Emily Bridges in the news again

[BatDuck]

There’s a lot to unpack here. The violent abuse Bridges received is utter disgraceful and rightly it should be acknowledged that Bridges should be able to live Bridges life without fear or harassment.

The tenor of the debate is not helped by these woe is me articles that have been dripping into the media since the New Year. Quite frankly, it feels like propaganda as there’s no push back on the issue at play: males do not belong in female sport.

www.itv.com/news/2022-06-07/emily-bridges-had-physical-threats-after-pms-trans-participation-comments

My condemnation of abuse and threats is unconditional.

For what it’s worth, it isn’t about whether Bridges’s times have gone up. I couldn’t really care less about that

As a separate point, rather like Lia Thomas, there may well be several motivations behind the increase in times. I should think that if, in the future, Bridges is competing against people with the same protected characteristic, and the competitive edge over other contestants is reduced, I would not be too surprised for a turnaround in competition performance times.

That’s right. It doesn’t matter if Bridges is as weak as a kitten now, they are not female. They have their own category and it’s not with the women.
Im am hugely offended by many of the things said in this article. EB asks for empathy but where is the empathy for women?

No one should be physically threatened. Trans ppl being physically threatened is real transphobia & completely unacceptable

and Im sure somewhere I’ll find comments from Emily demonstrating the empathy towards female cyclists that Emily is asking for themselves…….

Apparently someone threatened to kneecap EB. That is obviously awful and nobody should behave like that or expect to get away with that.

But the idea Bridges is after flogging that the elected Prime Minister of the country can’t speak about public policy is very silly.

On ITV News now

Honestly not sure what I said there.

I think it's rude to say the Prime Minister knows nothing about this. Everyone knows men shouldn't compete in women's sports. And men who are transitioning retain all the advantages they had when they were men - see Emily's performance at the men's event just a few months ago.

Won a men's race in March just mentioned

Denying that male puberty gives advantage

Infuriating and batshit.

"Not prepared to put myself through that" regarding racing against men.

Hope they fall off their bike.

Quite frankly, it feels like propaganda

It is.

The interview is now on the ITV.com website, apparently.

Yes, I was very at 'I'm not prepared to put myself through that'.

Thats nice dear.....

"Not prepared to put myself through that" regarding racing against men.

I shall leave that as an exercise for the reader as to whether any of Emily's current competitors in the women's competition have similar thoughts.

However, I'm a little baffled by this as Emily was doing this as recently as March in the university competition, iirc. There is rather a lovely, collegial photograph of Emily and team mates on the podium when they took the bronze (iirc).

I don't think the argument that 'going through male puberty confers no advantage in cycling because there is a lack of data' is really going to fly, tbh.

There's a shit ton of data. Which is why sports for anyone post puberty are categorised by sex. Why does no one challenge such outright lies?

It completely is propaganda

isn’t it strange how all the death threats, the rape threats with baseball bats, the “suck my dick you TERF bigots” directed at women is hand waved away in fact it’s not even acknowledged. Absolutely zero sympathy or empathy is given to women. We don’t get to do sad faces interviews in the media about the threats we face.

i suspect the more EB feels they are being thwarted the more these interviews will increase

Threats are unacceptable, obviously.
It also seems a bit unfair that BC appear to have given Emily the impression that all would be fine and nobody would mind.
However, it's not all fine and women do mind, and we have to be able to discuss it .

There is no excuse for threats of violence no matter how you feel about something.

It wouldn't surprise me if EB had received threats but I am becoming increasingly sceptical about such claims. Are there screen shots of the messages anywhere?

Activists are so desperate to bolster the "both sides as bad as each," other argument that they will selectively edit or take out of context absolutely anything they can use to help prove their case and yet when it comes to direct threats of violence against individuals there are no receipts. We all know they'd be plastered over SM if they existed but they never are?

I can't write what I really think about the rest of the article. The appeal for empathy is particularly galling.

Emily would have a good chance of medalling in a blatant male entitlement contest.

The comments on the ITV twitter are not having it at all

I can imagine that Emily has had some horrible abuse.

But I'm 100% sure it's not coming from women who just simply believe that males should not be competing in female sport.

You didn’t say anything obviously against the rules. No doubt the monitors are watching closely 👋🏼