Your Call, 3.05

Well, I got about halfway through yesterday's red-meat post on coaching before I had to dash, and I'm traveling today with no chance to finish it. I'll try to get it done tonight in Birmingham, Alabama, where I'll be covering the Davis Cup tie over the weekend. BTW, if you're going to Davis Cup, the Talk About Tennis crew, sans GVgirl (who had to pull out of the trip at the last minute), will hold a meet-and-greet at noon under the main sign for the Birmingham-Jefferson Convention Complex Arena (shades of the USTABJKNTC!). I just hope the sign isn't on the grassy island separating the north and southbound lanes of I-93,  but I've been there and done that kind of thing, too. I look forward to meeting Master Ace, and anyone else from the TWibe or TAT.

It's been a crazy run here, and for over a week I was somewhat pre-occupied in my off-line time with words, meanings, what happens when we appropriate words for our own use or context, or when the same words start to mean different things to different people. That's potentially a dangerous thing. One clarification I'd like to make: yesterday, in the midst of a discussion about Billie Jean King, Jewell (I think) asked why I used "inverted commas" (that's British for: "quotation marks") around the expression "women's rights." In my haste, I danced around the accurate and clear answer but never quite nailed it down: It's because using the adjective implies that there's a separate body of rights specific to women, and in the most familiar contexts that's not really accurate.

What most women seek are equal rights - full participation in what are basically pre-existing rights that men enjoy, or an adjustment of those rights in a more equitable and fair manner (one problem with making this a "women's" issue is that it leaves out other groups who suffer equally from the injustice, particularly minorites). Women have a tremendous amount of support in the effort to have equal rights - the problems really kick in when the term "women's rights" is used, or taken to mean, rights women may claim or enjoy based solely upon their identity as women. This opens on a breathtaking panoroma of issues, large and small.

Anyway, my original point was to emphasize that in many ways Billie Jean King has transcended, or at least tried to transcend, gender politics. Equal rights and women's rights are in some ways different concepts. It's ironic, but she's a prisoner of her own reputation and fame in that regard, and  X-number of people are always going to think of Billie in terms of gender and sexual politics.  it's her hook as a public figure. But she's actually better than that.

-- Pete