British Cycling doubles down

It's interesting what's in (and what isn't) publically available British Cycling board and council minutes here www.britishcycling.org.uk/minutes?c=EN There's not much mention of this policy, but recent minutes aren't there. They talk about getting lots of input from the external diversity and inclusion board they've set up who are www.britishcycling.org.uk/about/article/20210205-Our-Diversity-and-Inclusion-Advisory-Group-0 That includes somebody from Stonewall obviously and Pippa York - who featured in the video posted upthread

Patriarchy in action.

Men who identify as men and men who identify as women will always stick together.

They're talking out of their arses.

Total fail.

Why do BC think we have womens sport in the first place?

All the best policies come with an addendum that say “we’ll discipline you if you disagree with this”, don’t they? It’s a real hallmark of a popular, well reasoned, fair position.

The Mail has picked this up.

www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-10481379/British-Cycling-faces-revolt-athletes-blast-trans-policy.html

It's amazing, isn't it, how transwomen never seem to want to take up traditionally "feminine" pursuits like tapestry or growing the prettiest hanging basket or felting. It's almost like they want to just carry on doing male sport only winning over women instead

Perhaps when all the actual women and girls have stopped bothering with cycling at all (as appears to be the desired aim of British Cycling); and gone back to sitting doing embroidery, the transwomen will follow and aggressively demand their right to compete in lacemaking and millinery competitions. Maybe.

Seems like sex discrimination to me creating rules that blocks women from protesting against unfair treatment. As Sports England has said it clearly:

Competitive fairness cannot be reconciled with self-identification into the female category in gender-affected sport.

You should be able to state openly the ruling of the highest body of Sport in England without being fined.

So step 1 is to get female cyclists to raise this with Sports England.

Plus if you were Muslim or Catholic you could get them on religious discrimination too.

This is a legal case waiting to happen.

I want someone to test this. Post on social media. Send link to British cycling. Challenge them to fine them for this in a legal way.

Ridiculous. So many barriers already to girls and women cycling. This discriminates against and makes matters even worse for all, and especially the determined few with sufficient talent, resourced and determination to persist to get to compete!

The wants and feelings of a small minority of biological men should not be prioritised over fairness and improving access to sport for biological girls and women.

Any legal MNers out there who could take a look?

What powers does a membership organisation have to fine people at all, let alone to fine people for publishing unapproved opinions? If you join a cycling org (or any interest group) you dont assume you have agreed to agree with all their future opinions on political issues or all of their beliefs. How can you predict what a cycling org's opinions will be? It's the sum of its members. This seems to be belief discrimination. And it's authoritarian of them to stop members from criticising a policy. What if all membership orgs did that? National trust members not allowed to criticise the cost of the cream treas? Ok that's a trivial one, but im sure there's some farming practices and tenancy practices which members should be able to critique. They have set a policy in stone for ever by preventing any criticism of it. Terrible precedent.

I don't think this is proportionate at all. How can this be challenged legally? How can the whole policy be challenged? It discriminates against women.

It enrages me that anyone thinks this is ok but I take some comfort from the backlash that British Cycling are going to get when the public see what they are up to.

Sharon’s tweet contains a link to a quick survey.

female professional sportswomen give up lucrative careers, leave education early, move away from friends and family in order to train and compete, train full time often 7 days a week, delay or even give up their chance of motherhood etc. Do BC expect them to keep doing this while knowing there is a 10% performance gap and that this new group don’t face any of the same challenges in terms of periods and fertility.

Sounds as though they have forgotten the rest of their legal obligations in their rush to include men in women's categories...

This is the twitter thread where the sexist twats announced it.

twitter.com/BritishCycling/status/1486686437605060613

[quote Bananarama101]So it seems British Cycling new policy of inclusion can't actually be questioned or the fairness of just lowering testosterone to 'level' competition. They have the ability to limit or even seemingly fine members.

4w.pub/british-cycling-trans-policy/[/quote]
This is just horrifying in it's misogyny. It was huge mistake to pass the buck to individual clubs and expect these boys networks to act in the interest of women and girls. I expect British Cycling would be happy if all females just fucked off and left the men to it.

As for fining people (women, it's always women) for wrong think or pointing out the realities of biology and sex in sport I just have no words.

It worth pointing out that these policies don’t just affect competitive sport. They affect recreational sport/activity. It’s well know that to increase female participation sports have to offer women only activities - why? Because predominantly male mixed sex sports/clubs/classes can be offputting for some women.
So in some sports there are now mens, mixed and womens but all defined by gender not sex. In reality this means they are all mixed sex and women will lose out because they’ll self-exclude.

Pushing these decisions back onto individual sporting bodies to make policies was always going to cause problems. Women’s competitive sport is becoming a mess.

Loads of anger on this from mums of daughters who will be the ones that suffer

BC. Don’t care about women or girl cyclists

Worth posting this again