Cambridge bans trans rowers from women’s boat race

If Nicholas’s father is who I think he is, he won’t ever have to work a day in his life.
Talk about entitled male privilege.

I think there may be quite a few things that Nicholas does not understand…

I don’t think Nicholas understands what “morally unacceptable” means.

This is the aspect of the whole gender ideology fiasco that I hate the most (aside from what it has done to children). Because even if we hopefully deal with the whole issue of trans-identified men in women's spaces, and the media takeover of truthful investigation and reporting, the underlying misogyny will still be there.

So, we will always have to be on the lookout for the next rendition of Why Men Should Have Everything, So Let's Just Take Stuff From Women.

Also, why is the Men’s captain of the Darwin Boat Club sticking his oar in (ahem) to push men into the women’s teams. A decision which will only disbenefit others is so easy to make, isn’t it? Especially when those others are women.

Remarkable that their fine claimed notions of ‘long standing values of inclusivity and friendship’ doesn’t extend to facilitating the inclusion of trans identified men onto their team. No, it is easier to put women at a disadvantage in their own sport.

Goodness, Nicholas Budenberg appears to be of the view that trans identified men should be ousted onto the women’s team rather than be included in the men’s team. How very bigoted of him.

I hope he reframes his bigotry and indeed lobbies for a number of places on the men’s team to be reserved just for trans identified team, to be gained by simple majority vote. Otherwise he is a hypocrite when he talks about inclusivity.

On a different topic, there are so many misogynistic men revealing their creepiness, salivating from the mouth at the thought they get to disrupt women’s and girl’s lives under the guise of ‘virtue’. Probably can’t stop sniggering in private.

Totally agree.

Still no sign of the CUCBC minutes from the autumn on their website either...

The difference is that unlike the other examples, this is/was very deliberate and planned disruption - they don’t want to be fished out, pulled into bank, helped off the water etc, they want to cause maximum strife.

Hey @Brefugee , unless there have been more recent changes I don't know about, the mixed rules are paralympic rowing specific. Mixed rowing doesn't really exist in able bodied competition (apart from the odd 'fun' event).

There are various para categories for visually/physically/intellectually impaired athletes. I think mixed categories came about to try and create more opportunities for meaningful participation and competition in a sport that has relatively few people doing it.

Gender ideology confusion did make this all a dogs breakfast for a while, but World Rowing and British Rowing have now sorted this out for their own events. Para events have generally been a bit slower to sort this out, but I think in this case the governing bodies are the same.

whilst I agree with pretty much all of that (I just checked the weightlifting world records for max 60kg bodyweight men vs women in the same weight category (63kg is the closest), the men's record is over 20% higher) but I more or less jokingly made the suggestion almost to deliberately expose the difference between men & women - I bet if you did that you'd get loads of men moaning that a 59kg limit was somehow discriminatory because, yknow, men and women have different bodies.

Nope. Men aren't stronger than women just because they are bigger.

I'm 7" shorter than DH and can see how it would be easy to think it's scale that make men stronger but I'm 5'10 and my last year of uni and a few years after boyfriend was the same height as me. We were the same age give or take a few months, roughly the same weight and were similar levels of fitness (both played a team run around a field sport once a week plus one training session for that and a couple of gym trips) so the only variable between us was sex. He was much stronger than me. Male and female bodies are different in lots of ways that add up to a massive male strength/speed advantage even when the man is the same size as a woman.

Smaller women deserve fair sport too.

Isn't it rowing that has a rule that TW could row in women's teams, but that mixed 4s had to be 2 men and 2 biological real women?

tbh i think that any sport that allows TW to be in women's teams needs a 100% TW team to enter. The more the merrier so that eventually there are no women anywhere near it.
Then we set up our own sports again. (not really but the sight of 8 teams of men where there should be 8 teams of women might wake some of the "be kind" wankers up)

Agreed. It's been very depressing seeing so many handmaidens on both of those sites, more than happy to prioritise male feelings. There were definitely males in women's boats at last year's Bumps but hopefully they won't be there this year (tho DS isn't rowing this year so I won't get to watch)!

Many factors involved in an VIII, likely they were just a weaker crew. I seem to remember Oxford women being quicker to embrace similar recruiting tactics to the men in the earlier years of being televised.

But whether you are an effective cheat or not, a cheat is a cheat. Lose your integrity, you always lose. Even if the rules permitted self ID then, for me that would not be in the spirit of this private rivalry.

Thinking again, I wonder if this happening relatively early in 2015 may have meant CUW learnt a lesson early and in the years afterwards as this became more prevalent were able to quietly discourage similar from happening?

All speculation on my part, I'm going to have to find someone from that era to have a discrete chat with and satisfy my curiosity. Perhaps I'd better start accepting some of those alumni invites...

Why doesn't the men's team automatically allocate a space to a transwoman for inclusivity purposes?

They could have done that for transmen years ago if they were committed to the idea that transwomen are woman (and by default transmen are men - except they don't actually believe that when it comes to it).

I guess I mean that a small protest like that would be on the same level as other incidents like 'cow falls in river'*, 'altercation with other boater', 'crew capsizes' which are infrequent but stuff similar to that happens every few years and are dealt with by marshalls and organisers.

If there was credible threat of a much bigger protest that would be different. Better hope the weather is rubbish - like usual!

*this happened. cant remember how we eventually got it out but it took a while 😆

Didn't Osiris beat Blondie by 15 lengths that year? So they weren't a very effective cheat.....

Good. Those who have gone through XY puberty can compete against other rowers who have gone through XY puberty.

I played a competitive sport until I was 19 and for fun, we would mess around with the blokes. Even though I was on the top womens’ team, the blokes on the lower mens’ team would run circles around me; I never stood a chance.

@AlexandraLeaving I was told that the minutes from the captains’ meeting would be posted up on the CUCBC website by now but tellingly they haven’t been…

@GCburneraccount Well you say “should be easy to deal with” but is it really, for a bunch of students trying to run a big head race like Fairbairns? Even three people in a dinghy in the middle of the river around a blind corner could cause carnage, and I am not sure what the race organisers can do about it in the moment, apart from cancelling the race.