New British Cycling trans policy

[PoshCoffee]

The new British Cycling policy goes public at 11am tomorrow. Anyone dare to speculate on the outcome? Will it be a win for women?

So, women are still subject to terrorism and the threat of harm if they dont include males. Depressing.

Isn’t a vulnerable person

I haven’t rtft but I’m taking it is good news for women and girls

I think we’re seeing more row backs on gender ideology these days

Do people think it’ll stick if the GE goes to Labour / Lib Dem?

I hope so. It’d be tough to see work undone

In an ideal world I would have liked
to see Breeze become explicitly female-only. But I think in the current climate this would increase risk of targeting and the result would be fewer Breeze rides. Of course there’s a possibility that Breeze rides may be targeted anyway simply because they are sponsored by BC. There is also a programme called Let’s Ride which is similar to Breeze but explicitly mixed age and sex, it’s mostly aimed at families. And of course most clubs (including my own) run female-only club rides from novice level right up to race training. I just hope that the average TRA isn’t up for a 7.30am Sunday morning start.

The new policy isn’t perfect but it’s clear which direction this is travelling. Each time one sporting body announces a policy like this, others become emboldened to do similar. It’s a shame it even got this far but we are seeing more and more towards common sense.

I don't think Emily Bridges has helped themselves by referring to cycling authorities as Nazis committing a genocide. Such language does a diservice to holocaust victims as well as being simply insulting. A clear fair decision has been made by the cycling authorities in line with other sports. It is interesting that there has been no outpouring of support for EB or inclusion of trans athletes in women's sport.

I am glad there is momentum in terms of clarification of sporting inclusion rules which are really needed.

One thought....how is the policy to be policed? If a trans athletes ignored the policy and turns up for an event how will they be excluded. Will there be a need to see a birth certificate as obviously genital inspection is out and a chromosome test is expensive? Does grass roots sport have the resources to effectively police this?

It's still unacceptable that women will be expected to share changing rooms and showers with men.

Damn right!

It's physical bodies that are being undressed, exposed, and rendered vulnerable, not fantasy "feelz".

I don't think anyone will need to insist on a "genital inspection".

It's pretty obvious what 99.999% of these individuals are - or indeed what any individual is.

You can dress how you like, have whatever hairstyle you like and call yourself whatever you like - you can even have surgery and take hormones - your biological sex will still be blindingly obvious in almost every case.

Cycling is still one of the whitest, straightest sports out there

Says the white male who didn't seem to bothered about this when he was accepting and benefiting from their filthy lucre.

What has Bridges done to encourage homosexual people whether white or BAME to become cyclists?

What is the point of any woman, whatever their race/ethnicity or sexuality to train their guts out in an effort to become an elite cyclist to see their place either in the team or on a podium taken away by a white male who thinks he is a woman? Where's the fairness there Bridges?

Bridges version of inclusion is purely for white males who think they are women to compete against women, all about the T as per.

My husband has a lisp - he doesn't take offence at comments like this.

(HOWEVER - to any parents out there who have a child with a lisp, get a referral to speech therapy. Children don't "grow out" of lisps. If they still have them when they are 7, they will have them for life.)

Indeed - "Just William"

<hoping we can also have an eye roll>

🙄

Bugger - you beat me to it!

Eye rolls are particularly dangerous, allegedly, @Emotionalsupportviper their deployment must be done in a controlled manner.😆

Is it? I've just been looking for something else on Amazon and it popped up at about £13. No idea why. I'd buy it at 1p though.

I think banning TW from Breeze is completely unworkable anyway.

I disagree with this. All they need to do is apply the same criteria they are going to have to do with race licences: ask for sex and gender identity rather than gender.

There are already TW leading rides in Breeze and have done for years. I’d love to know the stats for those rides (BC will have them).
I wonder how many women turn up for a ride, realise the ride leader is male and never go again? Not because they are evil transphobes but because they are looking for female only rides.
There are mixed sex alternatives that TW volunteers can be directed to. This element of the policy is just a sop so they can say how inclusive they are. They don’t actually care about women.

I'm sure you are right.

There must be occasions where eyes roll so hard they go through a full 360 degrees, and propel themselves out of the sockets, hit the subject of the eyeroll and commit literal violence.

Chris Boardman gave up competitive cycling because he needed to take medication to avoid osteoporosis. He had low testosterone but exemptions were not made for a genuine medical need.

I've been reading about all the cheating in the Tour de France and the lengths these men would go to are insane. The dopers would set their alarms to go off several times in the night because their hearts would slow so much they risked dying in their sleep. Putting on a bit of lipstick and using hair-curlers is nothing to men with that mentality.

This is it.

It's all very nice to say this is one of the times when it would be fine to be 'inclusive' because no one is in a state of undress/no biological advantages involved etc, and at one time I would have said this.

But the point of women only rides was to provide women with times and spaces away from men for good reason .

Why do women now have to indulge some men in women only spaces and provide service to them when what they wanted was a female only option? It's not the job of females to provide support and care for those male people or to be props for their use. And yes, some females will turn up, realise it is in fact mixed sex, and be excluded. So not actually any inclusion going on really. Just misogyny.

What really boils my piss is Breeze is funded by public money. Our money. It’s there to include more women in a male dominated sport. Making it mixed sex completely negates the entire project.

😂

Quite. The message is always there to females: male needs and wishes come first, and after you and everyone else has met those to male satisfaction, you can have the crumbs left over.

Yeah, once upon a time I too was not a terf. I wasnt even a feminist. Those days are long gone.
I actively embrace being terfy now.
Im way more clued up about (the lack of and fragility of) womens rights.
I will not rest until we have a much fairer democratic process that listens to women.

With this caveat, @nilsmousehammer - women can have whatever crumbs are left over unless and until the men decide they want them too, and then women must be kind and give them up, or face rape/death threats.

Regarding enforcement, in order to race in a BC-sanctioned race you need a licence, either one issued by BC or by the federation in whichever country you are resident. If you are found to have lied on the licence application you can be stripped of your licence or banned from racing in the U.K. if racing on a foreign licence. The licence records your name, sex, DOB and your current category. You can’t actually register for a race that you are ineligible for on the BC website as it checks your age, sex, cat etc and these are re-checked at registration. (Category is a bit like leagues for football teams, everyone starts as Cat 4 and you win points by placing in races. For road racing if you win 12 points in a year you get upgraded to
cat 3 and then can’t race in cat 4 anymore. You can also get relegated if you don’t earn enough points in a year (although never below cat 3, to ensure cat 4 is strictly novices).

A little known fact is that there is a de facto ‘sex check’ in all higher level sport as during doping control the DCO must be able to see the stream of urine leaving your body, however I don’t know if UKAD actually have a protocol for reporting a sex discrepancy.