Battle of the Sexes是一部感觉良好的电影，制作精良，演技精湛。无论从哪个层面看，这都是一部大团圆结局的电影，包括一些在现实生活中不太幸福的结局。金赢了博比·里格斯的网球比赛。拉里，金当时的丈夫，支持金的网球事业，容忍她对自己性取向的理解，并最终拥有了幸福的第二次婚姻，金是他孩子的教母。里格斯与他富有的妻子和解。女子网球巡回赛为它的参与者、推广者，以及并非偶然的维吉尼亚苗条(Virginia slim)赚了很多钱。杰克·克莱默是一个性别歧视的恶棍，他不尊重网球运动员中的女性，也不尊重女子网球在经济上的吸引力——他被马丁·路德·金打败了。马丁·路德·金与玛丽莲·巴奈特分手后提起的赡养费诉讼以及马丁·路德·金失去的代言，在描述金与巴奈特的关系时没有任何暗示(甚至在结尾“发生了什么”这句话中也没有)。

Reactions to the movie have been strikingly divided in ways that reveal far-reaching conflicts about equality, sexuality, and sports.Manohla DargisinThe New York Times把它看作是带有政治信息的表面娱乐。Peter Travers inRolling Stonejudges the political overtones as forceful and directly relevant to the 2016 election.Roger Ebertis disappointed that the movie “does not hit as hard” as King herself did, even though it “illuminates the difference between fighting for equality and battling to hold on to perceived superiority.”SlatereviewerDana Stephensis more critical, albeit not only of the movie’s failure to explore the eventual bitter end of King’s relationship with Barnett but also of the movie’s failure to show more sports scenes. On the other hand,Heather HoganforAutostraddlejudges that the movie is “triumphal” for sports movies and for lesbian women.

One reviewer—Sonny Bunchin theWashington Free Beacon, an avowedly conservative website—takesBattle of the Sexesto task for failing to explore the controversies about whether Riggs had deliberately thrown the match, calling the movie a “parody” of empowerment and “cinematic malpractice” that’s designed to preach feminism rather than enlighten. Bunch’s review is right to call attention to the controversy and to the movie’s failure to address it, but it’s right for the wrong reasons. Bunch seems to think that Jack Kramer might have been right—that women’s sports just might not be as good as men’s and that King’s victory was a sham. But there are clear alternatives. One is that women’s sports are better—different, to be sure, but better in the values they evidence and the forms of competition they embrace. Another is that perhaps many sports today are misconceived because they are divided by gender or indeed for many other reasons.

From the ancient Greeks, philosophical writing about sport has been rooted in theories of virtue and the good. Discussions in this genre regard sport as a form of human excellence. Sport develops physical skill, mental concentration, and teamwork. Its goal is the best of human nature. On versions of this view, excluding or marginalizing women in sports is shutting them out from opportunities for excellence. (Or, like the Jack Kramer of the movie, it expresses a judgment that half of all humans are incapable of a distinctive form of human excellence.) Recognition of the importance of opportunities for excellence was critical to Title IX’s prescription for equal educational opportunity, including in college and school sports.

这些体育的美德理论的描述也典型地持有本质主义的人性观点。That is, they think that there is an ideal human form, perhaps represented physically by theDiscobolus这是希腊雕塑家迈伦的作品。此外，理想是男性完美的理想。从这个角度来看，理想的网球形式是男性网球:时速超过160英里的雷霆发球，快速的凌空抽射，有力的头顶球:猛击，砰，谢谢女士。玛格丽特•考特(Margaret Court)是这种理想的女性版本的代表，即便是与一位年龄过大的男性网球运动员相比，她也相形见绌。这位男性网球运动员从未体现出网球的男性理想，但他一路在温布尔登和美国锦标赛中夺冠，并位居世界第一。难怪法庭在“母亲节大屠杀”中屈服于里格斯，在金和里格斯之间的战斗之前。她试图玩男性游戏，即使是面对一个糟糕的模范，她被描绘成在压力下崩溃。但是，也许还有一些非本质主义的观点认为体育运动体现了卓越的表现形式。Battle of the Sexes描述了旅行中女性之间的相互支持，以及她们如何表现出深厚的友谊，即使是竞争对手。影片描述了金在感情生活艰难的情况下，与里格斯一起训练时的专注自律。从身材娇小的罗世界杯赛程2022赛程表欧洲区西·卡萨尔斯(Rosie Casals)到近6英尺高的玛格丽特·柯特(Margaret Court)，它展示了许多不同尺寸的女性美丽、优雅、有力的身体。参加巡回赛的女选手们的背景也截然不同:罗茜·卡萨尔斯(Rosie Casals)是在旧金山的公共球场上学会打网球的，埃文·古拉贡(Evonne Goolagong)是在澳大利亚土著居民和托雷斯海峡人受到歧视的情况下学会的，而简(当时叫桃子)·巴特科维茨(Jane Bartkowitz)是在家乡密歇根州Hamtramck的灌木丛中发现了一个球拍后学会的。

The Women’s Tour represented a separatist approach to equality. The women were forced into it as a protest to disparities in prize money. But then, and now, tennis displays a more integrationist approach to equal opportunity than many other sports. The major tennis tournaments feature men’s, women’s, and mixed events—although the mixed doubles final, played last, often seems like an afterthought. Other than the Olympics, sports like golf that permit women to enter the men’s events even though very few do, and sports such as ultimate Frisbee that are explicitly designed to include both male and female players, most sports are rigidly separate. And the tennis tournaments and the Olympics feature parallel rather than combined play for the most part. Almost twenty years ago now,Tamburrini and Tännsjöexplored the possibility of genetic engineering to produce women who were like men to compete on equal terms in sports designed for male bodies. But surely if we think seriously about sports as forms for the realization of human excellence, even just human physical excellence (although sport is far more than that), there are many ways in which we could design competitions that bring men and women together. At the very least, we should think seriously about the essentialist assumptions about male and female perfection that have dogged sports design for millennia.

Or perhaps it all just boils down to money, cash for entertainment, especially when physical risks are involved. In the end, that’s whatJack Kramerthought: that sports should be organized as money making ventures. Kramer made a great deal of money himself and was a crusader for the professionalization of athletes. But, as portrayed inBattle of the Sexes, he also thought it was justifiable to pay women less than men because fans would not pay as much to see women play. Kramer was proved wrong in tennis, but similar assumptions appear to pervade sports even today. Players on the US women’s national soccer team right now—yes, in 2017—are paid less than men, despitewinning a “bump”after filing a complaint with the US Equal Opportunity Commission. FIFA, the international soccer body, gave German soccer $35 million for winning the World Cup in 2014, while the U.S. Soccer Federation received $2 million for the women’s win in 2015. In fact, quite a lot of sports boil down to money today. Robert Nozick, defending libertarianism inAnarchy, State, and Utopia(1974), thought it was just fine if people chose voluntarily to pay Kareem Abdur Jabbar quite a lot so they could watch him play basketball. Many people today think it is just fine if fans pay a lot to watch people who have voluntarily put on weight and gained muscle mass turn themselves into concussion-causing missiles. Perhaps of note for those who object to paternalism for adults but believe it is permissible for minors,US Youth Soccernow prohibits heading for players 11 and under and limits it greatly for players 12 and 13;evidence越来越多的人认为，青少年足球运动员在12岁之前就开始学习铲球，会受到持久的脑损伤影响。

Battle of the Sexes是一个愉快的两个小时看电影。但它也应该成为讨论平等在体育运动中意味着什么，以及体育在更广泛的社会中扮演什么角色的来源。After all, it originated against the background of Title IX,Roe v. Wade, and many other developments that remain under attack today.