English Blackball Pool Federation

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The hearing is scheduled for 7th-11th April at Canterbury County Court.

Tribunal Tweets will be following the case…

Live tweeting sessions Abbreviations
J - His Honour Judge Parker
HH - Harriet Haynes, claimant
RW - Robin White, claimant’s barrister
CC - Colman Coyle, claimant's solicitor
EBPF - English Blackball Pool Federation
PT - Paul Thomson, defendant
AG - Anna Goodwin, defendant
SC - Sarah Crowther KC, defendants’ barristers, and
SS - Sapandeep Singh Maini-Thompson
JRL - JR Levins LLP, defendants’ solicitor
JG - James Goodwin, witness for defendant

The original thread has been deleted for “breaking Mumsnet guidelines”. Not sure why but possibly “misgendering” or possibly making it too easy to find the crowdfund @mumsnet it would be good if you could let us know so this thread can stay up. Do we have to pretend that the Claimant is female?

well yes. but without sexism there's no trans. if you're not prepared to believe that all women think and feel like this and all men think and feel like that then trans makes no sense at all.

so if you're the kind of sexist twerp who thinks his lady brain makes him a woman then woman = man + handicap probably makes total sense to you

They didn't say what the handicap would be but I suppose it could possibly be a weighted cue or an extra shot for women who are playing against men.

I think a weighted cue would be an advantage not a disadvantage. You need to move the cue less fast to transfer more momentum to the ball.

Handicapping is an batshit argument anyway. You could make the women's category of this sport accessible to men by ... making it an entirely different sport. No, piss off.

So there are males (stallions and geldings) and mares. Geldings are a subset of males.

That's interesting about calls to declare if a mare is in season when she races.

This tallies with that delulu Reddit thread about periods the other day that had a lot of TIMs describing their "jumbled hardware and software".

Dumb question - are we expecting a judgement this afternoon? Or sometimes later?

Cues already come in a range of weights, it's personal preference. There's no advantage, as such, to be had from a heavier or lighter cue. Some players use a heavier special cue for the break shot only. This is fine, and allowed by the rules. Other players just use their ordinary cue for breaking.

Plus Rigs. Which are male but with undescended testicles.

Thanks for clarification moto.

in horse racing it's so far recognised as to never be a topic of discussion that geldings (or equine eunuchs, males who've not been through puberty) are bigger and stronger than mares. and horses are less dimorphic than apes such as humans.

So do people know that the horse is male, or can one be confused with a female at any stage? (This may be a silly question.)Thinking about male sports
people with DSDs.

There was a rig at my stables recently, quite clearly still influenced by testosterone. It's rare to encounter a stallion outside a stud farm, so most horsey people are taken aback by the difference when they eventually see how one behaves. Even just standing still there is a "presence"; a kind of perpetual alertness that you just do not get with geldings.

EH was crystal clear.

-Men who block testosterone and take oestrogen have a reduced muscle mass of up to 5% in the first year, and then this plateaus at 7-8% over/after 5 years. Studies have shown that their strength is retained, even when muscle has declined.

-Relative Strength is only Absolute strength divided by your weight. Even if a lad has to bend over, it is doesn’t use much, and there is loads of headroom left over. (From others I had thought it would take nearly all his energy to not fall over, poor weakly lads). Relative strength may be important if you’re hauling your weight on a bike, but absolute is the one that is most important in pool.

-Height is important. Layout, taking shots etc. An outstandingly, uber skilled player may be able compensate, but it is still important. Mentions a fellow of 5’3 (would have had all the absolute power and proportions of a man though, my addition). A lad of 5’9 is not very tall for a man, but is still above average for a woman. There was a good basket ball player of 5’4, but you’d still say that height is an advantage in basketball.

The sheath (and penis) mean that there is no doubt that the horse is male. However, someone who doesn't recognise stallion behaviour (or if the horse is a youngster but old enough to be gelded) might mistake one for a gelding.

Male horses have a big gap between the anus (up under the top of the tail) and the sheath, so a DSD would have to have a big impact on the placement of the sheath to mean that anyone would be confused.

Also, it is not even a given that they increase their fat mass. This may be down to lifestyle adopted. If these men exercise they won’t go to lard.

No, judgement will be 'reserved' ie given later. It will probably be several weeks or even months. This is usual. The judge has asked the parties what arrangements they would like for the 'handing down' ie giving of the judgement. This will be discussed this afternoon and may involve fixing a date when they can all come back to hear it.

An additional factor in this case is the FWS judgment which is due next Wednesday and on which the parties want to make written submissions to the judge. He will want time to consider those. He has also indicated he has a period of leave booked so that may also affect the timing.

Thank you, all you horsey people.

Does anyone know how the SC decision will impact on this case.

HH has paid for a GRC so if the SC decide that men with a GRC are not female for the purpose of the EA will this just make it slightly easier for the judge to rule in the favour of EBPF or will it mean he will have to rule in their favour?

But what about the sports exceptions? Restrictions as proportionate means for achieving legitimate aim and all that.

Without any obfuscation, we’ve learned men retain their male advantages and absolute strength to all intents and purposes. Even when they take oestrogen and block testosterone.

Gosh, those ‘research’ (BH and HH) papers for lads marking their own homework were given a weight they didn’t deserve. Not only were they not rigorous, they were glaringly untrustworthy. I might even call them propaganda. That is just my opinion, though.

It must make a difference, because everyone involved seems to think so, but I'm not clever enough to see how. Because to my mind it just rearranges the comparators.

If he's legally male, the comparators are women (for sex discrimination) and other men (for discrimination on the basis of gender reassignment), and if she's legally female, it's the other way around.

Either way, s/he's disadvantaged relative to both comparators because s/he doesn't have a class to play in (either because s/he's stuck between classes ability-wise or because the classes are of indistinguishable ability but it would be traumatising to compete as a man).

Even if there's discrimination though, it can be legal if there's a LAPA, as @Cailleach1 points out. In this case, of stopping women's sport from being FUBAR.

PS I know you're going to say that there's a LAPA that permits exclusion of men from women's things, as embodied by the SSEs. But we can just stick another LAPA on top - of 'trans inclusion'. This law makes my head hurt.

From TT😀

J - Good morning. We have one more witness. Anything to raise?
An incident in court building, I can just say on behalf on def team, have recieved reassurances there won't be any further incidents. From our persp we are confident no further steps need to be taken
J - Anything Mr W
RW - equally confident
J - good thank you
J any other
SC 0- call EH

https://threadreaderapp.com/thread/1910605368129946003.html

What was it that Emma said that made everyone laugh?

I suspect it might have been this response:

J - there are issues around ads and disadv of being taller, and there's a separate discussion about adv of longer arms. Surely not the case that you have longer arms, different proportions
EH - there is a normal distribution, there are extremes
but males tend to have longer arms because they tend to be taller,
J - so a correlation between height and arm length but its not perfect, can you quantify
EH - well I don't have data but I would say that a 6' person would have longer arms than me
J - well, thats not surprising

This, exactly!

I think a good handicap would be having their cueing arm tied being their back.