Time & Perspective Quote by Billie Jean King

King’s sentence carries the quiet authority of someone who has watched public identity get treated like a spectator sport. As an athlete who dominated an arena obsessed with winners and losers, she rejects the very premise that queerness should be scored by outsiders. “Impossible to judge” isn’t just humility; it’s a rebuke to a culture that turns someone else’s timeline into a debate segment, a team controversy, a “distraction.” She’s naming the coercion baked into the question.

The phrasing is doing careful work. “Should come out” invokes obligation, as if disclosure were a civic duty or a brand requirement. King punctures that with “on their own time and their own terms,” a double insistence on agency. Time speaks to readiness and safety; terms speaks to control over narrative. Coming out isn’t presented as a moral test but as a negotiation with risk: careers, locker rooms, sponsors, family, tabloids. When she says “you just hope,” she positions allies where they belong - not as referees, not as detectives, but as people who can hold space without pushing.

The context matters: women’s sports has long been shadowed by stereotypes and punitive scrutiny, where being out can mean both visibility and vulnerability. King, who was forcibly outed in the 1980s, understands the difference between liberation and exposure. Her intent is protective but not closeting: she’s defending the right to self-definition, reminding everyone that authenticity loses its meaning the moment it’s demanded.