Statement by the Liberal Senator for Tasmania
Claire Chandler in the Senate:
Liberal Senator for Tasmania Claire Chandler has called for Anthony Albanese to reject slurs by Labor Senators against women who acknowledge biological sex as a reality and have concerns about safety and fairness in women’s sport.
“In the Senate last week, I spoke about the findings of World Rugby that biological males playing women’s rugby present a 20-30 per cent increase in the risk of injury to female competitors. These findings have major implications for many Australian sports and this is an incredibly important issue for millions of women around the world,” Senator Chandler said.
“At the end of my speech last week – I asked the question of whether Australians are able to speak freely about women’s rights and the reality of biological sex. According to the Labor Party, the answer is no.
“Despite the importance of this issue, my speech was interrupted by shouted interjections by a Labor Senator. Today in the Senate, Labor Senator Nita Green went even further, directly labelling not only me but also JK Rowling and other women, who share concerns about women’s sex-based rights being eroded, as “transphobic”*.
“I couldn’t care less about insults thrown my way from the Labor Party. But Australian women and girls are entitled to know if it’s official Labor Party policy to deride women for discussing safety and fairness risks in women’s sport.
“Mr Albanese should explain whether he supports the comments of Labor Senators. Is he aware of the research showing female athletes are significantly disadvantaged and at increased risk of injury when they are forced to compete against biological males? And does he know that unfounded accusations of “transphobia” against women like JK Rowling have been used to justify appalling abuse and threats of violence against women on social media?”
It would be interesting to find out if transwomen are competing in sports that don’t rely on physical strength and stamina, such as poker and pool, and how they fare when they do compete. Theoretically, women should be able to compete effectively with men in those sports although they have separate women’s divisions, presumably because women don’t perform as the same level as men. Transwomen and biological women should be on an equal standing in those sports.
I don’t think that TIMs will have much of an advantage over women in games like poker and pool. I don’t think that men have an advantage over women in those games either. TIMs wouldn’t have an advantage at chess either, as men don’t have an inborn advantage over women in chess.
There are more men at top ranks of poker, pool, and chess simply because fewer women want to play, especially as they get older. The existence of female-only tournaments is only a recruiting gimmick to try to get more women to play more.
Men may not have an “inborn” advantage w/r/t poker or chess, but they have the next best thing: patriarchal socialization, which holds that boys and men are smart, brainy, risk-takers, good at mathematical activities, and so on. I wouldn’t concede there is no male advantage in pool, because bigger people have a longer reach for making shots. Otherwise, the male socialization also permeates pool-playing. Not only are women not smart enough (supposedly) for strategic foresight, complex calculations, and spatial relationship understanding, these kinds of activities are restricted or forbidden for females, often on moral grounds. Expertise is gained only through practice. Males are allowed/entitled to devote the time to develop skill and expertise in these pursuits, whereas girls and women are not. Add in the factor that most unpaid labor involved in maintaining a home and family is done by women and girls, and a sizable chunk of practice (leisure) time is taken away from one sex, but not the other.
Male advantages in these activities may not be literally “inborn,” but the social environment into which male or female children are born by far favors the male every moment of his life. The absence of women in the top ranks of pool, poker, and chess is NOT down to the simplistic notion that “fewer women want to play.” The society that rewards males for certain pursuits, but punishes women and girls for following those same pursuits is a huge thumb on the scale of “fewer women want to play.”
As I have pointed out elsewhere, men do have an innate advantage at pool, snooker and billiards – they are taller (so find it easier to bend over the table, which is designed by and for men); and don’t have a breast in the way of holding the cue across the chest, as my husband found out when he played in drag for a charity match. He apologised to me for all the times he had criticised professional women snooker players for the way they positioned their cue – it is literally impossible for us to look along it the way men can.
Not to mention playing pool means leaning over a table, and how many of us want men staring at and grabbing our asses while we’re lining up a shot? I only played pool a couple of times, and even in a family setting, it was disconcerting to have my brother-in-law staring at my ass as I leaned over the table.
After the previous time billiards was brought up, I searched for information on women playing pool, and didn’t come across anything that made that particular point, although I’m sure it’s a reasonable one. There is an instructional video series by a woman professional pool player, and she didn’t say anything about it, but she is fairly flat chested.
Regardless, I think there is justification for separate women’s divisions in a number of competitions, even if there is no physical advantage of any sort, for all the reasons maddog mentioned.
Good for Claire Chandler.
‘I asked the question of whether Australians are able to speak freely about women’s rights and the reality of biological sex. According to the Labor Party, the answer is no.’
In Britain, Keir Starmer refused to support a proposal which would have forced every member (I think it was that broad) of the Labour Party to sign a pledge to support trans-rights and agree that trans-people really are the sex they claim to be on pain of being thrown out of the party. But supporters of the pledge are of course still there, and vociferous, as we saw from that little video Ophelia posted the other day.
Pass that proposal, and the Labour Party will be out of office until after its repeal.
@Sackbut
It’s different for pool and snooker: Pool players do not bow down so far as to have the cue contact their breast; they have only two hands as points of contact with the cue.
Snooker players OTOH have 4 points of contact: The two hands, the chin and the breast.
I confess to knowing very little about snooker. I didn’t even know how to pronounce it, let alone how to play it. The idea that one’s cue should touch one’s chest and chin sounds absurd to me. I have learned that not only is a snOOker table taller and larger than a pool table, but that people shoot differently too.
As for the ‘culture’ of pool, you bet it’s misogynistic. The reason it’s called “pool” at all is because the pocket billiard tables were installed in betting parlors, to give the idle men something to do between horse races. So it is certainly true that, like poker, pool comes from an atmosphere and tradition of masculinity (which is why I have never wanted much to do with either).
In terms of physical advantages, though, I don’t see much of one for men over women in pool. If there were an advantage to being bigger and stronger, then the superstars of pool would be big and strong, instead of looking like, well, Ko Ping Chung.
https://wpapool.com/ko-wins-thriller-over-filler-crowned-predator-world-10-ball-champion/
I don’t play, but it seems to me the basic mechanics are not all that different between snooker and other “cue sports”, as they apparently call them. I understand that different players may need to make different accommodations to allow for body differences: perhaps girth, arm length, height, hand size, and large breasts.
Here is an instruction video from Jeanette Lee, a professional pool player. She teaches men and women. I have not thus far found anything, from Lee or anyone else, that advises men and women to hold the cue differently. If there’s a different technique, it does not appear to be widely acknowledged.
https://youtu.be/6Wgf5gLDBks
Pool tables etc. were not designed in a vacuum. They were designed by and for men. I’m not very tall, and I can say for a fact that the table is too big for me. There are some shots I cannot reach. It’s like the generic cell phone, which was tested on men and fit comfortably in men’s hands, but which place a strain on my much smaller hand. Or like the heart attack protocols in medicine, which relied on data from men’s heart attacks. It took quite a while before medicine realized the symptoms were different for women.
And while it’s good that a man can realize a mistake and apologize for it, it’s yet another instance of the man not believing women or denigrating women, UNTIL whatever-it-is happens TO THEM. Another way in which women are not treated equally in society. They could just realize that women have reasons for things they do, and for how they do them.
Re pool tables; I seem to have lost the plot in this particular discussion thread, and I apologize. Maddog and tigger are of course correct that a lot of things are designed for men and may need at the very least accommodations for women, and I wasn’t trying to dispute that. I had been searching for some amount of different advice or instruction, and my far from exhaustive search didn’t turn up any, but there may simply not be any, because the need hasn’t been openly and widely recognized. Why was I searching for it? To see what it said, I suppose. But I do concede that there is sufficient reason to think that “cue sports” may well present a physical advantage for men.