Female pool player Lynne Pinches refuses to play transgender opponent and walks off at start of match

[IwantToRetire]

A pool player has forfeited her chance to win a top national title in protest at the sport allowing a transgender woman to compete against natal females.

Lynne Pinches packed up her cue and walked off as the final of the Ladies Champions of Champions got under way over the weekend.

Spectators clapped and cheered Pinches’ protest while her opponent, Harriet Haynes, appeared bemused before later picking up the trophy by default.
Pinches had been among a host of top female players to speak out in recent days over transgender women being allowed to compete against them in elite competitions.

More Female pool player Lynne Pinches refuses to play transgender opponent and walks off at start of match (yahoo.com)

I think the problem with the webarchive links is that having the www bit in the middle of the link is being interpreted by this site as a new link, which is why it ends up doing weird things. Using the link icon appears to work when I'm originally typing, but then so does just pasting the url https://web.archive.org/web/20240108130037/www.bbc.co.uk/sport/wales/67807719 so I'll have to see once the post goes up

I don't condone any abuse if Harriet did suffer any real abuse but I absolutely condone people objecting (in non-abusive ways) to Harriet's cheating. The very fact that Harriet can't understand the advantage men have is a clear indication of Harriet having not the faintest clue what it actually meant to be a woman.

Oh dear.

Have people been 'misgendering' him?

I can imagine there would be men abusing Haynes because that does happen (some men think they are the Man Police and take it upon themselves to give out abuse to other men who break from sex stereotypes).
Pointing out that Haynes should be playing with the men, that's completely fair comment in my view.

Haynes complaining of abuse, that isn't acceptable. The body in charge shouldn't have u-turned. The tw, though, is abiding by the current rules and, by the rules, isn't the one at fault.

They have u turned because of a legal threat by Haynes (not mentioned in the BBC puff piece), so yes I do think Haynes is at fault. I also don't think it's particularly an excuse that the "current rules" enable males to take advantage.

https://x.com/pincheslynne/status/1744310164713341046?s=46&t=SPorwN-mokktL467rcZ57g

If Haynes is being abused obviously that is wrong. - but we've seen people claim misgendering is literal violence so claims of abuse can never be taken at face value.

I consider it abusive to threaten legal action to play in a match where you have an unfair advantage.

It literally doesn't matter. There are sex segregated categories in pool. If you're a man - enter the men's.

I didn't know, or had forgotten that. I still think the governing body are at fault though. Tw gonna tw. Toddlers, even if they're in their 30s need to be told 'no',

I wonder if it's a similar situation as to the disc golf in the US? They're too small and underfunded to defend against legal action?

I don't like the selfishness and entitlement that seems to be emanated by men in these situations. But they shouldn't be abused. They've already weaponised victimhood.

I see that Lynn Pinches and some of her colleagues have set the legal wheels in motion:

https://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-13021475/female-pool-players-suing-transgender-policy.html

Female pool players are suing their governing body over its transgender policy in a landmark legal case. If the claim is successful, the bodies would have to restrict women's competitions to those born female.

Thats really interesting, I think all of the other cases I've heard about has been transwomen challenging policy around sports (rugby,cycling etc) in the UK but none of the cases seem to have come to court yet and I don't know is that because court cases take a long time or if the cases have been dropped

Cue sports are going to cause a lot of argument about the level of male advantage. So obvious in contact sports, swimming, athletics, less so in cue sports which rely on technique rather than just strength. Personally, I believe they really don't need to make the argument that women are at a physical disadvantage compared to men. It should be good enough to say, if women want their own competition, open only to women, they should be able to do so. And you could apply the same principle in chess, poker, and many other areas (like the Oscars!). And in cue sports, as is also the case in golf, I believe, the mens' comps are in effect 'open', that is, women are free to enter if they qualify. Which is fair enough.

I wonder now what the ruling bodies will do. Will they want the bad publicity of court cases? Bearing in mind that the whole Ultimate Pool thing is quite a recent set-up. They want to break into the mass TV market, like snooker, instead of being on backwater channels and YouTube.

duc748

In pool power definitely gives you an advantage off the break where it is possible to clean up the entire table.

That and height, reach, Hand span (for making the bridge) spatial awareness, even breast size can cause issues when leaning over the table.

I don't disagree. But it's a matter of degree. You could point to pint-sized blokes, much smaller than many of the women players, who can break just fine. Men do have an overall advantage at elite level, but I rather argue it in terms of women having a right to their own comp.

Good to see the coverage, comment BTL are almost all favourable with just a few men who don’t appear to understand sports

Those pint sized males have the power advantage still over female players though. Just because they are pint sized doesn’t mean they lack the power advantage and grip strength etc. That is the whole point.

That’s how chess argued it, although there is definitely a physical element in pool that’s not in chess.

It's late, but to be clear, I'm not saying that men don't have an advantage in cue sports, I'm simply saying that it's not so obviously clear-cut as it clearly is in contact sports like rugby, and people might well say, this woman I saw break, she broke just as well as a man. So, the difference is there, but it leaves room for quibble. And I think women are entitled to have their own comp, entered into only by women, if they want, In any sport.

We have the evidence!

Main tournaments have always been mixed sex - women rarely if ever break through.

Women can certainly play and clear up a table, but can they compete equally with men? The results suggest no.

I think we have to face this reality as much as we'd like to think it's down to a lack of self belief / sexism.

There needs to be a reason though for that right to exist doesn’t there? The argument would need to be one that has a legal basis. The GRA and the EA allow for single sex sports where fairness and safety are at risk if males are allowed to compete with women. Fairness (rather than safety) probably covers the sports where men have a social advantage like chess, darts, cue sports etc. obviously there may also be physical differences (or maybe mental differences in the case of chess) but safety isn’t really arguable in those sports.

We can argue it’s fair to allow women to have separate categories in those sports because they are so underrepresented. But if women and men were on a completely even footing why would anyone argue separation in the first place?

I guess the risk of arguing that the sexes should have separate things just because it is their right is that this could go both ways and men can say it is their right to have single sex categories also which would scupper the idea of open categories.

This is a really important case, I missed the crowd funding but if there is a need for increased I will donate.

My daughter is an aspiring female cricketer, we need to protect women's sport.

There's no legal basis at all, is there, for separate 'gender' competitions though, is there? In fact, if it's 'gender' rather than sex then surely they're liable to be directly discriminating against nonbinaries, agender folx etc. (and gender critical people but no-one is going to give a shit about us.)

Took a while to find them but Let Women play pool will find a garden.

Gender is no basis for a system of (sports) governance!

Lynne Pinches had turned down the offer of herf irst ever professional contract. She has rejected a place on the Ultimate Pool Tour, which features the game's top 32 players.

There is a remarkable, for the BBC, story, on thr BBC Sport site.

https://www.bbc.co.uk/sport/wales/68183503

Interesting about the Blackball ruling bodies (there's in effect two separate, and rival ruling bodies, presiding over different rule-sets). If the blackball people are OK with restricting entry to natal women, and presumably satisfied that they are safe from legal challenge in so doing, then Ultimate Pool are surely on shaky ground for backing down after initially saying, women only? I wonder about all the other top women players, though. I guess either they don't mind playing against TW at all, or they grin and bear it so as to keep their place on the Tour.