Men and women in sports: the playing field is far from level.

• Author: Navratilova, Martina

"Why is it that female athletes have to `prove' their heterosexuality, while male athletes automatically are assumed to be straight?

I OFTEN HEAR celebrities complain about the mail they receive. There is too much or too little; it's too boring or the writers ask difficult questions. Hearing from people around the world is one of the perks of fame I always have enjoyed most. Some have great ideas, and some are not so great. Some touch me with their stories. and some mistake me for their confessor. I never had to commission a public opinion poll to see how I was doing. The mail was the only barometer I needed.

When basketball star Magic Johnson announced he was HIV-positive, I was in the midst of a tennis tournament in New York. I was asked a question about him during a post-match interview. One writer later termed my response as taking "the more difficult. more noticeable road when [I] spoke out against an AIDS double standard." To me, it was an honest answer to a tough question.

Johnson said his many sexual contacts led to his being infected with the HIV virus. I replied to a reporter's query by maintaining that, "If it had happened to a heterosexual woman who had been with 100 or 200 men, they'd call her a whore and a slut and the corporations would drop her like a lead balloon. And she would never get another job in her life. It's a very big-time double standard."

I questioned whether people would be as understanding if I said I was HIV-positive. I told the writer, "No, because they'd say I'm gay--I had it coming. That's why they're accepting it with him, because supposedly he got it through heterosexual contact." Johnson was characterized by many as one of the "good guys" who got the virus "by accident" or "the right way."

I strike fear in the hearts of die-hard sports fans when I make the point that there are gay men and lesbians in all walks of life. I once wrote in an op-ed piece that there were gay quarterbacks--and even inserted "(gasp!)" in the copy--and that set off another firestorm of mail. Most men were infuriated, and I was told repeatedly and in no uncertain terms that it would be impossible for a football star to be gay.

So, American letter writers have taught me two important lessons. It's all right for a man to contract HIV or AIDS if he slept with many, many women, and quarterbacks are not gay. Let's assume I accept those missives (and I won't, not for a moment). That still leaves a lot of inequity in sports.

I thought...