I think we all saw this coming.
https://www.bbc.co.uk/sport/cycling/65718748
Under a new participation policy that the governing body said was "predicated on fairness", such athletes will compete in an 'open category' with men.
Female races will be "for those whose sex was assigned female at birth".
The changes will prevent riders such as Emily Bridges potentially being part of the British women's team.
Last year Bridges - the country's highest-profile transgender cyclist - was stopped from competing in her first elite women's race by the UCI, cycling's world federation, despite meeting the rules at the time.
Bridges reacted to the announcement with a statement on social media, calling the change a "violent act" by a "failed organisation" that was "controlling" the conversation on transgender inclusion.
She added that the racing scene was "dying under its watch" and that British Cycling was engaged in "culture wars".
British Cycling's policy had allowed transgender women to take part in elite female events if they met testosterone-based regulations.
I think this is a response to the anti-trans(women) frenzy that is whipped up by the media. The basic truth is compete where you can, but don't ever dare to win anything or come close. That is when the witch hunt starts.
https://www.cyclingweekly.com/news/riders-speak-out-followin...
Riders have spoken out about the "hateful agenda" of mainstream media after trans cyclist Emily Bridges won a fixed gear crit race which was run - as advertised - outside of traditional gender categories.
Bridges won the 'Lightning Category', which was advertised in advance as being open to "trans men and women whose physical performance aligns most closely with cis-women", and had seven entrants in total.
Lilly Chant - who identifies as female - was second. Third place went to cis-female and NLTCBMBC fixed crit racer, Jo Smith. The Mail stated that the race had the result of "leaving [the] young mother in third", choosing to publish the story with a podium shot of Bridges and Chant kissing, alongside Smith, carrying her child to the podium.
Comments
Not Surprised.
Without going into all sorts of complicated, likely flawed, evaluation procedures that would likely cost participants exorbitant amounts of money, I think this is fair. Of course there are unnumbered different circumstances for Trans folk. The only trans persons life I can evaluate is my own, and I was not on chemicals until late in life. Had someone started all this as a prepubescent, it might be worth arguing in court. Here in the US, child welfare folk seem to be frothing at the mouth to go after the parents of young trans folk. Sad.
Gwen
Expect a lot of Discrimination
My brothers and sisters can't get it through their thick skulls, GG do not want to compete against trans women. If one is trans I'll stand beside them and swear they are all female if they wish. There are hundreds, thousands of trans females who make my jealousy meter go into overload. Most GG never looked as beautiful. Most of those girls are not in sports competitions. Many have entered beauty contests and won. They are happy and content being themselves, mothers, housewives, girlfriends, scientists, engineers, nurses, doctors, professionals in every trade.
It's not a submissive role to be a female. I for one think it's the superior sex. Females have courage, strength, love, kindness, caring, and sharing so many males don't have. It's why God made them mothers. It's why those who are sick or dying prefer the female to care for them. It's why children instinctively run to females when they are scared or hurt. There are hundreds, thousands of reasons females handle the role of female most males can't do no matter how hard they try.
If one has to compete against females in their sport to prove how much better female they are. They missed part of the estrogen download. I wouldn't call them a real female.
The most intolerant are the ones demanding tolerance. Try love, understanding, kindness, forgiveness.
Hugs Leanna
Barb
Oklahoma born and raised cowgirl
Your point then
TLDR - Be happy with what you have and don't rock the boat even if it is not fair.
Gotcha.
It sounds like advice to women who wanted womens rights at one time but it is always about fear of losing what you already have.
Sorry, but nothing ventured, nothing gained in life.
Demanding Has Bit us in the Butt
What does fifteen billion, nine billion, twenty one billion, etc etc have in common besides large numbers? Losses of corporations who pushed the LGBT agenda. The public is tired of having LGBT pushed in their face. Bud Light can't even give their beer away in some places. Target stockholders had an emergency meeting this week to damp down the CEO woke agenda before it bit them even harder than it has. Disney has laid off over twenty thousand and lowered prices trying to entice the "family" back again.
I've begged God to recycle me since I was five years old. They put M instead of F on my birth certificate. No one made me Trans. It's not a birth defect or design flaw, but a blessing. So many times I should have died, I didn't. Miracles? No, God knew I hadn't learned enough to finish this life cycle.
Why should I feel anyone owes me because I am. In this world of entitlements, and it's someone else fault, everyone is demanding special rights, laws passed for them. I dare say the majority of males and females never got to chose who and what they are. Why should they give up their rights for those like me? Should they have special rights for being male or female? Really, should GG (genetic Girls) give up who they are, what they trained for, earned, deserve, because my rights supersede their rights?
If one is part of the alphabet LGBT and believes they are entitled. Try pointing at specific person and telling them, "You owe me."
In a way I'm competing against GG at their game. "You're very pretty." Doesn't mean they can't win the same compliment or have some gentleman open the door for them too. Or, "May I help you ma'am?" They only have to bring the glam. There isn't a woman in the world who couldn't beat me at their game.
Oklahoma born and raised cowgirl
The Mail said..
Is the key bit there Leanna.
If I believed all the tripe written in that rag, I would have a blue rinse and look down on Europeans.
Fortunately, The Daily Wail is not a favoured read at Perkins Towers.
I worry that some trans girls are doing us less favours than Nicola Sturgeon did. Let's fight the important battles, like not being called "sir" by an officious civil servant, or being allowed to go for a wee in a public toilet.
Who wins a bike race, less so.
I remember being so proud when Hannah Winterbourne was the first trans Officer in the British Army. That was an achievement.
"Lately it occurs to me..
what a long strange trip its been."
I agree with almost
I agree with almost everything you three have said. Not living as a trans woman through fear and cowardice. Perhaps I am not worthy to comment. I only get to indulge my inner female for a fleeting few days a year. I do not experience the harsh reality that many of you do.
My pet hate is when they say "That's what trans women are like". I always argue when a pervert in a dress says they are trans after being caught. I say "do you really think all trans women are like that?" Most would be totally incapable of rape due to surgery or hormone treatment.
Because there is no "Standard Trans Woman" to draw a line under and say, you must meet this standard, they ban all of them. Before anyone says it, I know all women and.men are not the same. They try to standardize that with the same hormone checks that allowed trans women to compete.
Would it have been better to say that trans women who never went through male puberty could compete? How many that fit that description are top level cyclists?
Leeanna
It is clear
that this 'guidance' has little to do with any science and is certainly political, the decision taken to bolster the position of BC with its sponsors and paymasters. BC and its predecessor the BCF, have a long history of banning things which set the sport in the UK back by decades. Open road racing, women competing at anything, professional riders - the list goes on, add in the huge money that the BOA and (insert latest headline sponsor) invest and yes, the writing was on the wall.
Why an outright ban? surely a ban on international selection would've surficed, we are looking at a huge pool of trans riders here after all, perhaps as many as, let me think, one. As for policing this policy, there is no regulation currently in place that requires riders to authenticate their birth gender or indeed for organisers to ask for it (flawed as even that concept is under UK privacy law). I wonder what Ms York thinks about the subject?
All in all, a bad decision handled badly.
Madeline Anafrid Bell
Political
Yes, it always is.
I for one object to anybody who is a trans apologist on this issue. Fair standards are already in place yet we continue to be marginalized in our identity.
As for that 'poor mother' who lost, well tough, train harder and participate in a fight where there is a reasonable chance of winning.
This was an open competition for goodness sakes.
A few years ago a woman
A few years ago a woman complained about losing a darts match to a trans woman. She said males had better spacial awareness so had an advantage. That may be a nature vs nurture thing, but physical development plays very little part of throwing a tiny dart a few feet.
Trans women will always be attracked for putting their head above the parapet.
Leeanna
Fairness
It comes down to how you define fairness. To some people the "fair" answer is whatever gives them what they want. However, it really means balanced, fair to _both_ sides. Someone like me, decades post-op, is not physically the same as a born woman of my age, however much I wish that was the case.
Don't get me wrong, I support our rights in every way except for sports unless male puberty never happened. I wrote my letters and made my donations to support the Gender Recognition Act and am still paying every month to Press For Change, but sport is different. All our other hard-earned rights have one thing in common: They did NOT take anything away from born women whereas sport, particularly at elite levels, does. This fight will only ever make us enemies.
I was an elite athlete pre-transition and gave it up when I transitioned because it was the right thing then, and still is. Even if it was scientifically provable that we had zero advantage that wouldn't matter, the moment we won something the cries of "cheat" would go up, and we as a group would never be forgiven. And the higher the level, the more it would matter.
I would _love_ to reverse the changes that puberty wrought on my body, but it's not possible. Fair? no, but this is real life and we have to live with it. The backlash here is only likely to get worse.
I've lived quietly for a very long time, but have been tempted more than once to call in to woman's hour or whatever to make the point that not all trans women support this fight, but - so far - living my life without press intrusion has won. I don't want to make enemies here either. I know some here agree with my position, but others feel that we should be allowed to do whatever we want. Fine, they can believe what they want but that doesn't mean that those who believe as I do are against trans rights - as I have seen suggested in earlier threads.
Fairness
The vast majority of us are NOT elite athletes. So, what if we finish third. or fourth or fifth or sixth etc in a 100 women field, say in a marathon. Is this still fair to protest that some transwoman had finished ahead of them.
By your logic, finishing anything but dead last would raise the ire of born women and we should not risk it.
What of born women who have had a raised level of testosterone as some Olympic athletes had shown, yet allowed to participate? Is that fair too ?
In my case, the sad truth is even pretransition with full testosterone I would probably be no better than the lower quarter of women athletes in riding. Seriously. Since I have been without it for decades I would be in even worse condition. Same can be said about my running ability. I sucked.
Fair?
Finally, let's say a ciswoman went through a serious encounter with steroids around puberty time and did it for a decade and then stopped. Should she be held back from competition?
Edit: BTW, the final question is not hyperbolae. I did a search about it and it is not rare at all to have teen girls take steroids.
Fairness
The issue is (mostly) about elite competition at the moment, and weakens as one goes down through the levels – although the cis woman who comes second to a trans woman at a club or school level event will likely still feel aggrieved or cheated. Like I’ve said before, it’s about the perception more than the reality and that won’t change.
Sports is a wedge issue, look at what’s happening in the USA right now which has grown from sports participation. Sometimes a fight isn’t worth fighting when the price is too high. See Pyrrhic victory.
Women with high T levels – like Caster Semenya – or those who have been on steroids can fight their own battles. It’s their business, not ours and we have enough going on without wading into those arguments.
Disagree
This is really about all competition, elite or not.
I don't care if we don't ever compete or not but it is bad precedent to let ones rights to be arbitrarily taken away from you even if one does not even exercise them. Women gained the right to vote in the US in the 1920s but whether one decides to exercise that or not is up the the woman.
If one does not defend a justifiable right then it just emboldens them to take more rights away from you since they feel they can now dictate what rights you should have.
And the whole steroid thing has every relevance to us steroid fueled pretransitioned women.
Elite?
The OP is about exactly that, elite competition in British Cycling, and it has arisen because the cyclist in question is close to a place in Team GB, potentially an Olympic team place.
What we are arguing about is whether this is a “justifiable right” or not. I don’t think that it is fair that I can’t get pregnant, but my feelings don’t overrule biology.
I don’t know what “steroid fueled pretransitioned women” means. Are you suggesting that HRT or anti-androgens are steroidal in nature? Just asking as I really don’t know. I’ve never knowingly taken steroids and it would have disqualified me from competition if I had done. I couldn’t even take mainstream anti-hay fever medication because it contained banned substances. I think that was steroids, but certainly banned.
Re: Fairness
I think you have a very good point here! Quite often the long term achievement of acceptance for the [minority] community we belong to is worth a LOT more than short term glory for a very personal goal or agenda. You need a lot of wisdom to pick the right battles to fight. And battles for personal glory and/or vindication, more often than not, in the long term is detrimental to the community or society.
And on the other hand, I feel that all that clamoring to participate in highly competitive activities -- especially where physical performance is at stake -- is damaging for every single one of us in the trans-community as a whole.
Each and every one of us (as well as every single person living on this world) need to remember that "my rights [and freedoms] end where they impinge on the rights [and freedoms] of others". But when I (or for that matter, anybody) insist on exercising my rights with total disregard for the rights of others, I become nothing more than an abusive, intolerant and toxic person.
Personally I feel that these [transgender] athletes making such a ruckus about being banned from competitions at any official level, is playing right into the hands of the right, conservative and fascist media and politicians to the detriment of everybody. Do we want to revive the socio-political of the 1930s and 1940s that reigned in Spain, Germany, Italy and even Japan?
To give you all a for example: The German government recently issued a travel advisory for Florida, because of the intolerant [and dictatorial] policies promoted by the government of Florida.
And yes, I will freely admit to a bias against the so-called "professional" sports, as well as most "amateur" competitions, because: a) I have been on the receiving end of bullying by so-called athletes with more muscle than bran; b) I have bee ridiculed and punished by the sports teachers throughout my school years; c) I have seen to many riots perpetrated by the sports fanatics (fan is just an abbreviations of fanatic); d) I have seen the reporting of people killed, as well as injured, by sports fanatics, either by inciting a panicky riot or by "celebrating" with guns and/or fireworks; and e) I have seen relationships and friendships break-down and fall to pieces because of the fanatical attitudes by the parties.
Do I need to remind you of the English hooligans in the 1980s and 1990s, where there was a virtual ban for English spectators to acquire tickets for football matches by English teams in many European countries. A segment of the English football spectators had become so fanatical, and thus intolerant and violent, that many other countries decided to ban almost all English tourists around these football matches.
Don't make waves
As examples goes to show in the US, one has to merely exist to attract the attention of those folks who oppose us. So, no worries about playing into their hands. They are attacking us over even before this whole stupid sports issue had popped.
They want to take away ANY rights we have to exist if they can.
I do not want to Chamberlain away something that should be a non-issue if properly managed.
Speaking of sports...
The rookie ball player had finally been called up to the majors and was told to report to the Yankee clubhouse for indoctrination. He would finally get to wear the pinstripe suit and wanted to make a good impression, so he asked his mother to help him make a proper Windsor knot.
"Oh, son," she sighed. "You still have so much to learn. There are no ties in baseball!"
Sport is like that. Somebody is always better at something, and that's the point of the contest. Otherwise, everyone would be wearing four-in-hands, or bolos with the little silver-and-turquoise slider. It would be nothing but ties all the way.
Hugs to all,
Erin (who twice got banned from church league softball because she could throw a curve underhand, and it wasn't fair that no one else had spent hours every day for months learning how by throwing at a chalk outline on the barn.)
= Give everyone the benefit of the doubt because certainty is a fragile thing that can be shattered by one overlooked fact.