Trans woman’s victory in female snooker sparks fairness row (Times, 2 Sep)

[BettyFilous]

Another day, another mediocre male taking a woman’s prize in women’s sport.

A transgender snooker player’s victory in a women’s competition has triggered fresh debate about fairness in sport.

Jamie Hunter, 25, became the first transgender woman to win a women’s ranking tournament on Sunday by beating Rebecca Kenna 4-1 at the US Women’s Open in Seattle.

snip

Hunter, 25, from Wigan, Greater Manchester, responded: “If Maria is upset, it is disheartening and saddening, but I’m there to help grow [the sport] not ruin it. I want the tour to prosper. 🙄

www.thetimes.co.uk/article/6c08649c-29ea-11ed-a830-74a6c8fbb722?shareToken=b718d32e7db506e5bf707834f039c760

Rebecca - congratulations on your win! Sorry to hear you were cheated out of your prize money.

As far as I can tell on this thread there is no evidence presented by anyone.

Do you have any evidence that there's no advantage @Walkden ?

"Do you have any evidence that there's no advantage @Walkden "?

Surely you need evidence before you did discriminate against people and not the other way around?

And as I've previously commented there's plenty of opinion from professionals that there is an advantage but it is not a physical one.

In fact by propogating the idea that it is unfair for men to play women at snooker we may increase barriers for women to participate.

Surely you need evidence before you did discriminate against people and not the other way around?

It's not discrimination though, is it? It's allowing someone to compete in a category which they don't automatically qualify for.

The process should be similar to when Oscar Pistorius wanted to compete in the Olympics using his blades. A lot of research was done in order to decide whether his blades gave him an advantage over the other athletes.

"It's not discrimination though, is it? It's allowing someone to compete in a category which they don't automatically qualify for"

But snooker is open to all genders/ sexes in any event.

Surely the evidence is that there have been separate categories for men and women since sport was invented. 🤔

But this wasn't an open competition. That's why we care. If Jamie had one the open competition we would not care - it's open to both sexes. Jamie won a competition that was set up for the sex class that Jamie does not belong to.

The main open events are open to both men and women.

The women's events are for women, not men who want to be women.

In these debates you will always get someone arguing that women can be bigger than men, stronger than men, faster than men, have a greater arm span than men etc.
Of course that is true,
But it does not apply across the board, and in fact, taking male vs female as a broad sample, men are irrefutably stronger, taller, faster, more muscular, and all the other benefits that a male body is known to have over a female one.
That's just nature and there's no point in trying to deny it.
It's why sports are segregated by sex.
Physicality matters.

So, what do we do to try to level the playing field?
We allow males to compete with other males, and females to compete in their own sex class.
If we start to say "well, THIS individual male bodied person is only 5ft 6, has a shorter arm span etc" then it puts us in a position of having to adjudicate for every individual person who wants to compete in a different sex class.
It is FAR simpler, quicker, and fairer to keep sports segregated by sex.

He is still a male. He should compete with other males.

Small weak males are not female.
Strong muscular tall women are not men.

There is a reason why the men who suddenly start competing in the opposite sex class start WINNING despite the fact that they were mediocre (at best) in their OWN sex class.
Look at the statistics for Lia Thomas for example.
Look at the male weight lifter Laurel Hubbard.

The day that a trans MAN (ie natal female) starts winning in the male sex class in sports is the day that I believe that sex does not matter.

Clue - it won't happen.

And let's not forget that historically women's sport has been underfunded, underreported, underrated and sometimes banned altogether. Women have fought hard to get even to the imperfect place we are in today. Why is it hateful to be annoyed and angry that just as women's sport begin's to achieve a higher profile, males can suddenly swoop in and take prizes which should have gone to women?

I don't hate Jamie, I don't want to ban Jamie from being a transwoman or playing snooker. I just haven't quite worked out what exactly has changed about Jamie since deciding to identify as a woman that prevents Jamie from playing in the same tournaments that Jamie has always played in for the love of the game.

If there was no male advantage women would feature in the open competition to some significant degree. There would be some tenacious and talented woman that would have broken through long enough ago for other women to have followed. This hasn't happened. This, at the very least, strongly suggests an inherent male advantage.

I'm saying this a lot today.

"If there was no male advantage women would feature in the open competition to some significant degree. There would be some tenacious and talented woman that would have broken through long enough ago for other women to have followed. This hasn't happened. This, at the very least, strongly suggests an inherent male advantage."

One could equally argue that it is an open competition so people with Cambodia would feature to some significant degree. This hasn't happened so there must be an inherent advantage to people not from Cambodia.

People in the sport think it is a mental issue.

It might be that people telling women they are a disadvantage make it difficult to find places to play because it discourages snooker halls from letting them play against men ergo making it more likely that an amateur trans player has moderate success against other amateur players

"The women's events are for women, not men who want to be women"

The governing body thinks differently, apparently.

"One could equally argue that it is an open competition so people with Cambodia would feature to some significant degree. This hasn't happened so there must be an inherent advantage to people not from Cambodia."

Nonsensical.
Where you are from has no bearing on your physicality, which is why sport is segregated in the first place.

Sport is about physical bodies. Sexed bodies.

But you know that.

I suspect there will be a growing push back on the policy that has allowed this.

www.thesportsman.com/articles/former-world-no1-believes-women-s-game-could-die-if-transgender-policy-isn-t-tightened

The majority of female players seem to be not supporting this, they are talking to each but not in public. As usual it is the older female players who feel able to speak.

"Nonsensical"

Hilarious that you have missed the point of this analogy completely.

which is why sport is segregated in the first place.

Snooker is not segregated......

Snooker is not segregated..

Who do you think the women's competitions are for? Are they open to men as well as women? (They do seem to be, since a man has just won one.)

No, your analogy is just shite.

"men have better spatial awareness and are calmer under presssure which are important attributes when playing pool/snooker."

You're like a parody of a 1950s housewife. Next you'll be saying women shouldn't vote because men have a greater awareness of affairs of state.

What ranking was Hunter in the men's game? That should clarify if they have an advantage over women!! 🙄

It's worth noting that women have a long history of being disallowed from snooker tournaments; the opportunities for them to gain a foothold in the game historically have not been there. This BBC article from 2019 describes the issues women have faced in this sport:

www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-england-lancashire-47732213

"No, your analogy is just shite."

Just like the original argument I was satirising. No one points that out because it supports the narrative that women are oppressed by the tiny proportion of people who are trans....

Maybe you’d like to tell these researchers your rebuttal, hearache.

www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC4304985/

Please post it here to start with, I look forward to it.

It doesn’t make females ‘lesser’ it means females may look at things differently. They may process things differently, and this deserves further attention as to why and the effects. It also means that an average female should not be compared to an average male in spatial awareness, unless you have evidence that this study has been surpassed by one more recently.

It's fascinating the convoluted arguments people create to argue for a man participating in a category established for women. We all know that not everyone has equal access to sport and that competitive sport is by it's nature discriminatory against anyone who doesn't have the particular characteristics to be the fastest/ strongest/ most agile. Are you advocating that all sport should be mixed sex and tough luck to women who clearly won't win much? The fact is that sport is open to people in many ways- groups for disabled people, amateur clubs, playing with family in the back garden, I'm sure the Cambodians who you feel are terribly underrepresented in snooker may even have their own sports and competitions in Cambodia.

The fact is that in elite level sport we want to see real competition against people dedicated to their game. We want to see the best woman and the best man win. This was not a mixed sex competition. Jamie was allowed to compete because everyone is scared. Scared of being accused of transphobia, scared of hurting his feelings, scared of not appearing liberal and kind and down with the kids.

I was there for a long time but now I have realised; I am kind and 'woke' and against discrimination and I won't be told by anyone that I'm not just because I do not support the lie that men can become women because of some magical inner feeling they claim to have. Once you take the goggles off you can see clearly the harm that is being done to women's equality and call out the patently obvious. As the little boy said 'The Emperor hasn't got any clothes on'. The spell was broken and everyone started to laugh at how silly they'd been.

"I am kind and 'woke' and against discrimination"

Except when that discrimination is against a minority group like transwomen!

Ultimately, its men not accepting that there are spaces and events that they cannot enter. They don't like the idea of women organizing without their presence. That and men, and a lot of women, do think that women primary role is to prioritise men. (And of course sport is full of cheats)

That's why everyone is claiming 'confusion' about this because everyone knows the issue, but men can't explicitly say it without sounded bonkers and women are scared to say no to men.

So instead they talk about inclusion, when really they mean male inclusion, they pretend not to know about sex, how male and female bodies are different, and how difficult it is for women to get a career in sport compared with men.

I can't see an end to this manifestation until women start rejecting the idea that a man can become a woman.