British cycling: the forums frong

[CyclingSam]

Well, I've been working my way through cycling forums, trying to get the gender critical point of view across. My record so far: banned/censored/banned/hobbled so effectively as to be silenced, under threat of further banishment; so basically self-banned.

https://www.lfgss.com/comments/16999451/
https://www.lfgss.com/comments/16997635/ (I'll cop to being a serial offender when it comes to mentioning Mumsnet.)

I want to make it emphatically clear to whom it may concern that I am not encouraging a 'pile on' over there. Their house, their rules. I'm posting out of frustration: this is the only place online I can vent to people who will understand.

There is someone on that thread who has put the case for women spectacularly well – I'll leave you to find her posts, as I don't wish to cause her any grief. But the environment is so chilly ("if you don't think transwomen are women, and that transmen are men... then this forum is a place of very thin ice for you") that I wonder how she, or anyone else who isn't a realityphobe, will get on.

Kind of wishing I'd fallen into a milieu other than cycling…

Bloody hell. The title is supposed to be 'the forums front'.

Ha! I've just googled 'frong' and am content to have made that particular typo.
https://starwars.fandom.com/wiki/Frong

I've given up with cycling forums, it's mostly men in them who never considered women to begin with.

Fighting a losing battle there.

Yep, it wouldn’t be a forum for me with a moderator with attitudes like that, and you will never be able to convince them. If they can’t understand the need for fairness in women’s sport and that males who have been through puberty retain physiological advantages in spite of any hormone treatment then they are totally ignorant. Podium places are being taken away from women that deserve them, and that is not on.

@ToBeOrNotToBee I'd offer my own site as a GC friendly cycling forum, but my understanding is you need other people to call yourself a forum. https://www.notanothercyclingforum.net/index.php

@Banoffeepie21For about a nanosecond I considered staying on and torturously threading that needle, but given the warning about "subtle digs and nuance", it would be like living on death row.

Hadn’t realised that was set up by you @CyclingSam 👍.

Have you seen the recent Fair Play for Women video, with Daley Thompson? Not cycling specific but objective and worth sharing.

I have seen that, thanks. Over the last couple of years I've amassed a large collection of links not just for anyone who wanders in, but as a database for my own use, even though I know that the chances of winning a link war are slim.

My main hunting grounds are here and Ovarit. Always on the lookout for good ones that don't agree with my views, which aren't difficult to find either (contrary views I mean, not links worth sharing). Even if you find someone whose writing you like, if the thinking is still too fucked up, well, who wants to do their bit to amplify that even a little.

"who wants to do their bit to amplify that even a little…"

on edit: though of course, when you know it would be hopeless to engage, starting with a link to something then taking that something apart can prove educational and, I dare say, gratifying.

You gotta love Velocio. Anything varying from the TWAW line, and it's game over re discussion. No ifs, no buts.

You might get rinsed on MN taking a TRA view, but noone will tell you what you can't say, and you'll be argued against to within an inch of your life. But you'll never be told you can't hold your view or that you can't promote it. Just that you bloody well be prepared to justify it.

But the TRAs like Velocio? They know best, they know all. Anything and everyone else is silenced.

Have you ever seen a "rights" movement more guilty of emptiness, so intellectually barren, so fragile as to be vulnerable to the merest pushback, and so lacking in pride that it needs to hide from scrutiny?

I haven't.

God, it’s depressing isn’t it! I paraphrase:

Fairness for women is completely irrelevant compared to addressing the HUGE number of trans suicides - which are stated as being ‘hidden’ on account of, no one can find the data 🙄

Meanwhile the obvious way to stop trans people killing themselves is to ensure TW have access to women’s races to win. 🙄🙄
Obviously, TM have too much testosterone to compete, so they just have to vacate competitive sport. Which is fine because they are, y’know <whispers> women

Emoji of the day - 🙄 - again!

As you probably (already) know Sam, there’s another cycling forum with a daily running commentary from TRSOH (i.e. the TRA side) which includes escalating unpleasant language, mostly aimed at women.
Judging by the posters who pop in there, I think there is an increasing number of silent readers being peaked due to the aforementioned vitriolic content.

The comments on the road.cc and cycling weakly posts about British Cycling rule changes were hearteningly sensible in the main too.

I hadn’t looked at lgss recently but assumed which side of the gender bread they were buttered.

looks like the thread was closed down? at any rate I now can't access it despite not having posted/been banned or anything.

I'll go out on a wild limb and guess that the forum is moderated by a trans-identifying male who thinks he should of course be allowed to compete against women; that he's every bit as much a woman as any other; and, to the doubtful extent that he concedes they exist, the legacy advantages conferred by his silly little cock and balls (and associated T levels) should be viewed as a 'superpower' on a par with Michael Phelps' wingspan etc etc?

Having read through the last week on that thread (the British cycling one), yes the mod is trans. Several people were of the “if you say a trans woman is a man you are hateful, transphobic etctetc”. I was pleasantly surprised to read sensible, thoughtful discussion in between those posting the usual splenetic plus an uber stirring troll who all parties asked to leave it out.

It was funny to read the ‘don’t look at Mumsnet, the horror’. Why, scared the fence sitters and undecided might learn something?

@Brevet1000 what's TRSOH?

The right side of history- it’s irony because they are very likely not to be.

Anyway the thread is still there https://www.lfgss.com/conversations/379802/?offset=625 but has been locked because the mod is upset.
The mod’s last post makes it quite clear where he stands
“If your feminism isn't intersectional, then it's not feminism.”
Aka if your feminism doesn’t centre men then it’s not allowed. 🙄

Thanks - I hadn't come across that term before and google was no help!

This intersecting bullshit really does piss me off. So the only way for men to accept that black women, disabled women, Asian women, working women, any woman different from the stereotype in their head is a woman is if men are women too.
That can all fuck off.

Wow, that Velocio is so hoity toity. Gotta be that lycra on WAYYYY too tight!

All that "ooh, transphobes, I'm shutting it all down!"

While all around him the "transphobes" are converging, stating mild reservations and genuine conceptual irregularities.

Only "BrokenBetty" can stay, but God DAMN is she a transphobe too...but heart in the right place...just shut up with the transphobia, already.

This stuff would be so ripe for a David Brent spoof mocumentary...I wonder if he'd have the balls?

Velocio doesn't understand what intersectionality means. If we used Velocio's definition, then feminism would have to be a movement which fights every single thing that is wrong in this world, pretty much, whomever it might affect, and that is a) impossible, b) never demanded of any social justice movements and c) a way to ultimately bury feminism for good.

True intersectionality is about understanding that the way misogyny, sexism etc. affects women and girls also depends on where they are positioned in the society along other axes of oppression.

Race, ethnicity, age, social class, sexual orientation, disability, religion etc. can all affect how and to what extent and how sexism and misogyny affect women and girls, and understanding that, in all its complexity, is an important task for feminist analysis.

But if we drop out 'sex' in that list of possible intersections, then we are no longer talking about feminism, but about something different.

Watching a man who identifies as non-binary lecture a woman obviously well versed in feminism about feminism is par for the course these days. Just one of the many things I learned at Mumsnet.

@Brevet1000, I'm not 100% sure if this is the forum you're talking about, but I've made something of a study of CycleChat, specifically their unmoderated satellite site devoted to politics and other hot button issues. Here, I'll drop you into my observation post (https://www.notanothercyclingforum.net/index.php?topic=3893.msg16386#msg16386) at the arrival of the person who doles out most of of the abuse, and who happens to be the same guy that went after me at another forum where I got myself banned by a transgender moderator cast from the same mould as Velocio.

I also noticed the increasing number of rational comments on road.cc of late, as opposed to the tone you often get from the reporting. For example, as regards Austin Killips topping the podium at the Tour of the Gila and grabbing the $35k purse, we had this: "As per the UCI's rules, Killips is perfectly entitled to compete and abides by the requirement for transgender athletes to suppress their testosterone levels below 2.5 nanomoles per litre over a two-year period."

'Perfectly entitled' rather neatly sums things up.

"Just a reminder that your forum admin is in the trans-umbrella and not shy about it, identify as non-binary and very much going to enforce a zero-transphobia policy.
British Cycling were assholes before this latest move, unfortunately I can't throw a strop and remove affiliation as I'd already done that with BC. But I can ban transphobes who even think they can use this space to further their views, and will do so on subtle digs and nuance too... I won't wait for blatant statements.
So this is the general warning, that if you don't think transwomen are women, and that transmen are men... then this forum is a place of very thin ice for you."

Moderator fragile ego on steroids. Talks about phobia but has no gripe calling an organisation "assholes".

"Seemingly because trans men don’t really feature in the Great Trans Panic. Possibly because the reason people fixate on trans women is because hatred of trans women is simply a further expression of society’s deep rooted misogyny."

This is also so void of any intelligence. Yes it is misogyny, but misogyny of not caring about females. Not to mention that transmen don't impact men the way transwomen harm women.

And the pièce de résistance, of course:
“Why won't I allow debate on this... because TERF views being openly accepted are a Nazi bar situation" (https://www.boredpanda.com/bar-bartender-nazi-punk-iamragesparkle).

They just can't help themselves.

I hate that Karl Popper quote so much. It always gives me a mental image of a particular kind of person saying it...