by Lauren Smith, spiked
This is what the endgame of trans ideology looks like.
This is what the endgame of trans ideology looks like: an all-male final of a women’s pool championship.
Last night, the UK’s Ultimate Pool Women’s Pro Series Event 2 in Wigan had its final match. This women’s pool event wouldn’t ordinarily have grabbed the headlines, except for one curious detail: this year, there were no women in the final. It was played between two transgender-identified men – Harriet Haynes and Lucy Smith. They had defeated four female opponents each before making it to the final, which Haynes ultimately won. Broadcaster Piers Morgan took to X to call the incident ‘preposterous’ and ‘cheating bullshit’. Meanwhile, former Olympic swimmer Sharron Davies described it as ‘bloody ridiculous and grossly wrong in every way’.
To make matters worse, Haynes already has multiple women’s championship titles under his (sizeable) belt. In 2023, he prevailed in the Women’s Champion of Champions final in Prestatyn, Wales, not because he outperformed the other players, but because his opponent refused to compete against him. Lynne Pinches, an actual woman, forfeited her shot at the national title. She said that ‘whenever you play a transgender player, even if you win, it doesn’t make any difference because, in your heart, you know it’s unfair’. Haynes won the match by default.
While it’s true that, in pool, the difference between men and women might not be as pronounced as in other, more physically demanding sports, men do still have some biological advantages. These differences – though hotly disputed by delusional trans activists – are obvious to anyone with eyes. The chief issue being that anyone who has gone through male puberty will have, on average, a much wider wingspan and be much taller than someone who hasn’t. As Pinches has explained, ‘they have a longer reach, and a lot of them are taller than us’, making it easier for men to make shots with greater power and speed.