"Transgender downhill racer wins first race by nearly 13 seconds"

[ShotsFired]

The mountain bikers get the madness of it - the reactions give me a glimmer of hope.

www.facebook.com/MBRmagazine/posts/1659492707420575

I also notice the shoutiest pro-trans commehter on that thread(who is being laughingly dismissed) is

ffs

I don’t know what to say, tbh. ‘I’ve been beaten by other chicks’. Words fail me.

Even if strength is not an issue (which I imagine it is), a transperson who's been through puberty as a male will probably be taller and have differences in their anatomy (pelvis, lower to upper leg ratio) compared to a woman. This must make a difference in cycling? Even with a "stand down" period, there would still be an advantage. It's not just about the level of testosterone you currently have in your body.

There needs to be an answer to this that isn't biological females losing out in sport.

Why is this being allowed to happen? Quite literally do not understand why the other female athletes are not shouting???

That would be akin to them wearing a T-shirt saying "I'm a witch. Burn me".

It is really an opening for second rate men. They can’t win as men and have no shame in competing against women where they have a chance of success. The men do not take the bullshitting. It is a shame that the organisations in these sports do.

Surely people want fair competition in sport, otherwise what is the point?

agree- why are other women athletes and their coaches not shouting louder? Only the wonderful brazilian basketballplayer - such an eloquent letter - surely masses of others would be rising up in support?

Fucking joke. No matter how hard a woman trains for a physical sport, a MAN can now compete against her and win.

The male elite race results:

Male, elite: Ed Masters (New Plymouth) 2:51.09, 1; Brook MacDonald (Napier) 2:54.02, 2; Matt Walker (Kawerau) 2:55.50, 3; Keegan Wright (Rotorua) 2:56, 39, 4; Wyn Masters (New Plymouth) 2:58.00, 5.

and the female:

Female, elite: Kate Weatherly (Auckland) 3:27.93, 1; Shania Rawson (Tauranga) 3:40.59, 2; Amy Cole (Christchurch) 4:10.92, 3; Melissa Newell (Wanaka) 4:37.10, 4; Sam Berryman (Rangiora) 6:59.73, 5.

Wonder why Weatherly (3.27) isn't competing in the male section (winner, 2.51)????

Bloody ridiculous. And for Weatherly to say: 'I’d like everyone to be on the same page. If everyone’s not happy then maybe everyone’s not doing their best racing and I just want everyone to be having fun and doing their best' is disingenuous at best and bloody insulting at worst.

Anyone here ‘out’ on fb? Brave enough to post a link on the comments to the mumsnet threads? I am not ‘out’ unfortunately!

I used to be openly Terry on fb but not any more as I had a TRA posting that I'm a transphobic bigot on my business page. I was able to block them and delete their comments, which I'd luckily seen a few minutes after they'd posted them. It was a wakeup call for me.

Terfy not Terry ffs!

(Waves at Terry!)

Tbf, maybe not the best idea anyway, as whilst there are a significant number of sensible gender critical posters, there are also a hardcore of actual transphobes lurking there too, not sure we want them over here!!

I have posted a comment about men winning races by cheating.
I've gone 5* general no holds barred TERF since last night.

Here's an article looking at some of the physiological differences between male and female cyclists.

www.cyclingweekly.com/fitness/cycling-and-gender-how-and-why-male-and-female-cyclists-need-to-train-differently-344365

It looks pretty clear that, even though a woman might beat a man long distance, in a sport like this a man has a clear advantage in a number of ways.

It's ridiculous.

All the men on that thread are TERFS.

*You're missing the point, Paul:

"Gender," as opposed to biological sex, is just a collection of dangerous sex stereotypes--ones that women, for example, once fought long and hard to disavow. As such, "transgender" is really just the rejection of one such stereotype (which is good) and the adoption of another such stereotype (which is not so good).

People should never encourage sex stereotypes. Rather, they should encourage every person to be more precisely who he or she is as an individual, without reference to external cultural impositions, including alleged "gender" and "transgender" stereotypes.*

Copied directly from one of the pages. Hallelujah, a man gets it.......

Oops. Bold fail!

There is another thread on this case which is worth a read

I pointed out that if you look at last year's results for the same event Anton Weatherly finished 34th in the men's race but was still 10 seconds faster than the women's winner.

It's a great way to win, isn't it? And it's not cheating at all, sports bodies everywhere are just happily going along with "man says he is woman, let him complete in women's events".

Laurel Hubbard is competing in the Commonwealth Games ffs.

It's interesting, too, that most of the people on the facebook comments section think he's had bottom surgery.

How much more frothy would they be if they realised that, generally, transwomen still retain their full anatomy.

How terribly brave and stunning.

The IOC rules are complete nonsense and driven politically, not scientifically. Fuck every single person that thinks it's ok for biological males to compete against biological women. It's completely against the ethos of sports and fairness.

It's lovely to see so many men on there making the same comments that we are on here

It's interesting, too, that most of the people on the facebook comments section think he's had bottom surgery

'Bottom surgery' and back to competitive mountain biking within 3 weeks is pretty impressive. . Less competition though