Emily Bridges claims there is no advantage in sport

[miri1985]

Maybe someone else can explain it to me because as someone who has never been involved with sport at a high level, I don't understand the point if you claim not to be able to beat your rivals, I mean isn't that the point of high level sport? If you're not competitive, what is the point in competing? Wouldn't you just do it for fun otherwise than put your body through high level competition? In a previous interview didn't Emily Bridges state that the aim was to be competitive again?

www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-10857133/Emily-Bridges-determined-prove-boasts-no-advantage-trans-woman-cyclist.html

"In her first interview since, Bridges told DIVA magazine it was wrong to say that trans women in sport retain inherent advantages and claimed to be able to prove it.

'I understand how you'd come to this conclusion because a lot of people still view trans women as men with male anatomies and physiologies,' she said.

'But hormone replacement therapy has such a massive effect. The aerobic performance difference is gone after about four months.

'There are studies going on for trans women in sport. I'm doing one and the performance drop-off that I've seen is massive'."

I'm genuinely surprised that some men want to win so bad that they don't even care if they're beating women. I really wouldn't have thought that would be the case. I suppose for the hyper competitive type this makes sense? What a total twat.

Let's hope this goes no further. Emily is an ultra competitive sportsperson who is driven to win, whether an argument or a competition.

Please sporting bodies do not mistake this for 'being in the right'. Many sportspersons would sell their grandmother to succeed, look at the mindset of Lance Armstrong.

PP making the same point.

Yeah good point about Lance. Some people will do anything to win.

This diagram says it all for me. Most of the advantages that come from being male and going through male puberty, do not go away when a man transitions.

And Emily was happy to continue to race in male cycling as recently as March this year, though as a concession Emily wore their hair in pigtails.! I wonder when that article was written, most magazines have a lead in time for copy and photographs of at least a month, and it’s only May now. I haven’t read the whole article but I wonder if her convincing and winning performances against other male students were mentioned?

See, I genuinely really like this pretty recent picture of Bridges. Really positive and as it should be, standing arm in arm with their team mates as they all pick up a bronze medal in the men's team pursuit in February '22.

Yes, the sort of blokes who sulk if they don't thrash their own five year olds at swing ball.

I read this today on another thread (Allison Bailey #16) posted by DelurkingLawyer:

A friend who specialises in sports law who I assumed would be 100% right-on amazed me with a lengthy diatribe about how VO2 uptake doesn’t change post transition. They’d read all the research. They said as much as anything else they were unsupportive of TW in women’s sports because they were offended by the shit disingenuous arguments.

Very interesting. And significant.

In that pic of Emily and team mates you can see Emily is the biggest of them, despite crouching a little and wearing pigtails. And that's the MALE team!

That was kind of the other men to include Emily on the team when by her own admission her performances have deteriorated so very badly since they started to transition. Maybe there are lots of kind men in mens cycling who are happy to include Emily in team cycling events so she can fulfil her cycling dreams and continue to look pretty in photographs.

"Here, we report that current evidence shows the biological advantage, most notably in terms of muscle mass and strength, conferred by male puberty and thus enjoyed by most transgender women is only minimally reduced when testosterone is suppressed as per current sporting guidelines for transgender athletes."

From this pubmed source - www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC7846503/

Obsessed with cycling from an early age.
Struggles socially with their peers.
Through a combination of bad luck and injury sees their Olympic place disappear.
Decides then to "transition"

Emily, you need to move on with your life. You can't take a woman's place. And the ridiculously filtered photos will do your self esteem no good either. You also aren't a lesbian, no good will come of any of this.

That they got funding for this despite the dreadfully poor study design is exactly because of ideological capture. This is the real problem. We are told things about various studies and about statistics on, say, homicide rates of transgender individuals which are untrue in the objective sense.

But there is no public debate about any of this because debate is viewed as an attempt to erase the existence of transgender people.

No physical advantage, just another typical lady

I believe Harpers funding came from the IOC, which is shocking when you think about how unscientific it is.

www.outsports.com/platform/amp/2019/3/13/18262451/ioc-olympics-fund-research-transgender-athletes

“Sport acts as a microcosm to the rest of society, so with the patriarchal structure that exists in the rest of society, that's intensified in sport.”

What a glorious own goal that statement is.

Speaking of own goals, this is a tweet today from Bridges’ mum.
Why would the female riders be training with the U23 mens squad? What could possibly be the reason women would want to train with and against men? C’mon Bridges’ mum, you’re almost there.

🤣 That’s a leap too far for the TWAW crowd.

Emma Hilton, Ross Tucker and Jon Pike (all on Twitter under their names) are all excellent on this topic.

Tucker pointed out in one of his tweets that it's not the testosterone the transitioning athlete has now or during the last year which matters the most, but the testosterone that has affected that athlete's body over the years, causing a male puberty, creating a permanently larger heart, heavier bones etc.

In other words, it is not really possible to reverse the advantages of going through male puberty gives someone.

The segregation in many sports is based on average sex differences. It's not based on gender identities, and it makes no sense to use identities on the basis of segregating events. Might as well use favourite colours or political beliefs.

I couldn't understand this at all, because when I try to empathise with these athletes by imagining myself in the shoes of someone wishing to transition from male to female I would never ever do what Laurel Hubbard and Lia Thomas and others have done: Barge into women's elite sports and take over.

It would make me feel deeply ashamed, as I would know what advantages my body conveys me, and I also would not want to injure my new sisterhood by beating them in an unfair manner.

Maybe this sounds trivial, but I keep circling back to this odd focus on themselves at the expense of everybody else.

But there must be other trans women who are not doing all this egocentric stuff. We just don't hear about them.

What Emily Bridges and others doing this might feel is that they identify as women but certainly not with women?

I couldn't understand this at all, because when I try to empathise with these athletes by imagining myself in the shoes of someone wishing to transition from male to female I would never ever do what Laurel Hubbard and Lia Thomas and others have done: Barge into women's elite sports and take over.

It would make me feel deeply ashamed, as I would know what advantages my body conveys me, and I also would not want to injure my new sisterhood by beating them in an unfair manner.

Absolutely agree - this is what I struggle with, as well.

I try to empathise and imagine what it must feel like to be a man and think you’re a women.

But by behaving like Hubbard, Bridges, et al - all it does is steadfastly confirm in my mind that they’re 100% unmitigated men.

What Emily Bridges and others doing this might feel is that they identify as women but certainly not with women?

Yes, indeed. They're not identifying with women, per se, but with an imagined simulacra of 'femininity'.

Yes. But these males have been not only told it is as it should because they are women, but also been told their reduced performance makes them competitive to women.

Bridges reality is they failed to make the men’s GB team so with all that lovely love and support have been allowed to believe their conversion is fair. Ie. Not making the males, transition and then make the females. All ok….

People who have a well adjusted concept of fairness would of course understand they have unfair advantage.

And I will leave it there to what I would say about being a well adjusted person as I won’t risk deletion. Like Joan Collins did.

Where is the corresponding stampede of trans men demanding access to male competitions and winning them? Surely that alone is good enough evidence this is an entirely one-sided patriarchal grab at something that belongs to women.