Vogue - another captured publication?

[SabrinaThwaite]

Vogue magazine has published a piece by Emily Bridges:

I Was Banned From Competitive Cycling Because I’m Trans. That Won’t Stop Me Fighting For My Rights.

https://www.vogue.co.uk/article/emily-bridges-trans-cyclist?utm_medium=social&utm_source=twitter&utm_social-type=owned

Full of the usual hogwash and inaccuracies, and the discredited CCES report is doing some heavy lifting.

And apparently they will be trying to take British Cycling to court. We shall see.

And this

So many women athletes they could have chosen. But no the whiny moaner got chosen

The next Vogue cover?

Any parent that has a child competing at a high level in sport spends thousands of pounds to support them - club fees, coaching fees, kit, travel, accommodation, entry fees, training camps, physio, nutrition etc.

Been there, done that (and have my own badges of having gone through all the lengthy training to be an official to support running of the sport).

So many parents want to live vicariously through their child. So many kids come up against a brick wall, whether that’s injury, pressures of trying to balance training with school, reaching their level or just falling out of love with their sport.

Bridges’s mother is on a hiding to nothing. All the world governing bodies of the major sports have stated females only in women’s sport.

She just hasn’t realised it yet.

Purple piss...that's a magnificent turn of phrase.

I'm sure in many cases of poor sportsmanship like Bridges, actually harming women is one of the drivers for the behaviour. Consciously or not, these fellas hate women.

Because the presentation, the filters, the clothes, the use of Vogue is all part of a deliberate PR campaign to say “look how much of a real woman Emily is, how can anyone possibly say Emily can’t compete in women’s sport? Emily is in Vogue looking gorgeous darling, how can Emily not be a woman?”

It’s designed to trick the casual reader into thinking it’s cruel to let someone looking like that race against men. So calling out the airbrushing and filtering and pointing out the realities of Emily’s appearance - and stature, something that is deliberately hidden in photo shoots like this - isn’t nasty, but entirely necessary.

I never fail to be let down by this phenomenon. Not just the obvious queerwashing, the reality denying, the obfuscation, the destruction of free speech and free enquiry.

But more and more I'm looking at the fall out on their side. The toxic self hate that must permeate every fibre of Emily's mum, Jazz Jennings' mum, the previous head of Mermaids. Just when did women, mothers in particular, become such terrible guardians for their children.

And then there's the sheer confusion on the part of the trans individuals themselves. Whatever you might think about your identity, you know as a natal male, especially one where your strength, lung capacity, stamina etc are all way in excess of even the top women in your event, or any parallel situation, that you have an unbreachable advantage. Even if you truly thought you weren't a male, you know that you go out onto the track in the female event already having won gold before you push a pedal in anger.

If you were truly a woman, you couldn't do this to your compatriot sisters.

Of course, there are women happy to rub the noses of other women in the dirt...the drugs cheats etc.

So Emily is shamefully a double cheat, identity and inherent drugs of puberty.

How does this sit with "her" emancipation?

Just when did women, mothers in particular, become such terrible guardians for their children.

They've always existed. It's just that there's a lot of them in the public eye these days. And not only that but they are being lauded as the complete opposite. It's truly sickening.

True Emily certainly is a big ally to the gender crit movement. British cycling has a long history of being sexist, but Emily managed to push them to actually do something for women for a change by being so over the top. Similar effect to Lia Thomas.

As for Bridges and his family. Bridges went to a fee paying school, not a major one, but enough to be firmly in the upper middle classes and obviously comes from a fairly posh background that is how they could afford to support cycling. Hence the sense of entitlement, but also the family pressure and expectation. That can work well, up to the point it pushes you too far. Plus Bridges is from Wales, that you can't tell that from the accent says a lot, from just outside Newport and to be fair to Bridges is likely to have not fitted in well in everyday life.

When you listen to Bridges you might go that is a bit of a posh twat, or the social artifice pulls you in. Bridges and his family know well to appeal to a certain section of the British middle classes, that is how they got a bunch of media stories out, but the thing is other Brits can see right through it, and they just don't know how to handle that. The Brit love of turning on social climbers has a dark side, but when it hits well deserved targets it is enjoyable on a deep level. Bridges claiming genocide just sounds absurd. Peaking a lot of people. The more publicity they get the better it is for us.

Vogue's headline got reader contexted with the truth on twitter which is delightful.

The Vogue headline is incorrect. Bridges is entitled to compete in the open category and has therefore not been "banned from competitive cycling." The statement that Bridges may not compete in the Women's category is accurate.

The Telegraph is loving this and has a great quote:

Fiona McAnena, the director of sport at Fair Play for Women, told Telegraph Sport: “It’s shocking, isn’t it – it’s once again a real kick in the teeth for women. We have any number of outstanding female athletes and Vogue will prefer to showcase a male cyclist who has not performed at the highest level. Emily Bridges is not yet a successful international cyclist so it’s hard to see why Bridges is there.
“Katarina <a class="break-all" href="https://archive.is/o/hOljJ/www.telegraph.co.uk/athletics/2023/08/20/katarina-johnson-thompson-gold-medal-world-championships/" rel="nofollow" target="_blank">Johnson-Thompson became the world champion in the heptathlon – she is a world champion in a really tough event. She should be in there, not Bridges.”

Oh, but @RealityFan, didn’t you see the bit in the article about the CCES having announced TW totally don’t have a physical advantage in sport?

The language of the site alone makes it clear there’s an ethical issue with with this centre of ethics (ie ideological capture & resultant bias). The report itself makes for quite remarkable reading - they’ve decided on the conclusion they want & reached it by ignoring the evidence (BeCaUsE rEaSoNs) & making a wide range of remarkable claims along the way; as well as the usual grossly offensive attempts to pretend this is in some way related to the issues around people with DSDs participating in sports & said issues being framed as racist policing of women’s bodies.

Personally - & I accept not everyone shares this view, due to our having fallen through the Looking Glass - I don’t think a paper that states “Male” and “female” are not mutually exclusive categories and should not be treated as such should be given any weight regarding biology & physiology. It’s all about testosterone from the physical side; & only elite athletes; & really the important thing to consider is the social factors… it’s absolutely brain-bending; & I don’t mean in the sense of intellectually challenging 🤦‍♀️

Cyclemum as she was on here was never as coherent or as insightful as she believed she was. I expect Amelia is rolling her eyes.

I believe it is known now that Teen Vogue has a huge male adult readership. The mag is aimed at them. It has been giving male oriented advice that they tried to hide as for being teen girls. I believe misinformation was coined with teen Vogue in mind.

A brain?

If India had a cervix they'd be dangerous.

I think the problem is that going against what your child wants is hard work. It takes a hell of a lot of talking, crying, research and fighting against ‘the norm’ (the norm being instant affirmation, puberty blockers, etc.) to actually get to the crux of why your child wants to transition.

God knows when my DS wanted to transition it was an extremely hard time for all of us, trying to walk the tightrope between showing him that we loved him no matter what and questioning where his ideas on gender had come from and what he actually expected from transition.

It would have been so easy to just whack him on the puberty blockers and come out as a feted trans ally with all the rainbows and sparkles that would follow. It if we had done that then he would now be medicalised for life and would be on his way to ‘bottom surgery’ and all the absolute horrors that entails.

So I’m immensely relieved that we put in the hard work, luckily me and my son have a very close relationship, so it could withstand the questions and heartache that happened. I’m still his ‘favourite person’! 😁

So why can't Emily compete in the Open category?

Emily Bridges is this year's token trans woman in Vogue's Women of the Year list, the BBC will soon do 100 Women and have to find a token trans woman or two to add.

But this is a Conde Nast issue, GQ keeps posting about trans issues too and asking readers to donate to Mermaids.

In a year where the England women’s football team and the England women’s netball team both made it to World Cup finals, and with the England women’s rugby team topping the world rankings, it’s strange that Vogue chose a male as the only sportswoman.

When I say strange, what I actually mean is shameful.

It’s not really surprising that a publication that exists to promote a fantasy of womanhood that involves all sorts of expensive, impractical and uncomfortable props to support the fantasy, should succumb to this one.

British Vogue is 100% captured, they have both Paris Lees and Shon Faye as columnists. I doubt they would ever feature anyone who has expressed GC views or publish GC views

According to the DM article on this, Bridges said that being banned from competing against women was akin to a genocide.

I mean, absolutely fuck this person.

Bridges is an entitled brat.

who buys/reads Vogue??? hands up !!

Emily can, but Emily isn't good enough. Emily can only beat women.

As for Vogue - there are so many amazing sportswomen they could feature. I hope they all tell them to get stuffed.

Emily and her enablers are thick skinned and hard faced alhough she sure
has impressive shoulders, ala Alexis Colby, (who was at least stylish and witty).

And all the good athletes - KJT, Femke Bol, Sifan Hassan, Laura Muir. And now a new generation: Megan Keith, Molly Caudery and the various gymnasts and sailors who've won international medals this year.