Poll - 92% of women's cycling pelaton vote against racing trans women

[flyingbuttress43]

www.telegraph.co.uk/cycling/2022/04/11/90-per-cent-elite-womens-cyclists-opposed-racing-transgender/

Apologies if this has been posted but can't see it. In today's Daily Telegraph sporting section and trailed on main paper front page.It's behind a pay wall, so a few extracts below.

A survey by the Cyclistes Professional Assicues had canvassed female members before making representations to the sports's governing body, the UCI, which intends to review its rules on trans competitors. 92% did not agree with trans athletes racing in the women's pelaton.

Triple world champion Marion Clignet, who is part of a group which wrote to the UCI last week calling for its guidance to be rescinded said her group "was for the inclusion of transgender athletees in cycling without compromising equality in women's cycling".

"This does not mean the women don't believe there should be inclusion for trans athletes in cyling - we just want to keep the promise of fair and safe cycling to women alive and well."

But legal experts have stressed the need to widen the debate to questions of human rights. Dr Seema Patel, a senior lecturer in law at Nottingham Law School said: "This is not a simple scientific debate, even the notions of biological male and biological female are far more complex than the public would expect them to be."

Really? Clearly Dr Patel is not as good at biology as she is at law.

Jugen Steinacker, chair of World Rowing's sport medicine commission has described the current situation as as mess.The governing bodies of swimming and triathlon are reviewing their rules.

Mr Steinacker said there was also significant opposition in his sport to trans gender women competing in women's events. "Elite sport cannot be inclsive without compromising the rights of women to stand a fair chance of competing for medals."

@PermanentTemporary
With swaps you need a Club with a social secretary who can faff about making arrangements. Which means the Big Sports. Or I suppose tiny ones might be able to manage something because they’ve only got 3 people & the College cat to organise. But there are heaps that don’t fall into either of those categories. And (at risk of sounding impenetrably Tabby) some Socs won’t Swap they [just] Squash - just the perception of Swaps is an issue for some groups. Islamic Socs don’t swap, for example, even though they could of course very easily simply not have any alcohol with their meals.

As for [5-]pennying, it’s an incredibly gendered behaviour. It’s also grim: people might ensure they have actual rolls of coins, but they don’t worry about how clean they are [not] before dumping them into food & drink.

Cambridge has an odd relationship with alcohol though: the concept of formal drinking societies isn’t exactly positive &/or healthy; & when student intoxication is seen as a concern because undergraduates “were vomiting within sight of High Table”… bit difficult to act the moral authority when you pay fines in port though, surely?

(There’s a fairly good explanation of swaps & pennying from Cambridgeshire Live [2017] available here. Presumably because Town would like - & deserve - an explanation of WTAF Gown are playing at much of the time.)

That’s all gone a bit off the main thread, sorry.

It is a mess of an article. Basically it’s desperate to keep up the Most Oppressed And Vulnerable line throughout, which is difficult because i. that’s objectively not true so reality isn’t on board & ii. even the interviewees aren’t up for it, despite being fairly keen to sing that song.

It’s an article about LGBT students so I wouldn’t expect them to cover disability - but that there’s no challenge to (or reflection on) the whole narrative of untold & unparalleled suffering jars. One might expect a journalist (even a student one) to consider that they might perhaps want to consider NOT making the LGBT student athletes look like entitled arses. Not least because making someone stand out in such a way in Cambridge takes some doing to the point that article (Mr Captain of Lower Boats isn’t exactly well-hidden from his crew, despite the namechange-for-article) is going to have really ticked some people off.

[quote PermanentTemporary]@NitroNine thank you! Fascinating and frustrating article as you said. I'd agree that it mixes up lots of things that are a major concern with others that just suggest a non-understanding of anything (comparing race times in rowing, for example, as an absolute measure of speed). I'd never heard of swaps or pennying so if they're traditions they're quite young, and they do sound fairly horrible so I'd support those being seen as a bad idea... But completely agree about mixing up different reasons for problems (which interestingly the interviewees point out themselves) and the total uninterest in disability access.[/quote]
Just popping in to say that pennying was very much a thing at Cambridge boat club dinners when I was there in the second half of the 90s! As was the no-hands eating thing, although it applied to everyone at the table and not just to the (presumably mostly female) individuals being victimised with 5 pence pieces. There would also be a "boat" race, where two crews would line up against each other and race to down shots of port in quick succession, starring at one end of the line and working towards the other.

Heavy drinking was ubiquitous at that time (it was the age of ladettes and cool Britannia!) so there were lots of rather rah drinking societies (split by sex) and I wouldn't be surprised if they did swaps then as well. I wouldn't know - I didn't touch the drinking societies with a bargepole! But I did row, and can testify that boat club dinners ("BCDs") were notoriously debauched, not least because they came after a term of relative abstinence while people were training for races. Interestingly, though, I don't actually recall them being overtly misogynistic - it was more that the 1st mens captain was expected to get off with the 1st ladies captain, etc. (Obviously, there are clear issues of consent and coercion here, but it didn't feel - at the time - as one-sided as you might expect.) And the whole point was that there were male and female crews, so everybody was hyper-aware of the biological differences between men and the women - I think it gave the dinners an added sexual charge.

Sorry, that was rather rambling It just reminded me of a part of my life I haven't thought about for 25 years! I can't imagine what negotiating all of this would be like in today's world. My (female) boat had a gay (male) cox and I can honestly say that this wasn't an issue apart from some rather lame cox/cocks puns. I'm sure he did face some casual homophobia, but he didn't go out looking for offence and was just great at what he did. I was thrilled (as a bookish, unsporty girl from a comprehensive) to be given the chance to try out rowing in a supportive all-female crew and I can't imagine I would have taken that opportunity if I'd had to compete for a place with entitled TRAs demanding a seat in the boat as well.