Cycling UK seeing sense

[PauliesWalnuts]

I don't doubt there isn't a need for an inclusive awards, but given the number of women who don't ride due to women-specific obstacles (kit, bike frames, traffic, abuse, safety etc) it's good that we've got an awards to ourselves:

'Do we need to exclude people even more?' – Cycling UK's 100 Women in Cycling criticised for not accepting nominations for trans women | Cycling Weekly

BC have a diverse income - Soort England grant for participation, UKSport grant for elite, sport science and med etc. they also get sponsorship money from various businesses, income from membership subs, and also from grass roots race entries, but that just about covered race insurance etc. Previously SE funding just went to governing bodies but it changed several years ago so other sports orgs such as CUK, Park Run, Street dance, cheerleading etc could also apply.

As ever "inclusive" means excluding actual women. Hey ho. The New Misogyny, same as the old Misogyny.

The Cycling UK definition in the Group Ride guidance that I linked to gives the impression that "inclusive" also means excluding regular men, which is neither inclusive or legal; let one in, you've got to let them all in. However the new handbook, released at the same time, recognises this: "inclusive" rides are "Rides open to all, including biological women, transwomen and non-binary people."

https://www.cyclinguk.org/sites/default/files/downloads/2026-04/handbook-for-cycling-uk-groups_stage-3b.pdf

Makes me think of, "I'm Brian, and so's my wife!". Progress of a sort anyway!

It is interesting and puzzling how British Cycling and Cycling UK appear to be following different legal advice. I am not sure how British Cycling are maintaining their inclusion of trans-women and non-binary in a women's programme, and therefore ignoring the Supreme Court ruling. But I guess unless there is a legal challenge, they can keep doing what they want ...

They aren't. As PP noted, it's just weasel words.

"Inclusive" is woman-"focused" but open to all including men. They just don't bother to list regular men like they list the special gender types of men. To give the special gender types and others the impression that special gender types are being specially included, when really they are just included like any other bog standard men.

They also have specifc "Women-only" rides and these are legally compliant.

Of course, a woman-"focussed" ride is an interestingly sexist concept. What is the "focus" here? Being pretty? Being non-competetive? Saying nice things about women? I'd love to know how what BC think these cycling needs are that are specific to "women".

And to be clear, I'm 100% in agreement that socialisation, sexism and differing capabilities and expereinces mean many men enjoy cycling in environments that put off many women. I'm not at all against having less competetive or more supportive rides with the hope that these are more appealing to many women, and indeed plenty of men including special gender people of either sex. I just really object to labelling them "women-focussed" as some sort of shorthand for "girly coded stuff".

Woman-focussed, even when mixed sex, should be focussing on or celebrating cycling for biological women. If BC very laudably also want to do inclusive, non judgemental and gentle rides, just bloody call them that rather than "women focussed".

But we all know, what they really mean by woman-focussed is "a ride where we can pretend women are of both sexes" - nothing to do with actual women at all.

[essentially a duplicate post, sorry]

Is this not the Cycling UK advice, not British Cycling?

And what the heck is the difference between 'inclusive' and 'mixed'?!!!! They're tying themselves in knots trying to be legally compliant AND give the men with the ladyfeels what they want ... I cannot wait for this all to be over - it has to be soon, surely?!!

Ah apologies, you are right.

Rest of my rant stands though - if "woman-focussed" means anything other than "focussing on the needs/priorities of biological women" within a mixed sex group it's just sexism rebadged as inclusion.

Of course, a woman-"focussed" ride is an interestingly sexist concept. What is the "focus" here? Being pretty? Being non-competetive? Saying nice things about women? I'd love to know how what BC think these cycling needs are that are specific to "women".

It's worth pointing out that it's not clear that 'woman-focussed' is legally compliant. Just the attempt to make men feel unwelcome in a mixed-sex service is enough to raise the expectation that the service is single sex and therefore legally should be for biological women only. One can easily see why this should be the case - if you have three official types of events (women: single sex, inclusive: wrong sort of men discouraged, mixed: for both sexes) but only one type, inclusive, in practice is ever held, then you're essentially back to the status quo that existed before where no events in a (once) women's sporting association is single-sex.

Excellent ranting, @FlirtsWithRhinos ! Trying to spot the difference between BC and CUK is hard enough if you aren't closely involved, never mind trying to spot the difference between an inclusive ride and a mixed ride.

I feel like we need a massive table to summarise everything here. But the important bits seem to be:

Cycling UK:
Inclusive rides: Legal? ✅ Plain English? ❌
Women-only rides: Legal? ✅ Plain English? ✅
Mixed rides: Legal? ✅ Plain English? ✅ up to a point

British Cycling:
Breeze rides: Legal? ❌ Plain English? ❌

An update today from Sarah Mitchell, CEO:

============================================================
I’m writing to share an update on the review of Cycling UK’s awards, which we committed to doing when we last spoke earlier in the year.

Firstly, before going any further I want to acknowledge that last year’s 100 Women in Cycling Awards caused hurt, and I want to apologise to all the trans and non-binary people in our community. Cycling UK has always worked to be a truly inclusive organisation. We have learned from what happened, particularly about the importance of listening to and consulting our community before making decisions of this kind.

We have reflected carefully on what happened, and our first step afterwards was to speak to you and get your feedback.

As part of this review and consultation period, we heard from over 900 members, supporters, former winners of 100 Women in Cycling, Community Cycle Club reps, sector stakeholders and staff. It showed there was a real appetite to have this conversation with us, and help us find a way forward, so thank you.

We didn’t just rely on survey responses either. Our senior team met a number of groups in our community to hear from them directly and those conversations were invaluable.

So, what was all this feedback and what might be next? The clear message was that people feel strongly that Cycling UK should continue to run a national awards scheme, but to do so in a way that celebrates the people and groups helping to make cycling more diverse and inclusive, regardless of identity.

Based on this feedback, we’re now going to start working on what this could look like, with the intention of launching a new awards programme in 2027, and we’ll share more information once we have it.

Thank you again for taking part in the review, giving up your valuable time, sharing your thoughts and ideas and helping shape the future of these awards.

Vom. I wonder who the "groups in our community" were. Because, oddly enough, they didn't ask the women's task force that they got together in about 2020-2021 (or if they did, I missed the memo).

edit: arg, how do I remove those enormous words?!

A line starting with # will be displayed as bigly text. Two # is a little smaller.

Bigly one hash text

Smaller two hash text

all the way to

Six hashes is the lowest supported heading level and apparently looks like normal Mumsnet text.

It's a convention used in a documentation language called Markdown to represent headings and sub-headings and sub-sub-headings.

I recall considerable excitement on this board when posters first discovered bigly text.

Hooray for the bigly words

Nobody ever apologies for “hurting” women, do they? Just let us have stuff of our own, Cycling UK!

thank you @selffellatingouroborosofhate

Maybe we needed to speak in bigly words all along!

edited to remove my failed attempt at bigly words and add:
I don't really understand why there is any need to say anything at all. Does Sarah have to bow and scrape to escape the wrath of those who don't like women to have nice things?

Hash, space, word.

#Fail

Bigly

I have been doing cycling and thinking today. So I sent off my AGM motion proposal (let's keep 100 Women in Cycling, because it's fun and it's in the 2024-2029 strategy) in mid-April. I sent it to the relevant address and Cced Sarah Mitchell. There is supposed to be some selection committee who review motion proposals, and inform the proposer about suggested rewording or if they have decided not to send it to the AGM at all. The CUK AGM is in September, our member group AGMs are supposed to be roughly May-June time.
I haven't had any info about the motion proposal yet, but I wasn't expecting to because they're probably busy with year end submissions from member groups.

But how does that work with the message from Sarah Mitchell above from last week? I mean, her message - four weeks after submitting my motion proposal - has made my proposal meaningless hasn't it? We members can't vote on my proposal in any meaningful form, because the CEO has already ousted it. And that's before I'd even heard back about the success (or not) of my proposal.

I want to say, I don't understand how this is fair. But that's true of everything this ideology touches, isn't it; it never was about fairness. It certainly seems like a poor way for a charity to behave. How depressing.

I didn't explicitly say "let's keep 100 Women in Cycling just one more year" but I'd be happy if that were to happen - and from the message above from Sarah Mitchell, it could still be the case. The internet says that nominations in previous years ran from about mid-May to mid-June. So this is something to keep a really close eye on in the next couple of weeks.

Bah. As predicted, I received an email yesterday (12 May):

Thank you for your motion regarding the continuation of Cycling UK’s 100 Women initiative. Since your motion was submitted, a communication has been sent to members setting out the future direction of how women’s contributions to cycling will be recognised and celebrated. That update explains the context for change, the feedback received from members and the community, and the approach the organisation will be taking going forward. In light of that communication, the AGM motions selection panel considered your motion against the criteria set out in Cycling UK’s AGM motions process and agreed that it should not be taken forward to the AGM.

Oh the irony of a national cycling charity being SO OBVIOUSLY CIRCULAR.