XPost: uk.rec.cycling, alt.fan.rush-limbaugh, talk.politics.guns
XPost: alt.transgendered

Emily Bridges’ evisceration of British Cycling, accusing the governing
body of “furthering a genocide” by denying those born male the right to
ride competitively against women, is a classic of its oeuvre. It deploys
the transgender lobby’s well-worn tactic of warping women’s legitimate grievances over fairness into some dastardly plot to erase trans people
from society. This is, and always was, a ludicrous overreach, engaging
with none of the reasons why so many female athletes are outraged and
instead making accusations of transphobia as sweeping as they are
baseless.

At no stage of this fevered debate has anybody advocated the “eradication”
of trans people, to use Bridges’ term. At no point have people put
Bridges’ “existence up for debate”, as alleged in a hyperbolic Instagram
post. On the contrary, all those asking questions in this conversation
have had to tread on eggshells in their use of language, constantly
checking pronouns and nuances so as not to inflame sensitivities. If only
the same could be said of the trans activists, whose idea of civilised discourse is to denounce anyone not acquiescing in their world view as a
bigot.

Trans people have the freedoms and the rights to choose whatever path in
life gives them the greatest happiness. But there should emphatically not
be the right for biological males, having derived all the physiological benefits of male puberty, to colonise the female category or to take
records and achievements away from women. Sarah Gibson, who attended an
elite boys’ school and is now non-binary, had no right to deny a young
woman lifelong membership of Cambridge University Boat Club simply by identifying into the 2015 Boat Race as female. Austin Killips, who grew up
male and has written a blog on transitioning called “Estro Junkie”, had no right to usurp Mexico’s Marcela Prieta at the Tour of the Gila, becoming
the first transgender rider to win a UCI stage race.

This is the context that Bridges wilfully disregards. The advantages of
male biology are so incontrovertible that Killips, a mediocre cyclist who
only took up the sport in 2019, is now being tipped for a spot on the US
team at next summer’s Paris Olympics. Bridges, by contrast, is anything
but a mediocrity. Let it be spelt out, for the avoidance of doubt, just
how much chaos Bridges could have created in women’s competition had
British Cycling not seen fit to act. Here is someone who, in 2018, set a national junior men’s record over 25 miles, registering a time two minutes faster than any senior female rider has delivered before or since. The suggestion of Bridges having the capacity to beat Dame Laura Kenny, the country’s greatest female Olympian, was no exaggeration.

For Bridges to assume, with this level of pedigree as a male, that there
was no problem entering women’s races with some testosterone suppression represented the height of narcissism. And it left British Cycling with no choice but to stop it happening. For if you allow something so egregiously unfair, you surrender any efforts to assure women of a level playing
field. I have read Bridges’ emotive response more than once, and I
struggle to summon much sympathy. All the wild ranting about “bad-faith
actors” and “far-right ultra-capitalists” does nothing to challenge the
fact that biological men have no place in women’s sport.

Bridges talks of British Cycling’s ruling being a “violent act”, except it
is nothing of the sort. It is a justified – and, let us be frank, belated
– attempt to guarantee that female races are fair. Bridges refers to being “banned from racing”, but this too is mistaken. There is nothing at all to
stop Bridges from lining up in the male category, or “open” category as it
has since been renamed. This seemed perfectly acceptable in the days when
the cyclist was still breaking junior male records, so why not now? The
very concept of a prohibition is just a transparent attempt to solicit
sympathy that is not deserved.

If anything, British Cycling’s decision still does not go far enough.
While common sense has been seen at last at the elite level, there is a
caveat that “our Breeze programme, a women-only community programme, will continue to remain open and inclusive for transgender women and non-binary people”. Why? Surely the clue is in the description “women-only”. Why
should women who have specifically chosen to ride in female-only events be willing to tolerate a policy of pure self-ID for any post-puberty male who fancies it? There is already fury about this exemption at the grassroots,
which the rulemakers would be ill-advised to ignore.

If there is one feature of this discussion of which I am heartily sick, it
is the idea that trans ideology only affects a tiny minority of people.
For when it is stretched to its most preposterous extremes, as we have witnessed too often in sport, it has the potential to affect half the population. It is women who risk having their accomplishments erased, not
trans people. A declaration by the Sports Council Equality Group in 2021
was unambiguous: inclusion and fairness were irreconcilable concepts. Individual sports would have to choose. At long last, British Cycling has, arriving at the inescapable conclusion that the rights of the many should
trump the entitlement of the few.

https://sports.yahoo.com/course-trans-people-rights-not-145202142.html

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