Cycling UK 'Top 100 women cyclists' nominee declines over policy change

[Jdsk]

Guardian: "Rules on single-sex spaces pose risk to trans people’s mental health, UK charities say":
https://www.theguardian.com/society/202 ... -charities

Jonathan

[mjr]

Rulings are never perfect and there will always be special cases and stuff that either just goes unrecognised or unquestioned. As such the legal system has redressed a balance and from what I see women seem to be pleased by that.

From what you see? How can you tell by looking?That's not what those I know have told me. It seems like a minority, possibly a small one, who are pleased by all this new doorslamming.

YouGov polling says 61% of females surveyed thought the Supreme Court got it right (20% thought wrong, 20% didn’t know)

https://sex-matters.org/wp-content/uplo ... 250509.pdf

Online survey and it looks like people couId simply claim to be female, doesn't it?

Also, others note that's not the same as agreeing with the recent rash of strange-looking non-sports interpretations.

[pjclinch]

From what you see? How can you tell by looking?That's not what those I know have told me. It seems like a minority, possibly a small one, who are pleased by all this new doorslamming.

YouGov polling says 61% of females surveyed thought the Supreme Court got it right (20% thought wrong, 20% didn’t know)

https://sex-matters.org/wp-content/uplo ... 250509.pdf

Online survey and it looks like people couId simply claim to be female, doesn't it?

Also, others note that's not the same as agreeing with the recent rash of strange-looking non-sports interpretations.

And YouGov opinion polling tells us that The Great British Public currently think that Reform should be the next government, which I see more as an indication of the effect of misinformation and bias in public discourse than as an indication that that's been carefully considered, is all good and proper and ~ 28% of Brits are entirely on-board with their positions and policies.

Pete.

[Bmblbzzz]

Here is one quote if you don't want to read it all. Could this woman join the WI now that they won't allow trams women into membership? She isn't "trans", at least in the normally understood sense, but she is a genetically male person with a female body.

“The most recent woman we diagnosed with having XY chromosomes was 33,” says Claus Højbjerg Gravholt - an endocrinology professor at Aarhus University who spent the past 30 years dealing with DSD.

His patient came to see him because she had no idea why she couldn’t get pregnant.

“We discovered she didn’t have a uterus, so she would never be able to have a baby. She was absolutely devastated.”

Prof Gravholt says the implications that come with questioning one’s gender identity can be destabilising - and he often refers his patients to a psychologist.

“If I showed you her photo, you would say: that’s a woman. She has a female body, she is married to a man. She feels like a female. And that is the case for most of my patients.

The interesting thing as it relates to psychological concepts of gender is precisely that she wasn't transgender. That is, despite being genetically male, she had no "gender identity" in her brain telling her she was anything other than the 100% female she outwardly appeared to be.

[Catherine Wykes]

First time poster, so it may be a bit rash jumping in on this one, but as one of this year’s recipients I feel like it would be slightly remiss of me not to comment, so strap in, here goes…
Firstly, and slightly pedantically, the programme is called ‘100 women in cycling’, not ‘Top UK women cyclists’. It’s supposed to be about recognising women doing good stuff in cycling, not being the best at doing it. Personally I think that’s an important distinction - it’s a pat on the back but it’s not a competition!
Secondly, please don’t assume every woman who accepted a nomination did so because we agreed with the (hopefully temporary) change to the entry criteria. The SC judgement and the interim guidance, rather than creating clarity, have put organisations like CUK, the WI and Girl Guides between a rock and a hard place and I accepted the nomination in recognition of that fact.

I really despair at how far backwards we’ve gone on this issue in the UK over the past decade, thanks mostly to a huge amount of trans hostile media coverage, and I can’t see it getting better any time soon. Section 28 was in place for what, 15 years?

I genuinely believe we’ll look back on this current period as a shameful moral panic, but until we do have the benefit of hindsight, I’m not going to judge charities and public bodies for making mistakes as they attempt to navigate a really tricky legal path.

[Zulu Eleven]

Online survey and it looks like people couId simply claim to be female, doesn't it?

Yet according to some on here, that simple act of claiming to be female should settle their eligibility for an award scheme…

[Jdsk]

Yet according to some on here, that simple act of claiming to be female should settle their eligibility for an award scheme…

Please could you tell us which posters have asserted that, and where.

Thankyou

Jonathan

[Jdsk]

Yes, that sounds likely. But I would have hoped that the legal advice would have included a warning about overinterpretation of the Supreme Court ruling. And I'm very surprised that it was "clear".

The judgment in Peggie:
https://www.gov.uk/employment-tribunal- ... slash-2024

And two immediate analyses:
https://bsky.app/profile/jessothomson.c ... idggowts2n
https://bsky.app/profile/goodlawproject ... idfvywly2z

It's a massive warning against over interpretation. And AFAICT shows why local pragmatic decision making is what's needed (until further legislation).

Jonathan

[Jdsk]

And the judgment in Kelly:
https://assets.publishing.service.gov.u ... 7.2025.pdf

Jonathan

[mjr]

Online survey and it looks like people couId simply claim to be female, doesn't it?

Yet according to some on here, that simple act of claiming to be female should settle their eligibility for an award scheme…

There aren't, but nonetheless, you seemed to be arguing that self-identification shouldn't be believed, yet you're willing to cite a survey that allows self-identification as proof that women are happy with something, which is just mind-blowing levels of irony . How do you decide when you're willing to believe people are what they say and when not? Do you only believe them when they agree with your prior beliefs, or what?

It seems obvious there was a motive for culture-warring men to misidentify themselves and stuff that survey to try to prove a point. I'm surprised YouGov didn't defend against it, yet also not, given their founders.

[Zulu Eleven]

It seems obvious there was a motive for culture-warring men to misidentify themselves and stuff that survey to try to prove a point. I'm surprised YouGov didn't defend against it, yet also not, given their founders.

Wow, so now you’re saying that one of the problems of allowing men to identify as being women is that men might deliberately misidentify themselves as women with inappropriate, or even dangerous, motives or intent?

Who on earth could have guessed that might happen?

[Nearholmer]

We all know that a tiny number of weirdos have, and might in the future do that. We aren’t daft. It’s utterly disingenuous to pretend that people either don’t know that, or are themselves pretending that issue out of existence.

But, deliberately fear-mongering that to be a huge issue, and then using that deliberately cultivated fear to support disproportionate, needless, measures, is itself pretty blooming weird, and it is dangerous in a broad sense too.

Right now, the town I grew up in is going through a bit of a challenging moment, because the Home Office propose to use an army camp on the very edge of the town to house asylum seekers. What has been “interesting” to watch from a distance (I haven’t lived there for decades, but keep in touch) has been the way in which fear-mongering, the very drliberate stoking of hugely disproportionate fear, has been used to coral opposition to what is proposed, and to legitimise variously xenophobic and plainly racist outpourings. I also suspect that some of this has been orchestrated from behind the scenes by ultras who have a sophisticated grasp of how to inculcate and use fear as a weapon.

So ……. a significant part of my hardening opposition to both your individual stabce, and the current legal interpretations on this topic relate to the general principle that law and public policy should be rational, proportionate, just etc, not driven by irrationality, phobia, disproportion, and very deliberate fear-mongering by ultras with axes to grind.

I don’t want my kids to inherit a world in which mob lynchings and witch-burnings are the norm, and if irrationality and manipulation by fear-mongering triumph, they will.

Proportionate measure to deal with real risks do not include preventing trans-women in general participating in activities where they present no risk, and have hitherto been welcome. Doing that smacks of vindictiveness driven by phobia.

[deeferdonk]

First time poster, so it may be a bit rash jumping in on this one, but as one of this year’s recipients I feel like it would be slightly remiss of me not to comment, so strap in, here goes…
Firstly, and slightly pedantically, the programme is called ‘100 women in cycling’, not ‘Top UK women cyclists’. It’s supposed to be about recognising women doing good stuff in cycling, not being the best at doing it. Personally I think that’s an important distinction - it’s a pat on the back but it’s not a competition!
Secondly, please don’t assume every woman who accepted a nomination did so because we agreed with the (hopefully temporary) change to the entry criteria. The SC judgement and the interim guidance, rather than creating clarity, have put organisations like CUK, the WI and Girl Guides between a rock and a hard place and I accepted the nomination in recognition of that fact.

I really despair at how far backwards we’ve gone on this issue in the UK over the past decade, thanks mostly to a huge amount of trans hostile media coverage, and I can’t see it getting better any time soon. Section 28 was in place for what, 15 years?

I genuinely believe we’ll look back on this current period as a shameful moral panic, but until we do have the benefit of hindsight, I’m not going to judge charities and public bodies for making mistakes as they attempt to navigate a really tricky legal path.

Thankyou for your insight Catherine and congratulations on your nomination.

[roubaixtuesday]

First time poster, so it may be a bit rash jumping in on this one, but as one of this year’s recipients I feel like it would be slightly remiss of me not to comment, so strap in, here goes…
Firstly, and slightly pedantically, the programme is called ‘100 women in cycling’, not ‘Top UK women cyclists’. It’s supposed to be about recognising women doing good stuff in cycling, not being the best at doing it. Personally I think that’s an important distinction - it’s a pat on the back but it’s not a competition!
Secondly, please don’t assume every woman who accepted a nomination did so because we agreed with the (hopefully temporary) change to the entry criteria. The SC judgement and the interim guidance, rather than creating clarity, have put organisations like CUK, the WI and Girl Guides between a rock and a hard place and I accepted the nomination in recognition of that fact.

I really despair at how far backwards we’ve gone on this issue in the UK over the past decade, thanks mostly to a huge amount of trans hostile media coverage, and I can’t see it getting better any time soon. Section 28 was in place for what, 15 years?

I genuinely believe we’ll look back on this current period as a shameful moral panic, but until we do have the benefit of hindsight, I’m not going to judge charities and public bodies for making mistakes as they attempt to navigate a really tricky legal path.

Thank you for your insights, and for you work for cycling

Catherine Wykes is committed to making cycling accessible, inclusive and enjoyable in Dundee and beyond. As Chair of the Dundee Cycling Forum, she successfully unites diverse cyclists, ensuring every voice is heard while advocating for safer infrastructure and policies. Catherine is the vital link between everyday riders and the local council. Her commitment shines through her work supporting women as a Breeze Champion and ensuring cycling is inclusive for all by engaging with partners like Dundee Dragons Wheelchair Sports Club.

“I’m a Cycle Champion and I’m delighted to live in a city that’s made a serious commitment to enabling many others to enjoy the benefits of everyday cycling.”



https://www.cyclinguk.org/biography/catherine-wykes

[pjclinch]

It seems obvious there was a motive for culture-warring men to misidentify themselves and stuff that survey to try to prove a point. I'm surprised YouGov didn't defend against it, yet also not, given their founders.

Wow, so now you’re saying that one of the problems of allowing men to identify as being women is that men might deliberately misidentify themselves as women with inappropriate, or even dangerous, motives or intent?

Who on earth could have guessed that might happen?

So given that some nasty pieces of work get into sports coaching for kids because they're paedophiles, let's just stamp out sports coaching for kids shall we? Or perhaps we might stand back, realise it's not a general case, and see that despite it being practically inevitable that some bampots will slip through, sports coaching for kids is on balance a good thing rather than a bad one?

Pete.