Meadow Tennis Center, outside the main gate, on the first day of the Open, to end this discrimination--and to institute what sportswriter Robin Herman proposed in The New York Times: players matched not by sex, but by the far more logical and equitable criteria of physical size and strength.

This would insure gender-blind equality and fairness not only for women, but--for the first time--for proficient males who lack physical stature. Ms. Herman noted the gross inequity of shorter male tennis players having "to play men a half-foot taller."

Billie Jean King herself has expressed dissatisfaction with sex-segregated tennis. "As long as men and women play separate they will never be equal, " she complained, "and it's my goal to see total equality between men and women."

That's our goal, too. We demand a single standard across the societal spectrum.

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