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…

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.

Compulsory Magdalen Berns video on this:

(I am assured Everyday Feminism is a real site, not a parody, and there are some real women who actually fall for it...)

Everyday Feminism! Brings back memories of gorge rising. It was one of my first stops on this journey thanks to their one-time star Riley J. Dennis, who Berns introduced me to, Mumsnet having introduced me to Berns.

Hers is one of the names these people find triggering, along with the other usual suspects: Posie, Glinner, Stock – some like to add a 3rd 'k' to her Twitter handle – and of course Rowling the witch queen. My otherwise well educated sister-in-law "hates hates hates" Rowling, but doesn't actually know what she's written; only that her friends hate her.

I have a ferociously literate (except on this subject) acquaintance who similarly despises JK, far preferring Judith the Obscure Butler (it's possible there may also be a measure of literary snobbishness involved), and regards the entire GC movement as useful idiots for the right-wing.

Today's reading material:

"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."

It's just added DARVO gaslighting.

Gotta love it. From our nouveau faux feminists,

"...some women think of feminism as woman-centered..."

I think we'll find that was, like, all women back in the day.

Even at the height of gay oppression and black rights trampled, no woman would have said the rights of gay males, black males, was in any way a feminist issue.

Gay rights, anti racism, humanist even, yes. Feminist, no.

So now feminism is co-opted to fight for men, especially those cos-playing at being female.

Your ID and language co-opted. Even your organising.

I don't think LFGSS are really representative of UK cyclists at large. It's basically London-based hipsters. Comments under road.cc articles are not censored and are probably (hopefully!) more representative. And of course the vast majority of cyclists have got better things to do, like getting out on the bike, then posting on forums or twitter (I am aware of the irony of this statement).

I reckon you're right, @BCCoach. Still, my experience shows that you have to tread carefully on non-hipster forums as well.

I used to write for road.cc, but don't think I'd fit in these days.

This post on the thread is worth highlighting:
Women (OG version) are talking about this to each other. More and more every day. If they are not talking to you about it it's because they are scared to.

Let that sink in. Women are becoming scared to tell so-called progressive, feminist men the truth. They do not believe you will listen. They believe you will call the witch hunt on them.

That's the woman who escaped getting banned by "the skin of her teeth", was put on notice that her views are considered transphobic, and told she'll be banished without warning or regret if shares them again. Think of that. I checked, and she's been a member for a dozen years. She bends over backwards to be tactful, polite and fair, even to those who give her grief. Very much in the minority as what she calls an OG woman on the forum. All worth throwing away because, as we know, you can never #BeKind enough.

Amazing that bullying is now elites sanctioned.

Hi everyone,
Long time lurker, first time poster here.
I thought I’d just give you some positivity from the world of Mountain Biking.
Mountain bike racing has been scratching its head about this whole issue for a few years now. Back in 2018 in New Zealand a chap called Anton Weatherly (a very mid-category male downhill racer) decided they wanted to be a lady called Kate and the following season won every New Zealand National Women’s Elite race, the national championships and then went on to compete at a world level, gaining several world cup podiums. There was obviously a lot of eye-rolling about this, but the UCI, forums and comments were heavily moderated towards “be kind” and TWAW.
One of the main Mountain Bike news Websites is Pinkbike.com (not associated with Pink news though) and, at the time, they seemed to be fully on board with this and deleting “transphobic” posts and shutting down any debate.
Fast forward to last week’s announcement about British Cycling limiting Trans Women in female categories, PinkBike.com ran an article … (comments at the bottom)
https://www.pinkbike.com/news/british-cycling-limites-transgender-women-competing-in-female-categories.html
Thankfully it seems that the entire mountain biking community seems to be overwhelmingly on the side of women. Any TWAW nonsense has been thoroughly downvoted.
I am really encouraged by this and have always known us Mountain Bikers are the good guys. I’ve been riding for 30+ years, and we just don’t seem to attract entitled misogynists as you do in other cycling disciplines (I’m looking at you road riding).
Just thought you’d like to know you brilliant women seem to have a pretty sizeable group of allies over here.

This is very good to hear.
I've always thought that no matter how dark this has all looked for girls and women, common sense and logic will win out in the end.
Because the alternative pretty much means the modern Western world, built on the Enlightenment, would fall back into a dark age predicated on pure superstition.
I can't see us as peoples going for that, quite frankly.

I'd doff my helmet to you mountainbikers if I wore one (helmet wars veteran here).

I do like this warning "Please do not link Mumsnet and JK Rowling... neither need more attention for their hate, and it's not educational either"

**

That response educates us fully everything we need to know about him.

Add road.cc to the list (archive link). That lasted all of 20 minutes.

Nicely written Sam. Right now, Ross Tucker, Emma Hilton, Cathy Devine, are taking apart IOC cowardice here.

As Helen Joyce put it so succinctly, the trans rubber is hitting the cold reality tarmac.

My addendum is, as with all car crashes, the results ain't pretty.

Was there any discussion or comments? Or were you and your post so swiftly booted that reaction was impossible?

I feel quite warm and fuzzy now.

What a bunch of wicked witches you all are. Oops, that's me too. Am I an evil wizard? Damn, that Harry Potter reference, and they told me not to go near there.

So hateful and uneducatuonal.

https://singletrackworld.com/forum/topic/uci-bans-trans-women-from-female-events/

There's been a noticeable shift here from earlier threads on similar issues

Posted at high noon: 404 by 12.20. No comments that I'm aware of. It's not as busy as here.

Apologies for yet another plug, but if there are any cyclists in need of a 'forum' that hasn't been captured (in tongs because it takes more than me and some rather obvious noms de plume to make a forum), head on over:

https://www.notanothercyclingforum.net/

It's noncommercial, nondenominational, and admittedly, a little out there at times.

@SausageandEggMcMuffin that all sounds nice and sensible, but can the ‘Kate’s’ still win all the women’s events? I mean, every elite race, nationals and some world… it’s A LOT. And has nothing changed then? Despite this group of friendly sensible good sorts you describe? Because that’s just disheartening.

It reminded me of the time our class was described as 'mad,bad and dangerous to know' in the school magazine.

Yes, but schoolkids are often seriously scary, lol.

We were only 12.😂

You make my point for me, lol.

What's even scarier is so-called adults, often with high IQs and a ton of social capital, not able to differentiate fact and fiction as well as "mad, bad and dangerous" 12 year olds, worse than 7 year olds, tbh.

Actually, I wouldn't hold much hope for a typical TRA minded SNP apparatchik to be able to argue reality better than a toddler.

We didn't devote much time to our studies but I can't imagine our lovely biology teacher (one the few we behaved for) would have been able to get away with any 'wrong body/assigned at birth' guff.

We were naughty but we knew the moon wasn't made of cheese.