May 10, 2024
FFS (Female Free Speech) Friday honors women and girls who are speaking out about the harms of “gender identity” to women and girls as a sex class. Today’s FFS Friday honors Deta Hedman, a British darts champion who has refused to compete against a man who calls himself a woman named Noa-Lynn van Leuven in the Denmark Open.
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“I’m not playing against a man in a women’s event.”
Photo: GB News
Hedman competed in the Women’s World Masters final for the first time in 1990 and won it in 1994. She stayed at Number 1 until 1997. She competed off and on for decades and appeared on the list of the BBC’s 100 Women in 2020.
She got into some trouble in late 2023 for voicing opposition to the inclusion of men in women’s dart competitions, stating:
This argument is not to help me at 64. I could walk away from the sport I love tomorrow. This is for the Eleanor Cairns, Aurora Fochesato, Paige Pauling and Hannah Meek starting their dart careers. If we are going to have a girls or women's world championship it should be the gender of your birth, which in my view is a fair and level playing field.
In other words, she was speaking out on behalf of younger female competitors.
On May 5, the feminist publication Reduxx published a story about Hedman refusing to compete against a male player the previous day:
A female darts player has forfeited her match against a trans-identified male in a protest of his participation in the women’s category. Deta Hedman refused to play against Noa-Lynn Van Leuven during the Denmark Open quarter-final yesterday.
Hedman, of Whitham, UK, is a three-time WDF World Champion runner-up, and has been a fixture in the women’s darts world since the 1980s, having played in both the World Masters and the Dutch Open amongst her numerous other career highlights.
In response, swimming champion and overall rock star Riley Gaines offered to pay Hedman the prize money she forfeited.
Some suggested Hedman had just faked an illness in order to get out of competing, but on May 7, Hedman “set the record straight” about why she refused to compete against a male player.
She bluntly told German newspaper Bild at the weekend: "I'm not playing against a man in a women's event."
Photo and caption: GB News
Ms. Hedman, today’s FFS Friday is for you.
These FFS articles are very inspiring. They're a powerful antidote against the daily gaslighting and misogyny.
No, Virginia, there is no such thing as a male lady.
I send virtual hugs, kisses and fist bumps to Deta Hedman and Riley Gaines, two awesome women, and of course to Kara for spreading the truth every Friday.
bravo to Hedman and yet again to Gaines