A wave of abyooos and exclooosion
BBC drools over guy who plays darts:
A transgender woman and darts player from Hull who has faced a wave of abuse and exclusion from competitions says she has been questioning her future within the game. Samantha Lewis’s passion for darts runs deep, and the sport has spanned generations in her family.
That is, his grandparents played darts and his father plays darts. Very generations-spanny, very newsworthy.
However, Ms Lewis, 28, has been left wondering if she should continue in the sport.
Here he is:
That arm, that wrist, that hand, those shoulders, that neck. Never mind darts, he could be wrestling bulls.
But oh dear, some people are saying men shouldn’t be playing in women’s darts competitions. Can you believe it?
Ms Lewis was banned from participating in the England Darts Open in Devon, receiving the rejection message via Facebook – a move she said was “very unprofessional”. The exclusion and online harassment have taken a severe toll on her mental health.
For some reason the BBC doesn’t say a word about the mental health of women who want to compete against women.
“England Darts has canvassed its players and executives on this very important issue concerning the future of women’s darts, and how England can continue to protect the integrity within our sport for its female members,” it said. It added that including “non-birth-gender females” in women’s competitions could “ultimately result in the demise of our women’s sport”.
Other darts competitions do allow transgender women to compete, depending on their testosterone levels. While Ms Lewis qualifies for them, she is taking a break at the moment to focus on her mental health. Her message to people who have contributed to her current struggles is a plea for empathy and respect. “Just keep your opinions to yourself. I’m still human at the end of the day. Think before you speak,” she said.
A plea for empathy and respect for him, that is. The BBC doesn’t see fit to say anything about empathy and respect for women.
In other news, Vlad Putin urged empathy and respect for his position regarding the war in the Ukraine. “At the end of the day, I am only human”, he said. “Think before you speak.”
This game could be played over and over. The women who have to play darts against someone who is large even for a man could say they are only human. ANY individual could meet criticism the same way. In the end, it doesn’t amount to anything. Truth is what matters, not delusions. Sometimes kindness is misguided, especially when it results in real harm to other people.
I am a little puzzled by this. I know nothing of competitive darts. Are there actual differences in the way men and women play such as distance from the target? I can see that men might have an advantage in a taller stance and greater upper body strength, but as I understand the game, what counts is accuracy, not how hard you throw it. Women supposedly have an advantage in fine motor movement and hand-eye coordination. Marathons are now co-ed, couldn’t darts competitions be?
As they aren’t, this guy should just play with the men while wearing a dress. I used to be a Yoga instructor and I used to tell discouraged beginners, “you start with the body you have.” My point with them was that with practice they could gain strength and flexibility. My point with Ms. Lewis would be slightly different.
I did a little digging on that question before posting and word is there is some advantage for male players.
Julia, there may well be advantages for men in darts given that all else being equal men are taller, stronger, and have a longer reach than do women.
In professional darts the regulation board height and oche (throwing line) distance is the same for both sexes; the centre of the bull’s-eye is 5’8″ from the floor – putting the highest-scoring section, the treble-twenty, at 6′ – and from the floor directly below the front of the board to the oche is 7’9″. This already means that on-average shorter women have to literally aim higher to attain higher scores than do on-average taller men, and hitting higher targets is harder than hitting lower ones.
On top of that it is clearly advantageous to be as close to the board as possible before releasing the dart. That’s why players stand not facing the board full on but sideways, with the leading foot parallel to and touching the oche and with the body leant towards the board as far as possible while still retaining balance. This stance clearly puts the throwing hand of a taller, longer-armed male player closer to the target at the point of releasing the dart than it does a shorter-armed, less-tall woman.
Then there’s physical strength. Gravity affects a dart’s trajectory even over so short a distance, so the harder a player can throw the dart the faster and therefore straighter it will fly. A stronger player can therefore aim more directly at the target whereas a less-strong player will have to aim above the target to allow for a more parabolic trajectory – a much harder shot, in other words. And that is why an on-average shorter and less-strong woman, who not only has to aim upwards because of her height, but has to aim even higher to account for the more arching trajectory necessitated by her arm strength, is at a disadvantage against an on-average taller and/or stronger man whose comparative aim will be lower and whose darts will trace a more direct trajectory.
Julia, in addition to AoS’s very well laid out reasons, there is also the matter that in 98% of the cases where there is no segregation by sex almost all the prizes go to males. We have seen that most recently when music awards went all in on being a single class and men took home almost everything.
It isn’t just that men are bigger, stronger, and faster, the entire world has a bias towards male success.
Women who have written groundbreaking books are lectured on their subject by amateur males, women at top corporate levels are drowned out in meetings by male underlings, and women brought in as CEO’s to fix up the mess made by her male predecessor are paid a whole lot less to fix than he was to break.
Almost every day I give thanks that I was born a male and don’t have to deal with the shit thrown at women, especially when it is thrown by other, ignorant women.
To my knowledge, marathons are not co-ed¹ in that there are still awards for the first male finishers and the first female finishers. The men are competing against men, and the women against women, even if they are running at the same time.
There are reasons to have many kinds of awards or competitions reserved for women, even if there is no physical competitive advantage; awards for writing or music, for instance. It is unfortunate that so much of the discussion in the media gets forced to be about competitive advantages.
There are pressures to turn various events co-ed and do away with the women’s category. I think many of the arguments used to support allowing trans-identified males to compete in the women’s category, mostly about performance differences, can easily be used to justify doing away with the women’s category. I don’t think the trans activists recognize this, at least out loud, in large part because the trans-identified males want to compete specifically in the women’s category, for the sake of validation.
¹ I use “co-ed” here because it was used in an earlier comment and people know what it means. I don’t like the term. I think “mixed sex” is probably better, but not drastically so.