Transwomen in Professional Darts

I’m a big sports fan and I can’t understand why darts has separate competitions for women in the first place. A dart weighs about 22g and the oche is 2.37m form the board. Physical strength is, therefore, irrelevant. It’s absurd & patronising to divide the sexes.

The separate league was primarily set up because of the social disadvantages, I believe. There was a thread about a male player in the women's category before.

If something is true, it's true.

We have a tendency to reason like this:
A is a fact.
A leads to consequence B.
I don't like B, therefore A can't true.
What we should do is accept the truth of A but question whether A does inexorably and inevitably lead to B.

If women's hand-eye coordination is worse than men's, all it means is that, depending on the exact parameters candidates need to fall within to qualify as a fighter pilot, more men than women will make the cut.

Apart from the factors that go into male athletic performance advantage, the differences between men and women are not dramatic and there is considerable overlap. Although in any given activity or sport, there may be a cumulative advantage for men caused by several different factors.

I mean there are only a few possible reasons why there's only been a handful of women competing at the top level of the darts open when they are at liberty to do so and the rewards would be much better

1: physical differences
2: social differences that mean women don't practise enough

Can't think of any other
Neither apply to a male person of any gender

So if that's the only reason, why is Noa competing against women? Noa hasn't been denied any opportunities.

Just like Emily Bridges who was competing happily it seems on male cycling teams at university, Noa can compete against other men.

If as Jonathan is so keen to point out, there is zero difference between men and women when it comes to darts.

Absolutely. The language is always the same isn’t it. Always about the self. The perceived ‘authentic self’ is treated as innate when in fact anyone can see that it’s been chosen like a costume. All about the menz feels.

I test into the top percentile for spatial awareness, mechanical reasoning and mathematical reasoning as well as for verbal reasoning, abstract reasoning and VR/MR combined. My iq is over 170. But it's a bell curve. There are actually more women who are naturally in the top percentile for many of these types of abilities. However at the very, very top, men have the edge. There are also more men at the very, very bottom.

isn't there a lot of alcohol at dart events,if so could be an interesting night.

Men and women have biological differences that go far beyond the physical. In terms of hand to eye coordination it's because we evolved with males doing a lot more hunting than females. Women have other things we're much better at. Women have better memory recall, we're better at gauging emotion from facial cues and vocal tone, we're better at noticing small details, better at telling the sex of person even from a distance.

All of this is on a bell curve, so while there are women who are much better dart players than the average man and men who have better memories than the average women. At the upper ends of these types of skills, all the best dart players will be men, all of the best players of games like Go Fish will be women. (And I can guarantee you that it was the other way around memory recall games would be taken more seriously than throwing games.)

1. Darts having an open category is clearly sensible. This allows all players to 'play as themselves' without compromising.

1. I would agree that the existence of the women's category is principally though not exclusively for social reasons.

1. If there is no physical difference between male and female players, why do the transgender participation rules for transwomen require hormone suppression? What is that meant to achieve?

Get so tired of saying this. If you genuinely believe the women's category is for all groups where there is social prejudice based on appearance, with zero physical elements at all (i don't personally agree but I can see the argument for darts more than most other pastimes) then rename the category - sure, follow Noa's lead and call it the Glow-Up category or the Welcome category if you like. If you can say 'The mens darts team doesn't accept me, I get comments when I compete which make it harder, the men call me a bender' then come on in. Should be a great category tbh, get some drag queens in there.

JUST DONT CALL IT WOMEN'S.

All possible. I know that as a highly accomplished STEM woman, with exceptional spatial awareness (just you watch me park my van!) I can potentially get overly touchy about these sorts of comments.

It's a really interesting issue and presumably darts would be a good sport to look at why women don't succeed as well? Apart from anything else, the sheer "maleness" of the environment must have some impact on young women even considering competing.

the bottom line for me is that Noa is taking up a place that should be going to a biological woman rather than playing on the men’s tour where Noa belongs.

It's a good question. I recall some research about sex differences in spatial reasoning / awareness - but separating this out from nature or nurture is tricky. The impact of playing games like football etc from a young age may well have an impact?

As a bicep has more fast twitch muscles and a recent study apparently showed (I have not been able to access it read it myself) that males had more fast twitch muscles in their bodies, would fast twitch muscles be responsible for accurate aim?

Along with the combination of strength in the arm, grip strength and height? And breathing, males have longer between breathes so have more time to aim.

Would that combination make a difference ?

'The best of myself'🙄
What fucking bollocks.

Why would this be? I fully understand about average heights, and muscle mass, and skeletal structure, but "inferior hand eye coordination" feels one step away from saying that women can't fly fighter jets etc.

Disgusting. I'm fed up of these cheats. I'm also fed up of all the stupid weedling arguments around testosterone and strength, ignoring the fact that there are other reasons like menstruation which could mean that a woman might not be able to practise everyday like a man could.

Ah a fluff piece written by Jonathan ‘would it be that terrible if women didnt win anything ever again anyway’ liew

I suspect The Guardian will be having a lot of these sort of articles over the coming weeks

the best women in the world - Greaves, sharrock, Suzuki- do play in the men’s tournaments. Often by invitation rather than qualification - they rarely make it through the qualifying rounds and only sharrock has ever made a final. So even in darts where you’d think sex shouldn’t make a difference - it does. Still as long as Noa feels validated eh

Darts run open and women's I thought

In womens Women stand closer as they tend to be shorter

It's very rare for a woman to make it on the open circuit but it does happen