Serena Williams is one of the greatest athletes of all time

“There will be talk about you going down as one of the greatest female athletes of all time. What do you think when you hear someone talk like that?”

“I prefer the word ‘one of the greatest athletes of all time.’”

As a tennis player myself, Serena Williams has been my idol for much of my living memory. She is strong, confident, and extraordinarily talented. This exchange with a reporter, after winning her 22nd grand slam title at Wimbledon just a few weeks ago, epitomizes all of the reasons I look up to Serena, for her powerful and inspiring presence both on and off the court.

The division and distinction between females and males in the athletics has always posed some discord. On the one hand, anyone who supports the equality of the sexes would likely think that females and males in competition as equals is only natural and fair. But it is true, to some extent, that there are certain biological differences between male and females that can’t go ignored. It’s a tricky line to walk when you are trying to promote the advancement of women. But when considering how we idolize athletes, biology does not belong in that criteria.

I would agree with Serena that she should be considered one of the greatest athletes of all time. Here’s my logic: Take Michael Phelps. He’s considered one of the greatest athletes of our time. He has broken records, won countless medals, and raised the level of competition within his sport. If you put Michael Phelps on a soccer field or on uneven bars, he wouldn’t look like such a great athlete. But within the context of his sport, swimming, he is dominant.

The same logic should be applied to Serena. For all of those who are so sure that she would lose to her counterpart male tennis stars such as Roger Federer or Novak Djokovic, and for all of those who see this as reason why Serena cannot be considered one of the greatest athletes of all time, these people are missing what that title means. It doesn’t mean that her serve is the fastest, it doesn’t mean she could beat Rafael Nadal, it means that she is the best in her game. And Serena Williams is the best in her game. She has dominated the competition, paved the way for many young athletes to follow in her path with her as their inspiration, and has changed the personality, the boundaries and the way that people view the sport. Correct me if I’m wrong, but those are all of the ingredients of one of the best athletes of all time, not just one of the greatest female athletes.

The issue that Serena’s comment point out is simple: female talent, and to be a female in general, is consistently and subconsciously held as inferior to pure talent, which translates into male talent. To be the “best female fill-in-the-blank” makes you inherently inferior to the “best fill-in-the-blank”, and usually the “best fill-in-the-blank” is male. This reporter wasn’t blatantly sexist, they were not trying to insult Serena or her talent. But there is a deeply ingrained issue in our societal rhetoric that inherently places females at a disadvantage to males. We are usually ignorant to this nuance, and in our ignorance we perpetrate the debasement of women. It is a seemingly subtle and insignificant issue, but its ramifications are not so insignificant.

Sometimes the smallest issues are the best place to start to fix the bigger issues. If we call Serena Williams one of the greatest athletes of all time, if we put her up there with Babe Ruth and Joe Montana and David Beckham, we take a little step towards treating all women with the same respect and recognition as all men. We’re not treating them as perfect equals, Serena Williams would probably be just as bad at baseball and Babe Ruth would have been at tennis, but we are recognizing each of their achievements as equally remarkable.