This isn’t about hating anyone. It’s about fairness. Men have physical advantages over women, and no amount of practice can enable a female to compete fairly against biological males.
In 2023 I reached the final in a pool tournament. My opponent was a trans-identifying man, and rather than legitimise this unfair competition I decided to concede. Men have a physical advantage over women in pool, and this was supposed to be a female tournament. No amount of practice can eliminate this disparity and make it a fair competition.
Transgender women had been competing in the female category for years, and I and some other women had been raising concerns about it. Shortly before this tournament the federation announced that it was changing the rules to exclude male people from our competitions. We were elated. But just a few weeks later, it did a U-turn.
Walking away from that final was one of the hardest things I’ve ever done. But I was inundated with support from all over the world. I banded together with some other female pool players and decided to take legal action on the basis that we were being discriminated against on grounds of sex because women, unlike men, were being denied fair competition. It wasn’t about hating anyone, it was just about what is fair for women.
Then the Supreme Court ruled that in anti-discrimination law, the word “woman” means biology, not paperwork or self-identification. Sports bodies that had opened up the female category to men were under pressure to reverse course. That federation’s rules are fair now. But even so I have ended up permanently banned from Ultimate Pool tournaments.
Because I was being targeted so viciously by transactivists, police advised me to wear a bodycam. I was wearing one when I was watching my son compete, a transactivist spotted me in the crowd and I alerted the security staff – but it was me that got kicked out. They blamed me for causing trouble and told me that if I didn’t agree with their version of events I would be permanently banned from all competitions, even as a spectator. I refused, and they followed through on their threat. I can no longer bring my son to his competitions and watch him play. I’m taking further legal action.