Cycling UK Forum

Cugel wrote:

pete75 wrote:

Cugel wrote:There's nothing to stop the prize-givers or the gong-awarders doing a virtual separation within a single race to give 1st woman, 1st man, 1st under 18, 1st over 50, etcetera. In fact this happens in hundreds of amateur races of all kinds.

All that means is women are competing against women for the woman's prize. There are few, if any , people over 50 or under 18 competing in top level professional sport.
If a sporting event is designed for all to compete on equal terms then for that to happen it would be necessary to have one set of prizes - the winner and down to whatever place the organisers want to award money be that third or tenth.

No, the women are also now competing against the men in the race they are in. Perhaps one will win the overall race, even among "the professionals".
Why not try it and find out?

What is the advantage to the men gained by banning women in their race? I can think of only one: the loss of ego should a woman win. Of course, this is only an advantage to misogynists; the weak of ego; the strange blokes who are afrit of ladies.

Cugel

No. I don't think the top women would want it. Their earning would whither away.
Some years ago when the men's and women's payments for winning Wimbledon were vastly different and there were complaints it was unfair to women the authorities suggested lumping the prize money together and just having one competition. The women were all against this idea as they knew they'd not earn any prize money.
Remarks about people being frightened doesn't help your argument.

pete75 wrote:

Vorpal wrote:

Ben@Forest wrote:
But bigger women are encouraged to take up sports that may suit them, shot put, rugby and so on and train for those sports

Really? I'm not huge, but I'm 5'8" and have a build and muscle more suited to playing rugby than tennis, I was not only not given encouragement (sorry about the double negative) growing up, but I was told outright that I wasn't allowed to play because I was a girl. While this was in the USA, rather than the UK, I didn't find that the reception was much better (years later) in the UK.

More muscle than Serena?

Actually, after I posted that, I thought of the Williams sisters. My muscles aren't so well defined, I have a more fat than she does, but I posted body composition analysis results on the string test thread. I don't know what Serena's body composition is. I thought the analysis was rather interesting, as I knew that I was more muscular than most women, but the person who did the test said that my muscle mass was above average on the men's chart, as well.

What I said, came directly out of what I was *told* as a youngster, even if the comparison with tennis wasn't. I liked BMX, baseball, and American football. I wasn't especially good at BMX (I didn it for fun, rather than competition), but I was good at the other two. I tried out for the school's American football team & was good enough to make the team, only to be told a couple of games into the season that no girls would be allowed to play. Further that this did not violate my Title IX rights because it was a contact sport. A few years and a couple of lawsuits later, this exception was proven wrong, even if it was too late for me. That was the early days of Title IX in the USA.

Anyway, when I was kicked off the American football team, I was told to try tennis or swimming instead. I was okay, but not competitive at both. But I made the soccer (aka, football) team, and even though I was the only girl, they couldn't kick me off because it was theoretically a non-contact sport and Title IX gave me a legal right to be there.

Ah yes the new Netherlands women's champion of beach cycling.



Head and shoulders above the rest.

https://www.natalievangogh.nl/2019/03/0 ... race-2019/

pwa wrote:Off Topic, but my solution for the lack of a proper female Tour de France would be to run a women's stage each day on the same course as the men's event, but timed to finish maybe an hour before. And if some of the backmarkers get passed by the leaders of the men's race, no problem.

I'd have them all starting together, with mixed teams. It would add further interesting tactics; does a team dedicate some of its male riders to strengthening the chances of competing for the women's GC?

You'd still be discriminating between women and men; something that I believe is unavoidable if you want to see elite women athletes providing motivation for grass roots female athletes. But at least the trans athlete could compete, they'd just not be eligible for the women's GC.

Just to be clear, this is what we are talking about:

https://www.bicycling.com/culture/a2573 ... ling-race/

Both cyclists in this photo identify as female. Out there in the normal world, on the street or the workplace, or in the pub, I have no difficulty accepting that because it presents me with no problems. If it makes the person on the left feel better about herself, yes, I will call her "she" and try to think of her that way. It helps her and it costs me nothing.

But looking at that image, that does not look like an equal match for competition. It looks very unequal. You get labelled "transphobic" for having such thoughts, but it is true so I am saying it all the same. "Phobic" means "afraid", and I know I am not afraid of trans people so I reject the term if it is directed at me. I don't resent or despise them, and I wish them well. But the person on the left in the picture, the woman on the left, is clearly physically very different to the woman on the right. I think I can tell the woman on the left was born male. It is obvious. I wish for her sake I could flick a switch and make her look as if she had been born female but I can't. Nobody can. She is physically different to women born female and in sport that makes a difference.

If women who were born female are to be able to aspire to competition at the very top we cannot have women born male in the same top level competitions unless it can be established that they do not have an advantage due to their original gender. Either that or we sacrifice the sporting ambitions of females born as females. That is the choice.

I don't hate McKinnon. I wish her well and hope the furore doesn't get to her. I just think she is competing in a grouping that cannot function for most of the others in it if she is there. In a sporting context it is as if she is a third gender. I'd be reluctant to say that to her face because I want her to be able to function as a woman, to be accepted. But sport is partly about biology, and biology isn't going to do everything we would like it to do just to make life easier for us.

It's quite difficult to determine different people's motives. McKinnon seems like quite an obnoxious character to me.

Lots of comments like this one:

https://twitter.com/rachelvmckinnon/sta ... 5902233600

Which would seem to be highly exaggerated and self-important. There are no traces of any of McKinnon's supposed sporting achievements prior to gender change anywhere online.

There seems to be a strong sense of entitlement which is not at all endearing in that fundamentally McKinnon hasn't ever done anything of note - a career as a philosophy professor and making a lot of noise about winning a bicycle race due to gender identity.

I think there are different levels of this, obviously it is different if you are playing Sunday league football perhaps, but having played very badly at school, I don't think if I was a woman I'd be happy if there was someone with a male body on the other team running into me with crunching tackles.

For non-contact sports at a non-competitive level it matters much less.

thelawnet wrote:Which would seem to be highly exaggerated and self-important. There are no traces of any of McKinnon's supposed sporting achievements prior to gender change anywhere online.

McKinnon was on R4 the other day. She made much of the fact that male and female testosterone levels could be similar or in the same range and therefore the sex one was born with didn't matter.

The female respondent (not sure but think she may have been a Guardian journalist) pointed out that it was not the testosterone on any given day but testosterone that a man produces through puberty that makes the developmental difference. And that if McKinnon was so convinced that a testosterone level was not a significant factor then why not compete in men's races?

Good point l thought.

Ben@Forest wrote:
The female respondent (not sure but think she may have been a Guardian journalist) pointed out that it was not the testosterone on any given day but testosterone that a man produces through puberty that makes the developmental difference. And that if McKinnon was so convinced that a testosterone level was not a significant factor then why not compete in men's races?

Good point l thought.

McKinnon's argument is, essentially, anyone has a right to declare themselves female or male in all cases and that's all that counts.

A Dutch activist tried to have himself declared legally 20 years younger but this was not accepted.

It is however essentially the same thing - 7 year olds don't play football against 13 year olds (even if the 13yo has a mental age of 7) because it would be unfair and dangerous to have children of very different size on a pitch together.

The Grauniad just reported trouble at Het Omloop Niewsblad after the ladies nearly caught up the laddies

Probably not of great relevance overall but I note that this article form one of the early Classics - Omloop Het Nieuwsblad - at the weekend

Omloop Het Nieuwsblad women's race halted as rider catches men's race

Was that just a case of bad planning with a gap that's not big enough to take account of the closing 2 vehicles in the men's race? Basically all the team vehicles, ambulance, tail wagon and other backup were behind the end of the men's race. There was a 10 minute gap. There was something like 3 minutes of following vehicles leaving a 7 minute gap which wasn't deemed enough.

IMHO the 10 minute gap might well be enough to separate the races looking purely at time, but only if that gap includes all the trappings of the men's race.

More bad organisation than a view that the women could compete in the men's race.

I wonder when an elite male athlete will self declare as a women and fully demonstrate the absurdity of the current rule system.

alexnharvey wrote:I wonder when an elite male athlete will self declare as a women and fully demonstrate the absurdity of the current rule system.

I have my female side but alas, will never be an elite athlete of any gender whatsoever, real or imaginary. I have seen professional footballers who seem a bit girlie, mind........ Perhaps you could perform your implied experiment using a few of them? But are they athletes? Actors, many of them (of the melodramatic ilk).

My own preference would be to hold a contest of some athletic kind in which all the blokes had to wear long frocks and a corset. Perhaps also those ridiculous high-heeled shoes? This might not settle the issue under discussion but would be entertaining to watch. Professional sport is, after all, an entertainment and hardly a sport at all.

Cugel

Professional sport is a bu$in€$$

The truly vile McKinnon has gone too far.

It's quite common for certain transgender 'activists' to make grotesque claims (such as the 'cotton ceiling', which is the argument that it's discrimination for lesbians not to want to have sex with people who identify as female despite being male). Generally these don't get noticed by the general public, but McKinnon's comments are reaching a wider audience.

McKinnon has said that not allowing transwomen to compete with women is the same as not allowing black women to compete with women.

https://twitter.com/theblaze/status/1104041585342377986

This was a very stupid mistake for a Professor of philosophy to make, because while you can generally claim that male is female without too much backlash, race is quite another matter (see the case of Rachel Dolezal who is a white woman who identified as black, and was non-personed when this was uncovered).

This followed on from saying that Sharron Davies looks like a man (punishment for disagreeing with McKinnon)

https://twitter.com/rachelvmckinnon/sta ... 0809117696

And trying to get Kelly Holmes cancelled by her sponsors, Specialized and Garmin, for disagreeing with McKinnon.

https://twitter.com/rachelvmckinnon/sta ... 8905570305