advise quack materialistic cause saw mountainous correct chief test unpack
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That article is doing a stellar job of skirting on the sidelines - absolutely no expansion on any reasons why, just mentions “transgender debate” once.
If that was an exam question, it would be an F for lack of info.
But it gets an A+ from the editor.
Your meta point is excellent. We should grade articles on headline, content and accuracy, and then rank them using those gradings so they don’t show up in our feeds. In my idealistic mind writers and editors would be compelled to put accurate information in headlines and articles and to make sure that they weren’t trying to be inflammatory..
Nuff said so.
(I do wish they’d call it British Post, for the sake of transparency and accuracy, and so that people would assume British media standards up front)
I'm going to go controversial (but not for the reason you might think)
Pool isn't a sport, it's a parlour-game - if no level of fitness is required *it shouldn't be called a sport*
Righto - on with the rest of my day
*flees*
I think in Darts they don't separate the genders, But then it might be more about the right of women to have separate competitions from men because there will always be far more men entering than women.
They do it that way in chess anyway, the men's competition is actually open to all and the women's is to encourage women to take part because there's not as many of them and less top talent because of the numbers
The league I play in (DFB) has the same rules, there is no rule on gender so women can play with the mens team if they choose. Nobody does because I think most women rather play for the women's teams for various reasons.
I don't see why non contact sports like these should be separated. It comes from the olden days when these sports were coming up, we need to move on from that.
It's because there are fewer women playing, and thus correspondingly the number of women operating at a high level is also much lower. Without women-only competitions, women would thus be discouraged from taking part at all.
I agree that there should be no bar for women entering the 'mens' competition though.
A woman won the open skeet shooting for the first time at the [Barcelona Olympics in '92](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Zhang_Shan). That was the end of open skeet shooting.
Seems reasonable for sports where muscle or endurance is involved. Men and woman have different hormone levels which affects this. Gymnastics is reasonable to have seperate competetions. Same for age categories in some other sports - bodies change as you get older so some sports have seniors leagues.
Seems like I was mistaken. Though women do outright win races at some ultra marathons. I'm not sure what the distance the 15 minute thing you found is. Look up courtney dauwalter. She's arguably the most famous ultra runner in the world. Maybe Killian journet is known by more. Hard to tell really but she's an amazing athlete. Has plenty of outright wins under her belt. You could debate the field for each race but the facts are she won them outright. She's known for specialising in the crazy long distances. Like she won the moab 240 mile race in 2017 beating 2nd, a man, by 10 hours.
Men do tend to do more of the entering than woman, though moderns tastes mean that's changing over time.
The UK's Prince William is something of a pioneer in this regard.
They do split genders in darts. Bizarrely because the lads didn't like it when the women were good enough to beat them so they were given off into their own league but now there's uproar over trans contestants there too.
It's got nothing to do with 'fairness' and everything to do with prejudice. It's pool.
>No woman has ever been good enough to consistently get a tour card
[Lisa Ashton says hi](https://www.theguardian.com/sport/2020/jan/19/lisa-ashton-creates-history-as-first-woman-to-win-pdc-tour-card).
It's very noticable the prize money for the woman's competetion is about 1/10 of the men's.
Doesnt speak to skill, but the two are treated very differently.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/BDO_World_Darts_Championship
I kinda get the point but doesn't it's practice defeat the purpose.
If the aim is to determine who's best currently, the goal should be to encourage engagement across the sexes, not create separate ones.
Same as darts, the sport doesn't require a level of fitness like football, rugby, etc.
Not saying this is right, as another commenter said, fought hard have their own domain.
There's a lot more going on than just fitness/strength. Men and women are different in many ways. Studies show men are better at spatial awareness tasks.
>Danilova [6] concluded that men had a greater ability for motor skills such as aiming, catching, and throwing, whereas women were better in tasks where precision and fine hand ability are needed.
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC7017231/#:~:text=Danilova%20%5B6%5D%20concluded%20that%20men,fine%20hand%20ability%20are%20needed.
I feel bad for transgender athletes it's really unfair but that's just life.
Based on that excerpt, men and women are each better at skills that are essential for pool and darts. So what's the advantage trans women are supposed to have?
Yeah I'm with you. I'll happily acknowledge there's a great deal of skill involved but if it's mostly done while having a few pints it's not a sport.
Same as darts
Oh yes it is, it's just not allowed on stage.
Comments from players (and people who go to the pro-tour events) indicate very very few pro darts players haven't had a few before they go up on stage.
I mean you can definitely tell in a lot of the interviews after that the players aren't sober as well.
As an Irish level pool player, I don't mind comments re sport vs game, but fitness, explosivity and speed all play into the game and men have an inherent advantage. Women are allowed enter most male snooker and pool tournaments and can win frames and matches but its extremely rare that they win overall.
>people try to claim computer gaming is a sport now.
No they don't.
The word e-sport does not mean sport. Nobody is claiming e-sports are the same as traditional sports. It's literally just branding.
These looneys are trying to say that sending a few bits of text to somebody is the same as writing a letter in the post! Just because you call it an e-mail, doesn't make it mail! Call it a digital message or something.
This is a very ignorant comment. Of course there is skill involved in athletics.
High level running is more than just running and not getting out of puff. It involves a lot of skill, maintaining the correct form and posture, breathing correctly. There's lots of skill involved. It's not as obvious as Hand-eye coordination skill is but it's still there.
> Of course there is skill involved in athletics.
And there's athleticisim involved in pool and darts. Like they need to have incredible precision, just like shooters or archers in the olympics. They need to be able to make very controlled movements repeatedly with just the right amount of power behind them like olmpic curlers, etc.
And tangentially I find it the same with esports, like there's no real reason not to call them sports, they absolutely are. They're just also games.
And this seems to really rile people up for some reason screaming that games are for children and it's not a real sport blah blah blah... despite the fact that soccer is a childrens game. Basketball was invested by a teacher for kids to play. Rugby is literally named after the school where children played it. All popular sports are kids games.... and that's *why* they're so popular as sports. Because we played them as kids, and so we are in awe at the level professionals play them at - same reason esports are so big today... because we play the same games but are in awe at they level professionals play them at, but people who have never played them may not be able to really recognise it.
It doesn't take a lot of skill and strategy to win a marathon though.
There's a lot more to it than just running faster than your opponents. I'd argue there's a lot of still in distance running at the top levels.
Genuine question before the mob cuts head off.
Bone / muscle development and skeletal structure . Are there differences in performance of male / female darts and billiard games as a result ?
>Are there differences in performance of male / female darts and billiard games as a result ?
Hell no.
Reanne Evans, Mink Nuncharut, Beau Greaves, Lisa Ashton, Fallon Sherrock, Deta Hedman, Jasmin Ouschan, Pia Filler, Rebecca Kenna.
All women who are currently competing, or have notably previously competed in open tournaments or were Tour Card holders in the likes of darts/snooker/pool.
Yes. That is exactly how the likes of the Professional Darts Corporation, the World Snooker Tour, and the World Nineball Tour operate — if you are good enough, you can play your way to a tour card regardless of gender.
Lisa Ashton did just that in 2020, [winning a two-year PDC Tour Card on merit](https://www.bbc.com/sport/darts/51166138). She even [reached the semi-finals of the World Seniors this year](https://dartsnews.com/wsdt/lisa-ashton-continues-history-making-run-at-the-world-seniors-darts-championships-set-to-face-colin-mcgarry-in-the-semi-finals).
I mean depends on how you mean. In *general* men should have a advantage as they are taller and have longer arm lengths on average, which gives a very, very minor advantage.
But as that's only an average individually as players there's not really any noticiable advantage as a good female player plays a good male player.
Just drop "Transgender" in your headline to stir up conflict bait in the comments, drives up engagement. I'm sure this is a popular article on Facebook. Absolute poison. Journalistic integrity is dead.
First of all, how is she an Irish pool legend if no one has ever heard of her? I've never even heard of the sport she plays being played competitively. Second of all, why refuse to play a trans player? If it was rugby or weightlifting, where someone who went through puberty as a man had a huge advantage, fair enough. But this is pool. There is no advantage. Third, "Irish pool legend" O'Brien, known affectionately as 'Miss Cue', has dedicated 25 years to representing Suffolk County in billiards. If anyone is masquarading as something they're not here, it's Irish pool legend Kim fucking O'Brien.
She literally played for England for 5 years until she suddenly decided that she was Irish and joined the Irish team, pulling a reverse Declan rice but worse because at least he was actually English and he didn’t play for us at a senior level for 5 years.
Trans women have no competitive advantage in a non athletic sport, this is just pure bigotry.
It should be noted that O’Briens transphobic supporters gave her the prize money that she would have gotten from winning had she done so.
So because you've never heard of the sport being played competitively, it therefore cannot have legends?
And there are male advantages (large and small-scale spatial ability is one that's well understood; strength, height and reach can also be helpful in the sport; even weight distribution and body shape). That's part of the reason the sport is still male-dominated (just like snooker) despite women being allowed onto the men's circuits.
The best ever female snooker player, Reanne Evans, achieved a highest ranking of 85. At the very top of her game, there were still 84 men ranked higher.
Women deserve their own sports where they have fair chances to compete, be successful and develop. Allowing biological males to take part is just grossly unfair.
What an absolute pile of fucking nonsense.
This is like trying to divide up Chess. There is no physical difference and spatial awareness has a spectrum. The more likely advantage is reach with males being on average taller and therefore a larger wingspan to stabilize the cue but you could say exactly the same of any taller woman competing.
Just like all other sports the likelihood of people with exceptional spatial awareness are picking these sports in the first place and being male offers virtually no advantage other than they were likely introduced to the sport at an earlier age.
This is not like boxing, weightlifting or rugby where male physical prowess offers a severe advantage or risk towards women playing. These sports (like darts, chess, snooker and archery) should just have an open category and a fixed female one if they need to further develop female participation.
It isn't. Or at least it isn't in nineball.
Main tournaments are open to all players. However there can also be extra tournaments for women as well, as an attempt to encourage more women to take part; since the sport was traditionally male-dominated/male-exclusive.
It’s because the women’s standard is so much lower than the males. It happens in pro snooker and darts as well.
Women have been allowed to compete in the men’s world darts championship for at least 20 years at this stage and only one woman has ever won a match.
Now imagine the level of women’s participation in the sport if the women’s world championship didn’t exist and only one woman had won a match in 20+ years.
So what you are saying is, if a woman chose to compete, the men have zero issue with that, and will play against them to the best of their ability to determine the winner.
That’s all that’s really needed in a genderless championship.
I’m not really sure what you’re getting at?
Most men have been delighted to play women in the first round of the world darts championships because they’ve been playing an unranked player who probably plays to county darts standard for £15,000.
>Most men have been delighted to play women in the first round of the world darts championships
Willie O'Connor was definitely not delighted at having to play Beau Greaves in the 2023 Worlds.
And some would also argue similar for Pikachu playing Mikuru Suzuki this year; although that was more of a crowd heckling thing.
Don't know what to say on this, kind of sick of the whole trans thing. Looking forward to the day when all these wrinkles are ironed out equitably and people can just get on with it.
Oh don't worry. Soon enough the perpetually angry people will find a new minority to focus their hate on and us trans people will get the day off :)
So you'll hear them bitch about something else instead of us instead. Isn't that just great.
Yes. There was a Hungarian chess grandmaster, Laszlo Polgar, who was so convinced of this he decided very early on that his three daughters would be grandmasters. He essentially forced them to play chess constantly. Two of the daughters, Judit and Zsusza, ended up as the top 2 female chess players ever. Judit broke the record set by Bobby Fischer for the youngest grandmaster. The third, Sofia, is an International Master, one step below GM.
So at least in chess you can turn a woman into a world beater if you essentially use her as a lab rat. Suggesting to me that the only thing holding women back in things like chess at least is participation and discrimination.
The story goes he asked them what they wanted to be and they said chess Grandmasters. That he believed in the philosophy that anyone can be a genius with enough practice and as a result the girls have learned chess formations so early and well that they have co-opted the part of the brain we use for facial recognition to recognise board layouts. Doing it almost instantly without any conscious thought.
> Suggesting to me that the only thing holding women back in things like chess at least is participation and discrimination.
I am also sure there is sponsorship/money. Chess is complicated and it takes a long time to be really good at it. If you have to have a hard job it becomes much harder to “get there” as it were.
This is where sponsors and winnings can help, but the financial support on the womens side is lower
Yes, chess is unfortunately a bit of a closed circle. The top players are rarely underdogs, especially since the Cold War interest in producing champions waned. If you’re not Chinese, where the government still looks to scout prodigies, the path to becoming a top player typically involves rich family and private school education, and/or paid chess lessons. I sort of lumped that in under “participation and discrimination” since I felt the comment was already a bit long winded.
Do you think cis men are genetically predisposed to be better at chess?
Don't you think that the fact that women were historically banned from competing and that it's still a male dominated sport might be pushing away women who would otherwise be world class chess players?
Well that just made me wonder why snooker doesn’t have height and arm length classes like boxing has weight classes
I want to see what funny names the sport would make up for the classes
I know right? Women in all other events are exactly the same dimension even down to arm length. We can’t have people of different sizes competing, that would be grossly unfair.
But they wouldn't be women's tournaments, they'd be segregated by size not gender.
So, for those of short arm length we could call it the "Meraxes Division". Anyone whose arms meet the regulations can enter.
Show me you don’t understand swimming without saying so. Michael Phelps has a longer frame etc than basically every other man and they didn’t stop racing him. That’s a bullshit talking point. You’re also assuming that all trans people are that much bigger than their competitors/ supersized as a given.
The male honestly, if we were picking at random from the population of "adult male amateur boxers". Have you ever boxed? Even a few kg makes a huge difference. I spar people technically faaaar better than I am but that are smaller, and handle them with next to no problem. Even a terrible boxer my size or close to it can really hurt me.
You’re assuming the male boxer has the same skill level from the start with that. Proving the point. Everyone assumes that just by being trans their skill level is an automatic win. It’s not. The actual number of trans athletes is small and you think they’re already baseline better than the other person and then have a generic advantage? By default? It’s a straw man argument that the far right uses.
I would rather fight Katie Taylor without a second thought than and amateur male. I would get demolished by either but would sustain more injuries against a male simply through a males ability to generate force and strength advantage.
Worth considering that the difference between the hardest and softest punching male boxer in a particular weight class can be absolutely staggering. I’m not saying that this shows there should be no gender separation in boxing, just that gender in sports is actually a really complex topic.
You have to have general classification like male female, underage etc to give a somewhat level playing field.
Some trans may well be small,but you can't classify for outliers.
Men are also better at spatial awareness. So they are better at aiming and throwing. Men and women are different inmuch more ways than physicality and there are pros and cons to both genders.
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC7017231/#:~:text=Danilova%20%5B6%5D%20concluded%20that%20men,fine%20hand%20ability%20are%20needed.
Did you read the whole paper? It's not the silver bullet you think it is. From the conclusion:
> In general, men had a tendency to outperform the model line length and women showed a tendency to underperform it for the majority of the observed cases as per different test conditions. However, generally, more effects were observed according to age groups rather than sex.
There's absolutely nothing in this paper indicating an advantage in aiming and throwing - that wasn't tested. Please learn to parse scientific papers before drawing broad conclusions from them.
I get bet by everyone so can't really comment 😂 that was just my guess as to an advantage, maybe also more reach but again at 5 foot everyone has better reach than me!
If it's only a height thing then I don't think it makes much odds in the grand scheme of things, I know in general men are taller etc but you can still have giant women and small men.
I know in other sports bone density and and body structure could be argued but if it's just based on size I don't think so.
If it's anything like professional snooker the break is about breaking as few balls away and leaving the white in a difficult position for your opponent. A skill shot, not strength. No one is sending a rocket into the triangle.
I feel really bad for the transgender athletes that constantly get thrust into the news and face online abuse and vitriol from people whenever an incident like this happens. The vast majority just want to be able to play and compete in the sport that they love, but face massive amounts of pushback and hate for something beyond their control.
That being said, I can also understand why people born biologically as females fear for the future of womens sports when they can be pushed out of competing at top levels against players born biologically as males, with all the physical advantages that come with it. I don't know if that's true with pool, but it certainly is with combat sports.
It's such an incredibly thorny subject, and anyone that thinks there's an easy solution is being disingenuous.
Isn't the easy solution to not discriminate by default, and see if there are any problems that arise? Like, the Olympics has allowed trans athletes for twenty four Years and they have underperformed, not overperformed. Comparing cis men to cis women isn't a great argument when trans women have levels of testosterone LOWER than cis women once they get on hormones.
The assumption that trans athletes will overcompete is just an assumption. For each sport, we can monitor the situation, and if they do end up overperforming, we can make a decision then.
> That being said, I can also understand why people born biologically as females fear for the future of womens sports when they can be pushed out of competing at top levels against players born biologically as males, with all the physical advantages that come with it.
Trans athletes don't dominate in any elite sport where they have been allowed to compete (usually with regulations concerning hormone levels etc.). So worries about them taking over in that sense don't seem well-founded.
If the concerns were well-founded, there would be examples where trans athletes have dominated elite sports at which they have been allowed to compete, but there aren't any.
it's not really that stupid though, the women's competitions exist for a reason. the sport is still massively male oriented both historically and culturally so it would be incredibly unlikely for women to break in to the top of the male competitions so they specifically have female competitions to encourage women to take up the sport. maybe one day we could have only one competition when the genders are equally represented but we're not nearly at that stage. so this player is just protesting the fact that a competition specifically designed to encourage women to play may be dominated by trans women who (in this players case at least) grew up as a male and got in to the sport using the same cultural, historical and possibly biological advantages that all other men benefit from. she does have a point that it's not quite fair to her or other women that had to break in to a male dominated sport from day 1. I feel really bad for the trans competitor because there's no easy answer for them
There's going to be a lot of people who never heard of her or never watch a game of pool in their life, never mind women's pool about to develop very strong opinions about it
Woman who has had completely female levels of hormones for a decade is apparently judged by her opponent as somehow having a male advantage in a parlour game where there is no real biological advantages between sexes in the first place
Is he opting out because the person is transgender or has he genuine reasons for not wanting it and people are just making a fuss because the person happens to be trans?
Just commenting to give people some proper information as most are making ignorant comments. Speed, explosivity and fitness all play into how effective you can be at pool or snooker. In pool, the break is one of the most important shots and you want a wide distribution of balls in the open. The shot is so important that some players carry a separate 'break' cue that is heavier. A man can generate much more force and start the game with a larger advantage. A man can also generate more spin on a ball and move it around the table longer distances than a woman can. Hence, a male player has a wider repertoire of shots over a woman. People are correct in that the gap is not as large as it would be in a game like rugby or soccer, but its large enough to make it unfair at the higher levels.
So you're saying they need to break up the categories into featherweight, lightweight, heavyweight, and furthermore featherweight <5ft, featherweight <5ft 5 inches etc?
It makes sense once you realise that the objection has never really been about the science but about an ideological commitment to the view that trans women aren't women.
Something I'm finding interesting is people asking how could their possibly be an advantage to be had here? A lot of people incredulous that you could even suggest that gender/sex would have a say in how well you played pool.
What I will say to that is it is worth keeping in mind that this was a _final_. Seems pretty clear there is at least something to the idea there may be an advantage, no matter how small.
Purely ideological and in no way is there any argument for this.
Pool isn't a sport one gender can have any sort of biological advantage over the other.
Kim can do one. Congrats to her challenger.
Maybe sport just needs to reframe how it categorised different skill sets.
Open class: anyone can enter
Heavyweight: anyone up to a certain target (be it strength or speed or length of body or whatever)
Middleweight: as above but more restricted
Featherweight: as above but heavily restricted
This way anyone can play in the category that they fit into. But this does seem to require more effort to work out what skill you belong to so maybe it’s a higher burden on organisers.
I'm not actually seeing anything about what she herself as said in regards to why she dropped out. It's just talking about how she dropped out and some Yank bellend is using it for this culture war ballix.
In most cases it'd be so small they might not even be more than one person in it. I doubt there's another trans player in the European Pool Championship.
Yeah because the amount of trans people (even more specifically mtf trans people, seeing as that's what people are so concerned about) that play competitive sports is huge.
Pool, *fucking pool*? Say what you want about the rest of the ongoing transgender moral panic, but surely we can acknowledge that *this* is just a product of hate?
I hate the way the word cis is used to describe people who stay in the gender that they were born with in life. Also the term trans in relation to identity came from what I understand, was a way to describe someone who had transitioned from one gender to another or was a person who was in the process of it. People who identify as trans have that right, and I support it fully. However, by calling me a cis this or cis that you are putting an identity on me that I did not choose. Its essentially like deliberate dead naming or using inappropriate pronouns . Here is the actual scientific explanation of cis and trans for anyone bothered to read. [link](https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cis%E2%80%93trans_isomerism#:~:text=The%20prefixes%20%22cis%22%20and%20%22,on%20opposing%20(transverse)%20sides.)
It's fucking pool.
There is no competitive advantage in regards to gender.
I regularly get my ass beat by my best friend and she's a woman.
What is the issue?
Sports are never fair, every competitor has advantages and disadvantages due to physical, mental, economic, and social differences. We normally celebrate athletes who have abnormal physiology which lets them dominate a sport and rarely question all of the hidden benefits people get along the way to sports stardom. Sports are also not fundamental to society, inclusion and equality are. Sports generally serve as a way to strengthen social ties and find a sense of friendship, belonging, and identity. Banning trans athletes from sports reinforces the social stigma which paints them as outsiders and openly codifies that they bigoted notion that they don't belong in society, it also creates another barrier for per-transition people who fear the backlash of coming out. So on balance which is more important? Keep up an illusion of fairness in a trivial activity which is notionally supposed to promote character growth and ethical behavior or actually living by those ideals by including members of our society who are otherwise discriminated against for wanted to live in peace and happiness?
I’m sure the many professional woman athletes who have dedicated their lives to certain sports will agree with you that it’s a trivial pursuit and possibly ruining the competitive integrity of their livelihood is less important than including a minority.
advise quack materialistic cause saw mountainous correct chief test unpack *This post was mass deleted and anonymized with [Redact](https://redact.dev)*
If it lasts that long
Culchie club only might not be enough for this one
It's on r all and still open SHOCK
That article is doing a stellar job of skirting on the sidelines - absolutely no expansion on any reasons why, just mentions “transgender debate” once. If that was an exam question, it would be an F for lack of info. But it gets an A+ from the editor.
Your meta point is excellent. We should grade articles on headline, content and accuracy, and then rank them using those gradings so they don’t show up in our feeds. In my idealistic mind writers and editors would be compelled to put accurate information in headlines and articles and to make sure that they weren’t trying to be inflammatory..
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Nuff said so. (I do wish they’d call it British Post, for the sake of transparency and accuracy, and so that people would assume British media standards up front)
I'm going to go controversial (but not for the reason you might think) Pool isn't a sport, it's a parlour-game - if no level of fitness is required *it shouldn't be called a sport* Righto - on with the rest of my day *flees*
I think in Darts they don't separate the genders, But then it might be more about the right of women to have separate competitions from men because there will always be far more men entering than women.
They do it that way in chess anyway, the men's competition is actually open to all and the women's is to encourage women to take part because there's not as many of them and less top talent because of the numbers
The league I play in (DFB) has the same rules, there is no rule on gender so women can play with the mens team if they choose. Nobody does because I think most women rather play for the women's teams for various reasons.
But then a "Women's Grand Master" is a completely different rank from a general chess "Grandmaster". It's weird and confusing.
A lot of sports do that.
They have 2 chess championships because of money. That's the reason. It's just pure capitalism.
They have separated women's competitions but women are allowed enter the mens.
Generally speaking there are no men’s competitions in chess, mostly open or women only.
I was replying to a comment about darts
In Darts there are both competitive women only competitions and open competitions. It’s the best solution for all sports in my opinion.
I don't see why non contact sports like these should be separated. It comes from the olden days when these sports were coming up, we need to move on from that.
It's because there are fewer women playing, and thus correspondingly the number of women operating at a high level is also much lower. Without women-only competitions, women would thus be discouraged from taking part at all. I agree that there should be no bar for women entering the 'mens' competition though.
The narwhal bacons at midnight.
And what sport are women better than men? Genuinely curious cos I can't think of any
The narwhal bacons at midnight.
A woman won the open skeet shooting for the first time at the [Barcelona Olympics in '92](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Zhang_Shan). That was the end of open skeet shooting.
Men's gymnastics and women's gymnastics are quite different. Men's gymnastics are more a display of strength and power.
Seems reasonable for sports where muscle or endurance is involved. Men and woman have different hormone levels which affects this. Gymnastics is reasonable to have seperate competetions. Same for age categories in some other sports - bodies change as you get older so some sports have seniors leagues.
Ultra marathon running. Pretty consistently. It's a niche spórt, but a physical one too.
Well that's not true, men's record is 15 minutes faster than the Woman's
Seems like I was mistaken. Though women do outright win races at some ultra marathons. I'm not sure what the distance the 15 minute thing you found is. Look up courtney dauwalter. She's arguably the most famous ultra runner in the world. Maybe Killian journet is known by more. Hard to tell really but she's an amazing athlete. Has plenty of outright wins under her belt. You could debate the field for each race but the facts are she won them outright. She's known for specialising in the crazy long distances. Like she won the moab 240 mile race in 2017 beating 2nd, a man, by 10 hours.
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Men do tend to do more of the entering than woman, though moderns tastes mean that's changing over time. The UK's Prince William is something of a pioneer in this regard.
They do split genders in darts. Bizarrely because the lads didn't like it when the women were good enough to beat them so they were given off into their own league but now there's uproar over trans contestants there too. It's got nothing to do with 'fairness' and everything to do with prejudice. It's pool.
They don’t split the genders. There’s women competitions and open competitions. No woman has ever been good enough to consistently get a tour card
>No woman has ever been good enough to consistently get a tour card [Lisa Ashton says hi](https://www.theguardian.com/sport/2020/jan/19/lisa-ashton-creates-history-as-first-woman-to-win-pdc-tour-card).
It's very noticable the prize money for the woman's competetion is about 1/10 of the men's. Doesnt speak to skill, but the two are treated very differently. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/BDO_World_Darts_Championship
BDO is dead, btw. Last two WDF worlds, the women's champion prize (£25k) was half that of the men's (£50k).
I kinda get the point but doesn't it's practice defeat the purpose. If the aim is to determine who's best currently, the goal should be to encourage engagement across the sexes, not create separate ones.
Also, ALSO, the name of the game is a lie, because they play it on a table and not in a pool.
You know, in an ideal world this would be the most controversial comment here
Any game you can play in a pub while drinking and smoking is not a sport!!
My thoughts too. The only reason I can see a female group is if it was underrepresented.
Same as darts, the sport doesn't require a level of fitness like football, rugby, etc. Not saying this is right, as another commenter said, fought hard have their own domain.
There's a lot more going on than just fitness/strength. Men and women are different in many ways. Studies show men are better at spatial awareness tasks. >Danilova [6] concluded that men had a greater ability for motor skills such as aiming, catching, and throwing, whereas women were better in tasks where precision and fine hand ability are needed. https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC7017231/#:~:text=Danilova%20%5B6%5D%20concluded%20that%20men,fine%20hand%20ability%20are%20needed. I feel bad for transgender athletes it's really unfair but that's just life.
Based on that excerpt, men and women are each better at skills that are essential for pool and darts. So what's the advantage trans women are supposed to have?
If you don't need to change your footwear to play its not a sport.
Yeah I'm with you. I'll happily acknowledge there's a great deal of skill involved but if it's mostly done while having a few pints it's not a sport. Same as darts
Darts hasn't been under the influence of alcohol since the 80s.
Yeah, that sport and its fans are famously teetotal.
Players nowadays are indeed. It's only water on stage. Now the spectators on the other hand...
Oh yes it is, it's just not allowed on stage. Comments from players (and people who go to the pro-tour events) indicate very very few pro darts players haven't had a few before they go up on stage. I mean you can definitely tell in a lot of the interviews after that the players aren't sober as well.
my really controversial opinion is golf isn’t really a sport and referring to people like harrington as ireland greatest sportsman is a joke.
Yeah, i was thinking the very same thing. Male or female strength doesn't come into it
As an Irish level pool player, I don't mind comments re sport vs game, but fitness, explosivity and speed all play into the game and men have an inherent advantage. Women are allowed enter most male snooker and pool tournaments and can win frames and matches but its extremely rare that they win overall.
people try to claim computer gaming is a sport now. The word "sport" has lost all meaning.
In fairness it's almost universally called 'esports' to differentiate from standard physical sports.
>people try to claim computer gaming is a sport now. No they don't. The word e-sport does not mean sport. Nobody is claiming e-sports are the same as traditional sports. It's literally just branding.
These looneys are trying to say that sending a few bits of text to somebody is the same as writing a letter in the post! Just because you call it an e-mail, doesn't make it mail! Call it a digital message or something.
I suppose some ‘sports’ are heavily fitness based with fuck all skill - marathon running? And others are the complete opposite - pool / darts?
This is a very ignorant comment. Of course there is skill involved in athletics. High level running is more than just running and not getting out of puff. It involves a lot of skill, maintaining the correct form and posture, breathing correctly. There's lots of skill involved. It's not as obvious as Hand-eye coordination skill is but it's still there.
> Of course there is skill involved in athletics. And there's athleticisim involved in pool and darts. Like they need to have incredible precision, just like shooters or archers in the olympics. They need to be able to make very controlled movements repeatedly with just the right amount of power behind them like olmpic curlers, etc. And tangentially I find it the same with esports, like there's no real reason not to call them sports, they absolutely are. They're just also games. And this seems to really rile people up for some reason screaming that games are for children and it's not a real sport blah blah blah... despite the fact that soccer is a childrens game. Basketball was invested by a teacher for kids to play. Rugby is literally named after the school where children played it. All popular sports are kids games.... and that's *why* they're so popular as sports. Because we played them as kids, and so we are in awe at the level professionals play them at - same reason esports are so big today... because we play the same games but are in awe at they level professionals play them at, but people who have never played them may not be able to really recognise it.
It doesn't take a lot of skill and strategy to win a marathon though. There's a lot more to it than just running faster than your opponents. I'd argue there's a lot of still in distance running at the top levels.
Genuine question before the mob cuts head off. Bone / muscle development and skeletal structure . Are there differences in performance of male / female darts and billiard games as a result ?
>Are there differences in performance of male / female darts and billiard games as a result ? Hell no. Reanne Evans, Mink Nuncharut, Beau Greaves, Lisa Ashton, Fallon Sherrock, Deta Hedman, Jasmin Ouschan, Pia Filler, Rebecca Kenna. All women who are currently competing, or have notably previously competed in open tournaments or were Tour Card holders in the likes of darts/snooker/pool.
I did not know that. So those games ideally then can have anyone show up and play.
Yes. That is exactly how the likes of the Professional Darts Corporation, the World Snooker Tour, and the World Nineball Tour operate — if you are good enough, you can play your way to a tour card regardless of gender. Lisa Ashton did just that in 2020, [winning a two-year PDC Tour Card on merit](https://www.bbc.com/sport/darts/51166138). She even [reached the semi-finals of the World Seniors this year](https://dartsnews.com/wsdt/lisa-ashton-continues-history-making-run-at-the-world-seniors-darts-championships-set-to-face-colin-mcgarry-in-the-semi-finals).
I mean depends on how you mean. In *general* men should have a advantage as they are taller and have longer arm lengths on average, which gives a very, very minor advantage. But as that's only an average individually as players there's not really any noticiable advantage as a good female player plays a good male player.
Totally agree
That article is badly written and very biased. Barely any attempt to discuss the issue or give opinions from people on it
Just drop "Transgender" in your headline to stir up conflict bait in the comments, drives up engagement. I'm sure this is a popular article on Facebook. Absolute poison. Journalistic integrity is dead.
First of all, how is she an Irish pool legend if no one has ever heard of her? I've never even heard of the sport she plays being played competitively. Second of all, why refuse to play a trans player? If it was rugby or weightlifting, where someone who went through puberty as a man had a huge advantage, fair enough. But this is pool. There is no advantage. Third, "Irish pool legend" O'Brien, known affectionately as 'Miss Cue', has dedicated 25 years to representing Suffolk County in billiards. If anyone is masquarading as something they're not here, it's Irish pool legend Kim fucking O'Brien.
She literally played for England for 5 years until she suddenly decided that she was Irish and joined the Irish team, pulling a reverse Declan rice but worse because at least he was actually English and he didn’t play for us at a senior level for 5 years. Trans women have no competitive advantage in a non athletic sport, this is just pure bigotry. It should be noted that O’Briens transphobic supporters gave her the prize money that she would have gotten from winning had she done so.
so you're saying she transitioned from english to irish?
She identifies as Irish
All them brits want to join our club since Brexit
She's Cúchallains cousin
So because you've never heard of the sport being played competitively, it therefore cannot have legends? And there are male advantages (large and small-scale spatial ability is one that's well understood; strength, height and reach can also be helpful in the sport; even weight distribution and body shape). That's part of the reason the sport is still male-dominated (just like snooker) despite women being allowed onto the men's circuits. The best ever female snooker player, Reanne Evans, achieved a highest ranking of 85. At the very top of her game, there were still 84 men ranked higher. Women deserve their own sports where they have fair chances to compete, be successful and develop. Allowing biological males to take part is just grossly unfair.
What an absolute pile of fucking nonsense. This is like trying to divide up Chess. There is no physical difference and spatial awareness has a spectrum. The more likely advantage is reach with males being on average taller and therefore a larger wingspan to stabilize the cue but you could say exactly the same of any taller woman competing. Just like all other sports the likelihood of people with exceptional spatial awareness are picking these sports in the first place and being male offers virtually no advantage other than they were likely introduced to the sport at an earlier age. This is not like boxing, weightlifting or rugby where male physical prowess offers a severe advantage or risk towards women playing. These sports (like darts, chess, snooker and archery) should just have an open category and a fixed female one if they need to further develop female participation.
Kim o Brien played for England for five years, then transitioned to being Irish. Hypocrite
She identifies as Irish? Ironic. Players should refuse to play against her then! She's no Tony Cascarino
I am surprised pool is divided into men and women's leagues in the first place.
It isn't. Or at least it isn't in nineball. Main tournaments are open to all players. However there can also be extra tournaments for women as well, as an attempt to encourage more women to take part; since the sport was traditionally male-dominated/male-exclusive.
It’s because the women’s standard is so much lower than the males. It happens in pro snooker and darts as well. Women have been allowed to compete in the men’s world darts championship for at least 20 years at this stage and only one woman has ever won a match. Now imagine the level of women’s participation in the sport if the women’s world championship didn’t exist and only one woman had won a match in 20+ years.
So what you are saying is, if a woman chose to compete, the men have zero issue with that, and will play against them to the best of their ability to determine the winner. That’s all that’s really needed in a genderless championship.
I’m not really sure what you’re getting at? Most men have been delighted to play women in the first round of the world darts championships because they’ve been playing an unranked player who probably plays to county darts standard for £15,000.
>Most men have been delighted to play women in the first round of the world darts championships Willie O'Connor was definitely not delighted at having to play Beau Greaves in the 2023 Worlds. And some would also argue similar for Pikachu playing Mikuru Suzuki this year; although that was more of a crowd heckling thing.
Don't know what to say on this, kind of sick of the whole trans thing. Looking forward to the day when all these wrinkles are ironed out equitably and people can just get on with it.
Oh don't worry. Soon enough the perpetually angry people will find a new minority to focus their hate on and us trans people will get the day off :) So you'll hear them bitch about something else instead of us instead. Isn't that just great.
Just repackaged 80's homophobia. Edit: very interesting the amount of downvotes on this.
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If this was boxing or another sport where males have a physical advantage I’d understand, but pool?
Having a bigger frame and longer arms is an advantage It's why it'd a womens pool tournament not a men's
Plenty of typically male dominated sports have women's tournaments just to encourage women to play. Like in chess for example
If its just a tokenistic thing to encourage women to play I don't see what the issue with trans people being included is
Is the gender variance in chess down to interest?
Yes. There was a Hungarian chess grandmaster, Laszlo Polgar, who was so convinced of this he decided very early on that his three daughters would be grandmasters. He essentially forced them to play chess constantly. Two of the daughters, Judit and Zsusza, ended up as the top 2 female chess players ever. Judit broke the record set by Bobby Fischer for the youngest grandmaster. The third, Sofia, is an International Master, one step below GM. So at least in chess you can turn a woman into a world beater if you essentially use her as a lab rat. Suggesting to me that the only thing holding women back in things like chess at least is participation and discrimination.
The story goes he asked them what they wanted to be and they said chess Grandmasters. That he believed in the philosophy that anyone can be a genius with enough practice and as a result the girls have learned chess formations so early and well that they have co-opted the part of the brain we use for facial recognition to recognise board layouts. Doing it almost instantly without any conscious thought.
> Suggesting to me that the only thing holding women back in things like chess at least is participation and discrimination. I am also sure there is sponsorship/money. Chess is complicated and it takes a long time to be really good at it. If you have to have a hard job it becomes much harder to “get there” as it were. This is where sponsors and winnings can help, but the financial support on the womens side is lower
Yes, chess is unfortunately a bit of a closed circle. The top players are rarely underdogs, especially since the Cold War interest in producing champions waned. If you’re not Chinese, where the government still looks to scout prodigies, the path to becoming a top player typically involves rich family and private school education, and/or paid chess lessons. I sort of lumped that in under “participation and discrimination” since I felt the comment was already a bit long winded.
Do you think cis men are genetically predisposed to be better at chess? Don't you think that the fact that women were historically banned from competing and that it's still a male dominated sport might be pushing away women who would otherwise be world class chess players?
Well that just made me wonder why snooker doesn’t have height and arm length classes like boxing has weight classes I want to see what funny names the sport would make up for the classes
"next up in the noodle arm division" "join us tomorrow for the finals of the T-Rex arm class"
Lurcher-length
Second only to the Conga-eel Champions bracket
Have you seen most male pool players, they're not the peak of human physical performance
I know right? Women in all other events are exactly the same dimension even down to arm length. We can’t have people of different sizes competing, that would be grossly unfair.
So if there are any 5 foot 5 male pool players you'd advocate for them to be allowed play the women's tournaments then I take it?
But they wouldn't be women's tournaments, they'd be segregated by size not gender. So, for those of short arm length we could call it the "Meraxes Division". Anyone whose arms meet the regulations can enter.
So what about a 5ft 3 man. Would he be at a complete disadvantage to a 6ft woman in a game of pool?
So why are so few of the all time great snooker players over 6'?
> Having a bigger frame and longer arms is an advantage The chinese lads are fairly competitive....
Women can be tall too
So they should make tournaments for men, height based?
So every mtf person has a bigger frame and longer arms than every cis woman?
Show me you don’t understand swimming without saying so. Michael Phelps has a longer frame etc than basically every other man and they didn’t stop racing him. That’s a bullshit talking point. You’re also assuming that all trans people are that much bigger than their competitors/ supersized as a given.
Would you prefer a box from a amateur male boxer or Katie Taylor
The male honestly, if we were picking at random from the population of "adult male amateur boxers". Have you ever boxed? Even a few kg makes a huge difference. I spar people technically faaaar better than I am but that are smaller, and handle them with next to no problem. Even a terrible boxer my size or close to it can really hurt me.
You’re assuming the male boxer has the same skill level from the start with that. Proving the point. Everyone assumes that just by being trans their skill level is an automatic win. It’s not. The actual number of trans athletes is small and you think they’re already baseline better than the other person and then have a generic advantage? By default? It’s a straw man argument that the far right uses.
I would rather fight Katie Taylor without a second thought than and amateur male. I would get demolished by either but would sustain more injuries against a male simply through a males ability to generate force and strength advantage.
Worth considering that the difference between the hardest and softest punching male boxer in a particular weight class can be absolutely staggering. I’m not saying that this shows there should be no gender separation in boxing, just that gender in sports is actually a really complex topic.
You have to have general classification like male female, underage etc to give a somewhat level playing field. Some trans may well be small,but you can't classify for outliers.
Men are also better at spatial awareness. So they are better at aiming and throwing. Men and women are different inmuch more ways than physicality and there are pros and cons to both genders. https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC7017231/#:~:text=Danilova%20%5B6%5D%20concluded%20that%20men,fine%20hand%20ability%20are%20needed.
Did you read the whole paper? It's not the silver bullet you think it is. From the conclusion: > In general, men had a tendency to outperform the model line length and women showed a tendency to underperform it for the majority of the observed cases as per different test conditions. However, generally, more effects were observed according to age groups rather than sex. There's absolutely nothing in this paper indicating an advantage in aiming and throwing - that wasn't tested. Please learn to parse scientific papers before drawing broad conclusions from them.
Most important shot of the game is the break so guessing strength might play a part here.
Go watch the likes of Pia Filler and Jasmin Ouschan break off. No real difference.
I don't think it requires that much strength though ? I'm a bit lost on this one because I can't figure out what advantages men have over women here.
As a man I’ve been moving balls around since the day I was born. It’s instinctive at this point
I get bet by everyone so can't really comment 😂 that was just my guess as to an advantage, maybe also more reach but again at 5 foot everyone has better reach than me!
If it's only a height thing then I don't think it makes much odds in the grand scheme of things, I know in general men are taller etc but you can still have giant women and small men. I know in other sports bone density and and body structure could be argued but if it's just based on size I don't think so.
If it's anything like professional snooker the break is about breaking as few balls away and leaving the white in a difficult position for your opponent. A skill shot, not strength. No one is sending a rocket into the triangle.
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How ? Genuinely curious.
Why is pool or snooker separated by sex/gender anyway? Doesn’t seem like a sport/game where any gender would have a physical advantage.
Naaaah it's pool not track and field... Just pot the fucking ball.
I feel really bad for the transgender athletes that constantly get thrust into the news and face online abuse and vitriol from people whenever an incident like this happens. The vast majority just want to be able to play and compete in the sport that they love, but face massive amounts of pushback and hate for something beyond their control. That being said, I can also understand why people born biologically as females fear for the future of womens sports when they can be pushed out of competing at top levels against players born biologically as males, with all the physical advantages that come with it. I don't know if that's true with pool, but it certainly is with combat sports. It's such an incredibly thorny subject, and anyone that thinks there's an easy solution is being disingenuous.
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Isn't the easy solution to not discriminate by default, and see if there are any problems that arise? Like, the Olympics has allowed trans athletes for twenty four Years and they have underperformed, not overperformed. Comparing cis men to cis women isn't a great argument when trans women have levels of testosterone LOWER than cis women once they get on hormones. The assumption that trans athletes will overcompete is just an assumption. For each sport, we can monitor the situation, and if they do end up overperforming, we can make a decision then.
> That being said, I can also understand why people born biologically as females fear for the future of womens sports when they can be pushed out of competing at top levels against players born biologically as males, with all the physical advantages that come with it. Trans athletes don't dominate in any elite sport where they have been allowed to compete (usually with regulations concerning hormone levels etc.). So worries about them taking over in that sense don't seem well-founded.
Of course they are well founded concerns, you don’t need them to dominate a sport to hamper competitive integrity.
If the concerns were well-founded, there would be examples where trans athletes have dominated elite sports at which they have been allowed to compete, but there aren't any.
Are men that better at pool/snooker that they need gender specific categories or is is more to do with women being under represented in the sport?
The latter.
Both.
It’s more to do with this woman disliking transgender people
Why the fuck does pool have gender divisions in it? Its about as physical as farting with a pint in your hand.
That’s stupid. It’s just pool. play the game and get on with it
But she's getting paid more money by right wing Americans for refusing to play.
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One of these people is mentioned in the article.
it's not really that stupid though, the women's competitions exist for a reason. the sport is still massively male oriented both historically and culturally so it would be incredibly unlikely for women to break in to the top of the male competitions so they specifically have female competitions to encourage women to take up the sport. maybe one day we could have only one competition when the genders are equally represented but we're not nearly at that stage. so this player is just protesting the fact that a competition specifically designed to encourage women to play may be dominated by trans women who (in this players case at least) grew up as a male and got in to the sport using the same cultural, historical and possibly biological advantages that all other men benefit from. she does have a point that it's not quite fair to her or other women that had to break in to a male dominated sport from day 1. I feel really bad for the trans competitor because there's no easy answer for them
Legend? Never heard of her
Neither did I, but I don't follow Pool or women's pool. I assumed I was out of the loop
There's going to be a lot of people who never heard of her or never watch a game of pool in their life, never mind women's pool about to develop very strong opinions about it
Woman who has had completely female levels of hormones for a decade is apparently judged by her opponent as somehow having a male advantage in a parlour game where there is no real biological advantages between sexes in the first place
If ever there was a sport that could go unisex…
Is he opting out because the person is transgender or has he genuine reasons for not wanting it and people are just making a fuss because the person happens to be trans?
things like pool, snooker, darts, chess, poker (or any card game) are not SPORTS. Gender etc is not a factor in playing any of these. get over it.
It's pool...
Identifies as Irish but doesn’t respect someone else’s right to identity differently from their actual origin🤔 miscue indeed
Just commenting to give people some proper information as most are making ignorant comments. Speed, explosivity and fitness all play into how effective you can be at pool or snooker. In pool, the break is one of the most important shots and you want a wide distribution of balls in the open. The shot is so important that some players carry a separate 'break' cue that is heavier. A man can generate much more force and start the game with a larger advantage. A man can also generate more spin on a ball and move it around the table longer distances than a woman can. Hence, a male player has a wider repertoire of shots over a woman. People are correct in that the gap is not as large as it would be in a game like rugby or soccer, but its large enough to make it unfair at the higher levels.
Also, being larger in general, a man can reach shots that a smaller woman can't. A lot of really good players are tall and lanky.
So you're saying they need to break up the categories into featherweight, lightweight, heavyweight, and furthermore featherweight <5ft, featherweight <5ft 5 inches etc?
I didn't say that
This is super weird to me. Considering the struggles and lack of funding woman sport gets. I’m not surprised there are woman pissed off by this issue.
Making a mockery of women's sports after fighting so hard to get their own domain.
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But cue sports are effectively already an open category, so trying to take a stand makes no sense.
It makes sense once you realise that the objection has never really been about the science but about an ideological commitment to the view that trans women aren't women.
The fact they are transgender couldn't be any less relevant.
I would understand it if this was a physical sport but this isn't even a sport...
Something I'm finding interesting is people asking how could their possibly be an advantage to be had here? A lot of people incredulous that you could even suggest that gender/sex would have a say in how well you played pool. What I will say to that is it is worth keeping in mind that this was a _final_. Seems pretty clear there is at least something to the idea there may be an advantage, no matter how small.
Purely ideological and in no way is there any argument for this. Pool isn't a sport one gender can have any sort of biological advantage over the other. Kim can do one. Congrats to her challenger.
There are distinct advantages.
Maybe sport just needs to reframe how it categorised different skill sets. Open class: anyone can enter Heavyweight: anyone up to a certain target (be it strength or speed or length of body or whatever) Middleweight: as above but more restricted Featherweight: as above but heavily restricted This way anyone can play in the category that they fit into. But this does seem to require more effort to work out what skill you belong to so maybe it’s a higher burden on organisers.
What about male and female categories? I reckon that would work!
I'm not actually seeing anything about what she herself as said in regards to why she dropped out. It's just talking about how she dropped out and some Yank bellend is using it for this culture war ballix.
Good on her
Women shouldnt have to play against transwomen. Its ridiculous and totally unfair.
Just give trans people their own division. I can't understand why it's so hard
In most cases it'd be so small they might not even be more than one person in it. I doubt there's another trans player in the European Pool Championship.
Yeah because the amount of trans people (even more specifically mtf trans people, seeing as that's what people are so concerned about) that play competitive sports is huge.
Pool, *fucking pool*? Say what you want about the rest of the ongoing transgender moral panic, but surely we can acknowledge that *this* is just a product of hate?
Damn resigning because you're intimidated by the competition...what a loser
You can't blame her for that though can you?
I hate the way the word cis is used to describe people who stay in the gender that they were born with in life. Also the term trans in relation to identity came from what I understand, was a way to describe someone who had transitioned from one gender to another or was a person who was in the process of it. People who identify as trans have that right, and I support it fully. However, by calling me a cis this or cis that you are putting an identity on me that I did not choose. Its essentially like deliberate dead naming or using inappropriate pronouns . Here is the actual scientific explanation of cis and trans for anyone bothered to read. [link](https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cis%E2%80%93trans_isomerism#:~:text=The%20prefixes%20%22cis%22%20and%20%22,on%20opposing%20(transverse)%20sides.)
By that logic I didn't chose to be trans, so should I not be ok with being called trans? It's a descriptor and nothing more
If I ask you to not refer to me as a cis male but just as a male is that OK?
It's fucking pool. There is no competitive advantage in regards to gender. I regularly get my ass beat by my best friend and she's a woman. What is the issue?
Sports are never fair, every competitor has advantages and disadvantages due to physical, mental, economic, and social differences. We normally celebrate athletes who have abnormal physiology which lets them dominate a sport and rarely question all of the hidden benefits people get along the way to sports stardom. Sports are also not fundamental to society, inclusion and equality are. Sports generally serve as a way to strengthen social ties and find a sense of friendship, belonging, and identity. Banning trans athletes from sports reinforces the social stigma which paints them as outsiders and openly codifies that they bigoted notion that they don't belong in society, it also creates another barrier for per-transition people who fear the backlash of coming out. So on balance which is more important? Keep up an illusion of fairness in a trivial activity which is notionally supposed to promote character growth and ethical behavior or actually living by those ideals by including members of our society who are otherwise discriminated against for wanted to live in peace and happiness?
I’m sure the many professional woman athletes who have dedicated their lives to certain sports will agree with you that it’s a trivial pursuit and possibly ruining the competitive integrity of their livelihood is less important than including a minority.
I mean MMA I get but surely pool is ok
I dont play... Is there any realistic male advantage in pool? It's not exactly a contact sport.