Accepting the refs call. Apologies for that
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just on a quck note pajac , you can do both bottom to up AND announce that , 2024-2025 season will be mixed mandatory, and the goal of boosting flinta player will be reached.
to balance these decisions, there should be something done to keep non flinta / non mixed groups interested and not feeling “discriminated” , although this word sounds wrong , its something we have heard constantly in this dialogue , and i think it just translate to a feeling of frustration and ostracism by male players that are scared to end up unable to participate.
so lets chill , there will be enough courts for everyone, at some point. lets not be afraid of tweaking the settings a bit to see what comes out of it.
we are lucky enough to be our very own federation and have impact on what we want to see to happen very quickly , its just about putting everyone on the same page.
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ok, so as a flinta person i am seeing a few red flags in this discussion and i think a lot of other flinta players as well…
first of all, it is not reverse sexism and reverse racism when the privileged group is asked to share those privileges. even though anti-feminist backlashes and harsh border politivs indicate that it is very scary…
i really would wish to not go into this direction in a discussion, please listen to those who are being oppressed. i know cis men also suffer from patriarchy, but this is not topic of the discussion here.
second, making championships mandatory mixed as a try out (no one said forever!), might be just the same as trying different formats, squad or bench… and anyways, as in every mixed tournament, majority (2 thirds mostly?) will be cis male anyways… and you know what, maybe there is also frustration by flinta players cause they will not get asked to play the euros or whatever. 
i have the feeling a lot of change happened in the last years in bike polo and i am happy about it, i also think there are now so many strong flinta players out there, without the empowerment through flinta only tournaments and allies, that would not have been possible. but i think there is much more to do in education and respect and support… as i said, claiming space as a flinta person or any minority group does not mean that the space of the privileged group is gone forever, but, can you move a bit maybe? and acknowledge flinta players as bike polo players, talk to them, team talk with them if you are playing in mixed teams, include them, see their strength and weaknesses, but also yourself, stop using discriminating language, etc. etc.
it’s not too much to ask for, is ist?
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My hunch is that as a proportion just as many FLINTA/FTWNB players oppose mixed mandatory as males… There were extended discussions about these issues when mixed mandatory entered the zeitgeist in 2016 on facebook and my sense, having re-read those dicsussions very recently, is that opposition was quite balanced between the genders. I have no reason to believe this has changed. There are good faith arguments against mixed mandatory, especially in it’s current 1/3 form, that have nothing to do with reverse discrimination or maintaining existing sexist norms. I am interested in critically assessing these objections however that has not been the focus of this thread so I have largely divested.
For reference, I support the trial of mixed mandatory as a general idea. However, in consideration of the many reasonable criticisms from a diverse range of stakeholders in the community I think the berlin mixed 1/3 orthodoxy could be greatly improved.
I would welcome a new thread that aims to deal directly with the objections to mixed mandatory in a pragmatic manner in the hope that we can reach a better consensus on the advantages and disadvantages of the various possible top down inclusion strategies.
Discussions about bottom up change to address systemic social dysparity in all its forms are no doubt incredibly important to our sport and I am not suggesting that the top down and bottom up strategies should be forever split into two separate and distinct categories of discussion however I have noticed the tendancy in this discussion to end up focusing on bottom up issues to the detriment of having clear and open dialogue about the various top down strategies and their relative merits.
Big hugs. D.
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Hello ,
We have made a survey about European polo FLINTA players and what they think about mandatory, we have some interestings opinions.
By now I can share you that we had 76 answers and i am pretty sure we can have more.
At Do you think that Championships should be mandatory mixed ?
We have 65,7% YES / 20% NO/ 14,3% NO IDEA
Do you think that Championships should be mandatory mixed _.pdf (23,9 Ko)
In which country do you play _.pdf (27,7 Ko)
Also now if EVERYONE/TOUXTES could answer and share this survey it would help having a concret worldwild opinion about it .
Thanks a lot !
xoxo
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OK here it is to contextualize this survey;
it started after a tournament in Rouen ( world famous “Epiphanie”) that was a mixte between “mixed gender team priority subscriptions” then oppened to anyone.
The tournament was running perfect as every other years till the final. Then in the final we had a “combat de coqs” between 6 worlds champs males players and the atmosphere was not reflected every other games before.
From that the french community started to have discussions about MIXED GENDER MANDATORY TOURNAMENT. This discussion became european cause we share opinion on the poloverse topic
“Polo in Europe is so much more of a boys club than in NA”
One of the principal argument against mandatory mixed was number of FLINTA players around Europe and their level.
Then Elena suggest me to make a survey to have a more concret idea of FLINTA number in Europe, their level and their volontee or not to make championships mandatory mixed gender.
The survey is more specific about championships because it is where EUROFLINTA are under represented ( you can see that also in David Barthod topic after Wolrds in Perpignan: WHBPC 2023 - Statistics
FLINTA representation in Euro Bike Polo
We (some euro FLINTAs) created this anonymous survey to better understand where the community stands on mandatory mixed.
Then non FLINTA wanted to give their opinion on a survey too so we had the idea to make it also worlwilde because it could really help next big championships organisations to suggest format that could satisfy a majority.
May also motivates more FLINTA to be part of championships organisations and descisions taking…
Woods and I made the new survey which is here to indicate what everyone think. I know it is not perfect but it is still a good INDICATIVE tool.
I will share results from now then let other people answering too and give finals results friday the 15 of March.
It is ONE answer by person and you can come back to your account to change your mind…
WHICH BIKE POLO DO YOU WANT TO PLAY?
Collecting WORLDWILDE opinions about formats and mixed gender bikepolo teams in championships
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Thank you Jojo, for your effort :)
Just a bit of a feedback:
The answer set for the “Would you like these championships to be mandatory mixed gender?” question is quite ambiguous.
Given that we want to find an answer, “Do we want to make obligatory mixed teams on Euros?” it will be hard to classify the answer “I’d prefer an alternative where…” as clear yes or no. It will be even more complex with other hand-written answers that people gave. Like “yes but gradually” - what it can exactly mean in terms of this year championship? etc. etc.
Anyway I think that poll will give us a lot of valuable informations :)
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just to add more context: initially the mandatory mixed idea emerged during the flinta meeting post berlin 2023. And somehow the circumstances bring back this idea again and again.
About the questionnary: before the sheets will be available to everybody, the votes will be totally anonymised.
More personnally:
It seems to me that the discrimination in polo is a vague term that needs to be defined concretely, which would allow to understand better why some measures against it are necessary.
Now I see the mandatory mixed for next worlds and a clear measure against the main type of discrimination in polo. The only measure that is concrete and is simple to implement.
With the target of changing the attitudes towards the non-cis males in competitive polo.
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Sorry, but I don’t agree at all with this and I’ll say it once for all :
“it started after a tournament in Rouen ( world famous “Epiphanie”) that was a mixte between “mixed gender team priority subscriptions” then oppened to anyone.
The tournament was running perfect as every other years till the final. Then in the final we had a “combat de coqs” between 6 worlds champs males players and the atmosphere was not reflected every other games before”
I’m not discussing any other topic here, so please don’t consider I give any opinion on something else than this, but this context IS SO wrong.
First it all not started in Rouen. Maybe some discovered all these matters in Rouen, better late than never. I even think that this matter was european before it was french, or swiss.
Then, the tournament DID NOT RUN perfectly before the 2 last games at all. I’m not blaming anyone here but other things happened in Rouen. There were issues like only 3 refs for the whole week-end, no ruleset available, difficulties to find goal refs etc etc etc… These things are usual and once again, I’m not blaming the organisation, I don’t do much better when the tournament is at home. Just saying that there is a way of improvement here.
Also, there were other games with a pretty bad atmosphere and some “nice words”. For example, I was (poorly) reffing a game and after a crash, one male player, from a mixted team, came to the player who provoqued the crash and who was still on the ground. He stood above him, pointed at him a threw a nice “Do that again and I f*** you up”. This is to me a beautiful example of what a “coq” can do.
I’ve already said what I had to say about this finale, and I’m still sorry it ended up like this and still take FULL responsibility for my actions (with a “s”). However, as long as I remember, nobody has been verbally threatened during these 2 (3 because winner bracket finale has to be included) games. So please, stop putting the whole responsibility of all the shit that happen in bike polo on these 5 guys and me. It’s way too easy looking at this, ignoring the rest and then give as a conclusion “Mandatory mixted will fix this kind of behavior”.
To me, the only proof Rouen gave us is that these kind of behavior is most of all a matter of individuals (male apparently) since it happened with a mixted team too …
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salut Boubou <3,
these lines incite me to a question I d like to ask you.
what do you see is targetted by the proposal of mandatory mixed?
and why even this proposal could arise?
( we both agree that individual agressive behavior between 2 males is out of mandatory mixed aims).
P.S: love mongrels forever!
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One stupid question. What’s the point of the voting option: „ I’d prefer an alternative where mixed gender teams would have more chance to be selected“. Ithink that the question is clearly only about championships in which teams register and first have to qualify in order to take part. So how is this supposed to work with the higher probabilities of being selected for mixed teams? In the context of championships it makes no sense to ask if teams could be selected or not
Every team has to qualify in regional qualifier to then play euros etc. So for me there are only two options as an answer. Either Yes or No (and maybe just to test it next year and then see). I don’t get the point for the other answers.
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i guess it was proposed there as an option since its z type of positive balancing we can already see a lot on tournament , its true that it would be a bit akward to implement as qualifier process BUT WHO KNOWS 
thanks for your constructive critic.
i agree that these two items are not clearly explained.
i also know that when the questionnary was created by Jojo and Woods, they wanted to include the alternative proposals they ve heard from other players.
for now, imo, the most important is to focus on the good will and good faith.
fill the questionnary even if its not perfectly formulated.
if none of the 6 items one might chose fits your opinions, there s a space “other” so you can freely propose other alternatives in a better and more concrete formulation.
pajac, personnally i ve understood “yes but gradually” as making part of a YES group, but certainly the “gradually” is confusing.
august, i heard about a proposition that could fit this item.
if these items can be explained in more detailed way, would be much appreciated.
it could be done by the quest authors, or the players who initially envisioned them,
or also by player who maybe already filled the questionnary and selected one of these 2 items, the ve certainly see better than me what it means.
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[important stuff]
It is not complaining; I find it hard to make a good poll, and I’m glad someone created one. I just want to point out that making any decision from that poll will be controversial.
[/important stuff]
Based on current results (I assume they will stay the same) and the ambiguity of answers, it will be really controversial to make one decision (mandatory mixed) or the other (nonmandatory mixed). Too many votes cannot be classified as strong yes or strong no; it means that no matter what the decision will be, a significant group of people could feel cheated or tricked.
For me, “yes, gradually” is as much part of a yes as no - Maybe some wildcard spots are reserved for gender-mixed teams (so “no” for mixed euros) but next year more or in main tournament? Or perhaps now 1 Flinta in team is required, and next year, at least 2 (so “yes” for mixed euros)? The same problem is with “I would prefer.” What does it mean ?! If you could select only yes or no, what would you choose?
Explaining these answers now is not a solution, some people already made that votes and it is hard to expect that they everybody will get back to the poll to correct it 
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i see no reason people wouldnt be able to come back and change their answers, if they see that the ambiguous formulation led them to chose a wrong option. the questionnary is modifiable. i tried with my own vote.
what do you think if instead of being pessimist and invalidating it, we try to do something useful to make this questionnary a bit more valid? at the end, no matter our opinions, i guess everybody would be interested in knowing what the comunity thinks overal.
why do you think that adding supplemental explanations to the ambiguous items wouldnt help?
if some people already clicked they certainly knew why. on the other side, those who didnt vote yet could see clearly what is ment.
i m sure that nobody means to sabotage this initiative by invalidating it right? so let’s brainstorm a bit about how to improve it.
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I didn’t say they won’t be able to; I just expressed doubt about their willingness to do so - most people don’t like polls, so it is hard to convince them to fill it out once and much more challenging to persuade them to correct it - that’s just my opinion.
I didn’t say it wouldn’t help to add a supplemental explanation. It will help but It will not make it perfect or good enough - it won’t correct previous answers. I noted that answers are ambiguous in the current form, and I expressed an opinion that using that poll to decide with a current vote distribution will be very controversial. Even if we add supplemental explanations to proposed answers, how will we classify handwritten answers?
@mironova_e I don’t think that it is nice to twist someone’s words like that - for sure, it does not create a welcoming basis for brainstorming.
I don’t have a solution. I would be more than happy to present it if I had. I believe bringing the club-based structure back to life at EHBA and using it to make decisions (clubs have their votes) will be better, but it is not a silver bullet. Such a poll is excellent and valuable for building some landscape, but it is not enough to decide - that’s just my opinion.
Such a decision is really hard to make. No matter how transparent, clear, fair and square the process will be, it will bring a lot of negative emotions. As far as I know, we should instead strive to minimise it.
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I think it is possible to imagine a system to increase the chance of being selected for a mixed team without making it mandatory mixed.
I didn’t give it much thought and to be honest I voted for mandatory mixed 
but it could be something like: For each qualifyers for a given championship, the minimum number of mixed team qualified must reflect the proportion of mixed team that participated in the qualification, and it could be the responsability of the country to find a system to respect this proportion.
Eg, for a country with 4 spots for Euros, where 15 teams participate in the qualifiers, in which 4 are mixed. It means approximately 1/4 of the teams are mixed, hence one spot is reserved for one mixed team. To make it happen, it could be somthing like: the 3 first teams are qualified anyway, and the fourth spot goes to the first mixed team non qualified already. If there was no mixed team in the 3 first, than there will be only 1 mixed team qualified, if there was a mixed team in the 3 first, than there will be 2 mixed teams qualified.
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in that case for exemple , if all mixed teams are ranked 13th ,14th, and 15th , it would then send to euro team 1st ,2nd ,3rd and 13th , which imo strays too far from an accurate representation of one country levels , thats why i rather have mandatory mixed rather than some weird ratio / quota experiments.
these systems are nice to include more mixed team in some tournaments tho !
shouldnt th e season of tournaments that teams get onto to qualify from country qualifiers to euro to worlds needs to showcase still the most skilled players ? , or you kinda loose the purpose of aiming at being "the world champions of bike polo " ?
i know there is also a claim that "bike polo is not diverse because of the lack of diversity showcased in such tournaments " but isnt it forcing a bit the diversity and altering too much the real level of those teams that gets qualified ?
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Would you have the same argument about another mandatory mixed sport?
Mixed double tennis comp do not remove the competitiveness of the game (even tho levels of the top 10 women would hardly get into the top 100 men despite being both pro athletes)
You can find examples of how people play other sports here
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my argument is that i prefer mixed mandatory , im not sure if you read that part right.
what removes competitiveness is the automatic qualification of one team fitting a quota , is mixed tennis doing that ? or other mixed gender sports ? i m reading your wiki link but its not really talking about slots allocations .
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