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?

It's interesting that all of these riders are in Anglophone countries. I wonder if this is selection bias by the list compiler or whether this is not happening outside of the Anglosphere. Given that cycling has a far greater status as a national sport, and far higher participation in Belgium, Netherlands, Columbia, France, Italy, Slovenia one would expect many reports from those countries.

There is an interesting thread here on road.cc if you want to see how the cycling world (well, the readership of road.cc who are mostly British with a health dose of Americans/Australians) are reacting: https://road.cc/content/news/emily-bridges-slams-british-cyclings-new-transgender-policy-301485

The comments under that piece are very interesting and many are thoughtful and considerate. Thanks for sharing.

They're all about Emily, aren't they? Just one or two commenting about looking at it from the women's side. And some are woefully under-informed.

to be honest I found a lot more comments in support of Female Cyclists than I at first expected. I guess it shows that (many) men who have A Very Serious Cycling Hobby have a decent understanding of how important fairness is in sport, even at the Very Serious Hobby level.

I've pasted a few from the first page below

Vo2maxi (generally made a lot of the better comments)
Ultimately a Trans woman has a male body which she modifies to her own desires and needs, with drug treatment and/or surgery, or to comply with competitive sport regulations.
The latter has proven to be a complete minefield which has seriously placed women's sport at risk.

leewalton
Definetely the right decision by British Cycling.
Bridges and other transgender cyclists can still compete, and if they're good enough, win, given that they have the same physical advantages as the men they will be racing against in the open category.
Allowing transgender cyclists to race against competitors that were born as women is unfair, and gives the transgender competitors an unfair advantage. This is being born out in the race results, with wins by Bridges, Killips, Seplavy, Thomas, etc, etc.
I can't believe this even needs any debate.

Markle
An utterly sensible decision, at first sight. In practive however, nobody is going to see the Open Category as open, but as the men's category, and any odd trans athlete as an ... oddity. So I really sympathise with Emily Bridges, because in practice, she is being told to accept the humiliation of either racing with the men, or not to race at all. I can't begin to understand how upset she must feel to basically have bike racing being taken from her, it's a huge part of one's identity for anyone racing at that level. I don't have a better solution either. Except for the cycling community to come together and make the sport outside of elite competition as welcoming and inclusive as we can make it. For those here saying that she brought that exclusion onto herself etc: You can and have to do better.

Well, this article is specifically about Bridges' reaction. There are two other articles about the policy itself if you have a look in the News section. But having read all the comments I think there are many more than just one or two comments looking at it from the women's side and the vast majority or supportive of the policy. Interestingly, most of the comments critical of the policy only appeared after "US wake up time" on the day the article was published.

https://road.cc/content/news/trans-cyclist-criticises-british-cyclings-open-category-301517

I think this Road.cc article is particularly relevant. The quotes from Jackie Aspden are particularly illuminating. It’s all about Jackie and what he wants. Not a single thought about how his presence on women’s only rides affect women.
I recommend Googling Jackie.

Yeah, it's almost like woke Americans are doing that imperialist thing, which they love to criticise when and only when it's someone else doing it, of telling another country how to run its affairs.

Today's word is "hypocrisy".

The majority of my cycling friends, both male and female are in favour of the policy. I would say that most people I know who are involved in racing, either as riders or volunteers, see it as a positive move. The fairness issue is very easy for most people who are interested in racing to see and to comprehend.
Less people I know seem to share my concerns around the lack of action on the non competitive side of things. A lot of my male friends, and a depressing number of women, are oblivious to why this matters. Largely the men don't care as it doesn't affect them and they don't see why it's an issue and the women are busy being kind. I'm finding a lot of people nodding in agreement when I explain why I don't think it's right for biological males to compete as females but the same people will accuse me of bigotry if I don't agree that transwomen should be on Breeze rides for example. The "rights" of a small minority of males are still being given precedence over those of many, potentially vulnerable, women.
This policy is a big step in the right direction for sure, but there is still a very long way to go.

All about Emily as in all about how Emily feels. It really grates with me when I see people so sad that this one male person can't have everything they want regardless of the effect on women, even if the posters reluctantly agree that the BC decision is correct. Lots of hand-wringing about the supposed difficulty of deciding between fair sport for women on the one hand and men who claim to be women getting validated on the other. And all the references to "she" and "her".
A lot of the comments supportive of the decision are from the same bloke, who is also annoyingly willing on women's behalf to give up language and accept Bridges as a woman. It's great that he is commenting in support, but still.

And yes, I can totally believe that criticism of BC policy came mainly from the US readers!

100%

Woman so keen to step aside for 1 man

Are they keen to step aside - or are they scared/terrified of putting their heads above the parapet? We’re conditioned from a young age to try and protect ourselves from aggressive male behaviour - do perhaps a case of if you can’t beat ‘em, join ‘em? We’ve all seen what happens to women who do speak out - you have to have huge strength of character and nerves of steel to put yourself, your livelihood and your family through that.

Gosh, quite a lot of 'it's so complicated', but I liked this:

The vast vast vast majority of trans-women would never have been able to cycle professionally to begin with. They do not have elite, professional level physiology.

That they were able to get to elite/pro level after transitioning means they are unfairly pushing out other women who do have elite/pro level physiology.

That they are excluded from elite/pro level /womens/ category does not mean they lost anything. For they never had the physiology to justify such a career - other than by using their retained male developmental advantages against those who did not have that.

Emily Bridges is the one potential exception to this. She displayed some talent in male categories, before treatment. Though, it is still not a given that she could have made it to pro level. Maybe, but maybe not.

When "trans genocide", being "terrified to exist", and comparing themselves to "vulnerable refugees" who are being deported is getting bandied about I can't give this hyperbolic rant any credence.

These are not fragile little waifs - they are hulking great male bodies intent on intimidating women.

From my cycling discord, it seems that people are at least open to alternative viewpoints in the cycling world, but there are plenty, far too many that should know better what male versus female physiology means, that subscribe to gender ideology.

There is not a chance in hell I would stick my head above the parapet. I'm running around firefighting all sort of other shit.

I really do not have the mental health resources left to deal with doxxing, cancelling, verbal, virtual and maybe physical threats.

Add in a massive dose of rejection sensitivity because of my neurodiversity and dealing with demented oldies daily and I'd worry for my own mental health.

Particularly as we have a massive family history of in-patient asylum (as in proper use of the word) and latterly MH hospital admissions plus non-existent care in the community. Not everyone has the capability to fight these battles, much to my shame. Total kudos to those that do...my hat is doffed to them.

Look at all the shit all over the TV today. Really would you want to be that brave?

I absolutely agree with all you say @Breezechampion1

Well, yes, I can have some sympathy for someone who loses out on a promising career due to injury as EB did. It must be extremely distressing . But injury is something that professional, and amateur athletes , know about, have to plan for and anticipate . And if debilitating injury happens then accept the curtailment of their dreams. Expecting to continue their career path by “downsizing” as EB appears to do is something that of course doesn’t apply to female athletes, because there is nothing for them to “downsize” to, they don’t have the option to push another athlete off the training programme, the funding stream and ultimately the podium.

I suppose injured female athletes could identify as children.

One thing to bear in mind is that the vast majority of elite women riders are not professional (as in they cannot make a living from cycling alone). The only ones that are, are on the Olympic programme (who are paid a stipend with just enough money to exist while they eat, train, sleep and nothing else), and the handful who have World Tour team contracts. Women's domestic and continental teams generally get expenses, kit, bikes, travel and coaching and if they are very lucky a small salary, but not nearly enough to live on. Some are lucky enough to have some sponsorship, or maybe have a youtube channel which brings in additional income, however the vast majority have to fit training and racing around ordinary "day job" employment.

It's an almost monastic existence, with no hope of ever having the "normal" things that most 20-somethings aspire to like owning your own place, or having a social life, or having holidays. Your entire life revolves around training and racing, while trying to earn enough money to survive in the gaps between. The level of dedication and self-deprivation is off-the-scale extreme and hard to grasp by those outside of elite endurance sports. This is why it is so galling for us (and this opinion is shared by the vast majority of men in cycling too), to see women's places being taken by men who have had a relatively "easy ride".

Other sports have the same problem. Male elite footballers can earn six or seven figure salaries. Their female counterparts, not so much. Most women's A teams don't even get to use the club's "main" (read: main for the men's A team) pitch for their matches, instead being thrown the crumbs of getting to play on a training pitch somewhere. And most newspapers (The Morning Star being a welcome exception) talk about "football" and "women's football" and give the women's game very little coverage compared to the men's.

Sporting women have been thrown crumbs at best since forever. To expect them to give up those crumbs to sub-par males is deeply unfair and beyond offensive.

Incidentally, here’s Bridges (and Dixon) smashing a female QoM record on Strava.

Funny how Bridges claims that the on-going Harper study will show a massive drop off in performance, yet beats the previous women’s record by a huge margin. Michelle Bergstrand is/was an elite cyclocross athlete.

What an obnoxious shit Bridges is, going around breaking all the other records like a kid smashing other children's toys because they're not allowed to play with them.

I wonder if Sandy has ever said no?