Matt Glantz has angered poker Twitter by joking that he now identifies as a woman, his mock-up of the all-time women’s moneywinner list sparking a backlash…
Identifying as a woman takes me to 2nd on the Women’s All Time Money List in Poker.
Please respect my decision w/o any unnecessary nonsense or blowback.
I expect @PokerNews @TheHendonMob & @CardPlayerMedia to make all necessary changes to the rankings.
Ty for your support! pic.twitter.com/NRDLpvjc6X
— Matt Glantz (@MattGlantz) April 9, 2022
The Philadelphia pro’s tweet didn’t go down well with the multi-talented poker and chess guru Jennifer Shahade, who wasn’t slow in telling Glantz that if it was meant as a joke, it was a particularly awful one…
If you really ID as a woman now, Congrats.
If you’re doing this in bad faith, it’s vile and a sign you’re losing whatever argument you’re trying to win.
🏳️⚧️ 🏳️🌈 ♥️ https://t.co/RJdBnnlx2A
— Jennifer Shahade (@JenShahade) April 10, 2022
PokerStars pro and two-time US women’s chess champ Shahade added: “So you are a woman now? I certainly wouldn’t judge that. Do you still go by Matt? I’m just confused because I haven’t seen any other examples of you IDing as female in your life/Twitter. But I muted you for a while so may have missed something. If so my apologies and Congrats!”
There was a serious point to Shahade pulling Glantz up, however, as she explained: “I’ve worked for over a decade in promoting women and girls and gender minorities in mindsports. Never once have I seen someone do this in bad faith in chess (and rarely in poker). If you’re the first to, it just proves that…liberal policies affirming gender identity work.”
In Glantz’s make-believe world as a woman, his earnings of $7,387,139 would see him leapfrog the likes of Annie Duke, Kristen Bicknell and Kathy Liebert to take second place, only Vanessa Selbst ahead of “her”.
With women making up only 5% at most of players in the game, and often having to put up with all manner of misogyny and abuse, the numbers and relative problems for transgender poker players are unknown, but unlikely to be better.
There were plenty of others who felt the same way as Shahade about Glantz’s apparent pretence, though, with transgender poker player Alexa Heart explaining the seriousness of the issue.
It’s cute you thought this was funny..or even witty..or that this is even how it actually works.
Talk to me when you’ve been beaten within an inch of your life because you’re trans after turning down some meat heads advances because he felt less of a man.— Alexa (@thealexaheart) April 10, 2022
Another transgender pro, June Cuervo, shares her poker journey on social media, with Instagram posts from her cash games and tournaments in Vegas…
June stated in an interview with Lee Jones last year: “I know zero other transgender poker players in Las Vegas. Perhaps I can set an example for somebody else, let them know that they can be out as transgender and still be welcome and active in the poker community.”
Cuervo also detailed her experience of the one event that HAS been headline news regarding gender in years gone past: “I played the Ladies Event at the WSOP, and that was mostly a good experience. I rocked up to the registration window, showed the person my ID, and they said, ‘Cool. Gimme $1,000.’ Of course, it’s $10,000 for a man to enter that event, so there were no issues there.”
Good news for June, but there have been attempts to ridicule that event – and gender in general – in previous years, with Shaun Deeb among those to “gatecrash”, dressed in drag.
Deeb turned up along with several other men in 2010, some as a supposed protest, others having lost “prop bets”. Deeb, in a pink dress, claimed he was planning to donate any winnings to women’s charities but failed to cash.
David Sesso, another who played that year, stated afterwards: “I apologize to anyone I offended and vow to never participate in another Ladies Event.”
Meanwhile, back in the here and now on twitter, poker pro Tim Reilly had a slightly different take on the Glantz gender debate…
This is a stupid take and deducts from the real argument that XY and XX gender should be segregated. If you want to identity as The Wizard of Oz go ahead but poker is a game of the mind and rankings shouldn’t be segregated.
— Tim Reilly 🇺🇸 (@TimReillyPoker) April 10, 2022
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