a serious area of discussion that can't be discussed
This should be a serious area of discussion however it can't be discussed rationally. We see people quick to sling out homophobic and various terms trying to lump anybody that disagrees with them into a group. Building your own straw man(straw person?) and then knocking them down is always easy.
A few facts: For over a decade now there have been areas of competition where a second rate man decides they are female and dominates the female competitions. I haven't been paying it much attention but I believe it is bicycle sprints that is having this problem right now.
One person's rights stop where another's begins. The same is true of groups. However, every minority thinks they should be equal but with special privileges. When two minorities bang heads I do think it is funny in one respect, a serious issue in others.
I bet many have never suspected this but men and women are different!(joke if anyone needs to be told) This applies to both physical and mental differences. This has been proven by medicine, science, and practical application. In pool I argued quite vehemently that there was no reason that ladies couldn't equal men when I first came on this forum.
On paper that is true. Looking back, I have personally encountered dozens of men that might have been called better than A or shortstops. I have encountered one, maybe two women. One was a kinda manly woman although she was definitely female. The other one was stacked like the proverbial brick outhouse, all due to nature. She was however believed to be lesbian. I bring that point up because I do believe there are legitimately gay and lesbian people by birth, not inclination. I also believe that enough study would find differences between these born with different gender inclination people and the run of the mill person of their gender.
There will always be outliers, we can name a few in pool. However, for the most part there are some performance differences between the average male and female. With all of the small and not particularly strong men who have been masters of the pool table I don't think size or strength is the answer. Nor is the number of players. More women in pool or more Filipino male players? If it was simply a numbers game the strong Filipino performance wouldn't exist. There are economic and social reasons that I believe go a long way to explain Filipino performance but that is veering away from this thread. Bottom line, for now at least, females are at a disadvantage to males playing pool. One well endowed lady that I played with for years did often complain her boobs got in the way.
Now we come to a primary point. Men and women are different and men have an advantage. Even if the hormones are balanced to be female do born males lose all of these advantages? My guess is probably not. Hunters are built differently than growers and gatherers and it will probably take millions more years to flatten out the differences.
Should traditional lady's sports be destroyed by political correctness? The obvious answer is no but how do we prevent it while meeting legal and social demands to be politically correct? Eventually there may be competitions solely for "other" but we are a long ways from that.
No real answers but there are some real issues brought up by a totally bullshit first post. I suspect that most reading it didn't buy it even at first glance. Not that the problem couldn't happen today, and won't happen in the future.
There is a basic equality of all human beings. That doesn't mean that we are all genuinely equal in all respects. Hard to believe I know but the brutal truth is I couldn't beat Michael Jordan playing basketball at any time since about 1970. At my peak I would have bet every penny I could scrape up I could kick his ass on a pool table though. If nothing else I would break his back with him trying to play on a standard height pool table for twenty or thirty hours.
Sometime in the future we are going to have to destroy the politically correct myth that all people are equal in all respects. If not it will be the end of true female competition in many areas. That could include pool.
Hu