Olympic medallists from Games past Daley Thompson and Sharron Davies have criticised British Cycling’s transgender athlete policy during an empassioned debate sparked by the governing body sharing its “zero-tolerance” to hate message on social media.
Thompson, who won decathlon gold in 1980 and 1984, was responding to British Cycling tweeting an updated version of its transgender policy, in which it stated: “We take a zero-tolerance approach to instances of hate being targeted at individuals because of their views of gender identity.”
> British Cycling launch consultation on transgender policy
British Cycling’s policy states that members should “accept all participants in the gender they present” and that anyone breaching the guidelines, which includes “stigmatisation or discrimination” against a competitor, will face “appropriate action”.
The two-time Olympic gold medallist asked why the policy was “prepared to alienate at least 50 per cent of their audience?”
“More importantly why would they do it so easily. Whose interests are they really looking after?” Thompson tweeted.
Davies, who won silver in swimming at the 1980 Moscow Olympics, went further, accusing the governing body of not looking after its female athletes.
“It’s your job to look after female athletes as well as male ones,” she said. “The very least you could do is listen and work with the actual science. I will remind and remind you of your position in years to come.”
We take a zero-tolerance approach to instances of hate being targeted at individuals because of their views or gender identity. This thread will be moderated, and if you’re aware of inappropriate or offensive behaviour by our members please email compliance@britishcycling.org.uk.
— British Cycling (@BritishCycling) January 27, 2022
In May, British Cycling announced it would be conducting a five-week consultation into its transgender and non-binary policy.
The policy was first published in October 2020 and received backing from former professional cyclist Philippa York.
142 thoughts on ““Why alienate 50 per cent of their audience?”: Daley Thompson slams British Cycling for transgender athlete policy”
An impassioned debate?
An empassioned debate?
hawkinspeter wrote:
Presumably both passionate and empathetic.
Oh, on second thoughts…
Once you characterise one
Once you characterise one side of the debate as “hate” then the debate is over.
Looks like classic Twitter
Looks like classic Twitter dogpile to me.
All they actually said was they’ll stop being intrusive for Recreational memberships and for Race memberships they are stuck with the UCI policy. Hardly call for a twitter dogpile.
Davies and Goodhew appear to be conflating recognition of athletes in competition – which is obviously a sensitive topic with membership of BC in general which shouldn’t be.
Whilst there are trans ppl who are equally passionate about professional sports recognition for their preferred gender neither side should be allowed to overshadow a tolerant treatment of the general trans population by BC.
Secret_squirrel wrote:
So sexist!!
I barely had time to miss
I barely had time to miss that thread and we’ve a second chance! My teacup is rigged for storm.
Quote:
So people who are called “TERFs”, “gender fascists” and so on won’t have to put up with that hate either? If not that statement has no meaning and indeed is hypocritical, it just means we won’t tolerate hate towards the views with which we agree.
No comment on the wider issues (after seeing Rich and nosferatu going at it I have no desire to stick my nose into that can of worms) but that seems mealy-mouthed of BC to me.
I hope you’re not waiting for
I hope you’re not waiting for me to comment ?
sparrowlegs wrote:
Nor me!….
Captain Badger wrote:
I hope you’re not waiting for me to comment ?
— Captain Badger Nor me!….— sparrowlegs
Can we have a debate about helmet use instead? 🙂
With apologies to Private Eye
With apologies to Private Eye
OldRidgeback wrote:
Hmmm, we haven’t done religion for a while…..
Captain Badger wrote:
Well the Thread That Shall Not Be Named got closed down when it veered in to blasphemy…
mdavidford wrote:
Christ mus have missed that one – please refresh my memory MD
See the last two comments.
See the last two comments.
mdavidford wrote:
Captain Badger wrote:
Don’t post on the thread, the
Don’t post on the thread, the beautiful, shiny thread, the jolly candy-like thread…
https://vimeo.com/126720159
chrisonatrike wrote:
I can’t help it, it’s so beautiful…. fzzt
I’m staying out of this one.
I’m staying out of this one. ?
This appears to have been
This appears to have been picked up from the Daily Mail (searched google/news for Daley Thompson; this was the top link, Daily Mail the fifth, all the other recent search results relate to alleged legal shenanigans from the extremely non-athletic Chicago politician Patrick Daley Thompson).
Thompson’s, and in particular, Davies’ common stance on the TS issue is well-known and long-standing.
The DM’s stance appears to be “anti-woke” (or as some might put it, anti-tolerance), and anti-cycling at the same time. So just general poop-stirring. No need for us to stick our arms into a whirring cement mixer of poop started by the DM. There is also reference to this on, er, David Icke’s website.
Can’t say I have an issue
Can’t say I have an issue with the BC Twitter statements referenced in the article. It is wrong that any individual should receive ‘hate’ due to chosen gender or viewpoints.
However, I am led to understand that behind this fairly benign, and totally reasonable comment, BC supported athletes have also been instructed that they are not to comment negatively about trans sport in any instance.
If that is indeed the case, then that is not cool at all.
Jimmy Ray Will wrote:
Those paying/supporting you to do something will often have standards of public comment they require you to maintain as part of your contract/agreement, and that is not unreasonable in itself.
My contract of employment specifically sets out the consequences of me publicly criticising my school’s policies on social media or elsewhere.
I can choose to still do it, and I know the consequences of making that choice. Likewise, if BC supported athletes feel strongly enough about BC’s stance to want to speak out they are free to do so, knowing that the consequence will likely be withdrawal of their funding/support.
That is not to say that I, personally, support BC’s policy on this … I am on the fence simply because there is so much debate on the science behind it, and most public comment turns into a slanging match between the two extremes of opinion.
I appreciate everything you
I appreciate everything you say, however the crux for me is in your last paragraph.
As there is still so much uncertainty (rightly or wrongly) surounding this subject, I don’t think its reasonable that athletes potentially directly affected by trans sport are unable to express their concerns / opinions publically.
As a paying customer of BC, I’m not impressed by its forced silencing of arguably understandable concerns.
Having said that, personally, unless we start seeing world class podiums being dominated by trans athletes, I am not sure how big an ‘issue” there really is. But, crucially, who I’d say needs reassuring / their position considering is not middle aged men like me, its young women coming into the sport. Alas it seems as though they’ve simply been told to shut up and suck it up. Is that progressive / inclusive?
Jimmy Ray Will wrote:
But all those competing at local level do not have legitmate concerns being beaten by someone who was a man 2 years ago, as long as world class podiums are not dominated.
I hear ya, and highlight…
I hear ya, and highlight…
“But, crucially, who I’d say needs reassuring / their position considering is not middle aged men like me, its young women coming into the sport.”
Whilst ensuring that trans athletes are able to enjoy the same freedoms as everyone else – namely the joy of playing sport – we do also need to monitor;
– how trans athlete participation influences top end sport – for instance should the percentage of trans athletes reaching the top end of their chosen sport be grossly imbalanced to the total number of trans athletes participating, measures that ensure fair play may need revisiting.
– the perceptions of those entering women’s sport – or not – around trans athlete participation, and if these perceptions are influencing the likelihood of someone starting or continuing a sport. If participation in women’s sport declines and trans athletes are causing this decline, then some horribly awkward conversations will need to take place.
It all depends how British
It all depends how British Cycling class transgender athletes.
In Scotland, the wonderful woke government are pushing for self-ID laws, i.e. a man can say he is a woman and then use female only spaces. Women’s rights are being destroyed and due to Hate Crime bill that the government is trying to implement then a woman can be jailed for refusing to call her rapist she if said rapist chooses to self-id as female.
In the UK, there are male rapists who say they are female and are housed in female only prisons and have committed sexual attacks on female inmates.
Constructive comments based
Constructive comments based on facts and reality are welcome but hate is not. I despair of the word ‘woke’ as it seems to mean what ever I dis-agree with but cannot win an argument using strength of logic or meaning. If a person born as a man identifies as a women then they need to recognise without undertaking gender reassignment treatment that they have a biological advantage over people born as female. This needs to be reflected however sensitively in any prizes or recording of positions. Is anybody aware of how this is being translated within the sport at whatever level ? At the elite level transwomen having undergone reassignment are not winning everything or even coming close to the top female born athletes. At the lower level many trans atheles are just wishing to take part, compete and be accepted. They in general they do not wish to alienate anybody but equally do not wish for others to impose there viewpoints or judgements where it is intended to cause harm or discrimination, we seem to have enough division in this world without the need for more.
Phillipa York has an informed
Phillipa York has an informed, first-hand take on this. Basically gender reassignment led to immediate loss of muscle mass and strength, accompanied by a gain in body fat. Could explain your observation.
Two sexes, Male and Female.
Two sexes, Male and Female.
Anything else is weird
CXR94Di2 wrote:
Even if you entirely dismiss the concept of people having a gender different from that of their birth sex, that statement dismisses all those born intersex, i.e. with both male and female features, or neither, around one in 1500 births. You are presumably using “weird” here to mean “unnatural”, correct? Who are you to tell other human beings that they don’t conform to your ideal of what “natural” means?
I think ‘weird’ translates as
I think ‘weird’ translates as ‘outside my comfort zone and understanding”
Every person is either female
Every person is either female or male, there are only those two options.
trinityboy wrote:
Every person either applies binary categorisations to reality or they don’t, there are only those two options.
Betrand Russell on proof and uncertainly in maths may help:
trinityboy wrote:
It always amazes me just how sure of themselves that stupid people are.
I’ll take this opportunity to show that even names are surprisingly complex when you take a little peek out of your perceptual bubble. Here’s a list of falsehoods taken from https://www.kalzumeus.com/2010/06/17/falsehoods-programmers-believe-about-names/
I’ll add my favourite one
I’ll add my favourite one that I’ve come across: There are no people who have Null as a name.
mdavidford wrote:
That should be on the list, too, along with little Bobby Tables (https://xkcd.com/327/)
It’s fun to think something
It’s fun to think something simple is complicated, but there’s a vast amount of misunderstanding and disinformation on this topic. For example, if somebody could point to a third sex category in any mamallian species that would be astounding.
There’s a little website, you
There’s a little website, you may have heard of, called google. If you type into the search bar something along the the lines of studies of intersex mammals, you will find various studies you can critique with your in-depth and peer reviewed contradictory investigations, allowing the original scientists the right of response to your work.
Or you could keep trolling a cycling website ?
Thanks – I think there’s a
Thanks – I think there’s a misunderstanding in there, nobody is going to point to a peer reviewed article showing a third or further Sex because they don’t exist.
trinityboy wrote:
I strongly suspect that you’re not going to attempt to point to a relevant study on why people can be neatly into male and female binary categories because:
A) there is no credible study that exists to demonstrate this; and
B) you’re enjoying an attempt to hit another three century in the comments, go on, admit it. ?
Yes if you mean no study can
Yes if you mean no study can show a human that is neither male nor female we’d agree.
Ooh science… yet I feel
Ooh science… yet I feel this is really a cry for some Marc Almond!
trinityboy wrote:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Intersex_(biology)
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gynandromorphism
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hermaphrodite
Thank you, but ‘intersex’
Thank you, but ‘intersex’ doesn’t mean ‘Not one of the two sexes’. It’s a confusion of language, a bit like the way ‘inflammable’ doesn’t mean ‘non flammable’. There are a range of medical conditions covered by the rather unhelpful term ‘intersex’ that affect men (males) and women (females) quite distinctly. They can be mild, life threatening or difficult to manage, but they are sex specific.
trinityboy wrote:
Intersex is a general term for an organism that has sex characteristics that intermediate between male and female. The term intersex typically applies to abnormal members of gonochoric species that are usually sterile. It is not to be confused with the term hermaphrodite.
Intersexuality has been reported in mammals, fishes, nematodes, and crustaceans.
You’re mistaking the map for the territory. “Male” and “female” are artificial terms that humans use, but “intersex” covers some cases where you cannot determine that the person is one or the other. You could decide to classify people based on their chromosomes and arbitrarily put less common sets (XXY, XXX, XO) into one or other category, but that hardly means that there’s only two types of sexual genetics just because you’ve put them into two categories.
It’s like a completely colour-blind person declaring that there’s only two colours and dividing up colours into black and white.
None of that means that any
None of that means that any human is not male or female.
trinityboy wrote:
You mean that you can still arbitrarily classify someone as male or female despite the facts of the matter.
You’re a colour-blind person telling us that red is clearly white and blue is clearly black. Your lack of understanding does not define reality.
Another analogy for you – humans are clearly either tall or short. You can not point to a third height for humans that is neither tall nor short.
“Don’t tell them about about
“Don’t tell them about about quantum superposition, Pike!”
chrisonatrike wrote:
I mentioned polarised lenses once, but I think I got away with it.
chrisonatrike wrote:
Heisenberg was driving in his car, when the police stopped him.
Heisnberg wound down his window and said “Can I help you, officer?”
The Officer said, “Do you know how fast you were going, sir?”
Heisenberg replied “No, but I know where I was to a fair degree of certainty”
Great gag, I’ve always used a
Great gag, I’ve always used a slightly different version:
Heisenberg is pulled over by a traffic cop and accused of speeding. “Where are we officer?” he asks.
“Why, we’re in Göttingen.”
“Are you certain of that, officer?”
“Absolutely.”
“In which case you can’t possibly know how fast I was going.”
Heisenberg and Schrödinger
Heisenberg and Schrödinger were driving on the motorway, going to a seminar, when they get pulled over by an official looking cop. The cop comes around to the driver side and says to Heisenberg,
“Did you know you were going 87mph in a 70?”
And so Heisenberg says, “Oh great, now I’m lost”.
The cop scratches his head, and says, “Pop the boot, I want to take a look”. He walks back, looks in and then walks around to the right side and says to Schrödinger, “Do you know you have a dead cat in the boot?”
Schrödinger says, “I do now”.
After some thinking, I quite
After some thinking, I quite like the tall/short analogy.
Imagine if you will, a planet much like ours, populated with people much like us. However, they’ve never categorised people based on genitals, but instead used to have a remarkably strict height based system.
After birth, a doctor examines the new-born and declares (usually based on size) whether the baby is tall or short. Obviously, all babies are small, but they categorise them based on what height they will eventually become (it often wasn’t clear if the right decision had been made until they hit puberty). The tall people are dressed in blue and the short ones in pink to differentiate them.
Over time, their society has made different roles for the shorts and the talls – the talls are considered “bread winners” and go out to find work whilst the shorts are expected to stay home and look after things there. Their society used to have a strict policy of only allowing short people to marry tall people, although they are now more accepting and have finally allowed shorts to marry shorts and talls to marry talls.
Now, there were some peculiar situations when a tall didn’t grow as much during puberty and ended up “shorter” than some shorts and conversely some shorts grew massively to become at first sight, a tall (obviously they would still be wearing characteristically “short” clothing).
Eventually, their people talked and talked and decided that maybe people should be able to decide for themselves if they were short or tall and they even developed surgical techniques for shortening or lengthening people who felt that they didn’t fit in to the stereotypes (height reassignment surgery).
That also caused a kerfuffle as almost all their sports were strongly divided into talls and shorts as the very best talls seemed to out-perform the very best shorts in almost every competition. The shorts declared that it was unfair for height re-assigned talls to compete directly with them (the shorts’ competitions were often considered “lesser” in their society) and at the same time, the height re-assigned talls were fighting to get equal acceptance in society as the traditional talls and shorts. (There were also several short people that chose to dress as talls and some of them chose surgery whilst others wore prosthetics such as raised shoes. They didn’t seem to cause nearly as much “concern” from the rest of the population).
Now imagine when our societies meet – would they mock us for focussing on dangly (or not dangly) bits between our legs or would we mock them for doing the same with height?
hawkinspeter wrote:
Probably just nuke each other, because, y’know, different…
mdavidford wrote:
It’s the only way to be sure…
Again, there are the two sex
Again, there are the two sex classes, that’s how we all got here, millions of years of evolution. People aren’t arbitrarily dividing each other by dangly bits.
trinityboy wrote:
If dividing people by dangly bits isn’t arbitrary, then dividing people by height is also not arbitrary and actually a far more obvious physical characteristic. Again, million of years of evolution naturally divided people into tall and short. Alternatively, you could appreciate that height and sex characteristics are a continuum and not a binary division.
For there to be any sensible continuation of this discussion, you should specify what definition of male and female that you are using – might be dangly bits, genetics or some combination thereof. Imagine meeting the planet of talls and shorts – what measurements are they using for tall and short?
trinityboy wrote:
Although technically correct, you are out by a few orders of magnitude there…
It’s not arbitrary, it’s
It’s not arbitrary, it’s normally obvious but in rare cases it takes an expert or a number of experts to find out.
most color-blind people would
most color-blind people would be more likely to tell you the red is green and the blue is gray. color blindness is clearly not your forte. but that’s OK, color blind people are one of the few groups left on the planet against which it still seems OK to suggest prejudice.
cmedred wrote:
I was referring to monochromacy which is complete colour-blindness and is very rare. But yes, red-green colour blindness is the most common form (and far more common in men). I’m puzzled about your prejudice comment as in my experience it is impossible for people to tell whether an individual has any colour-blindness, let alone pre-judge them. Maybe you’re confusing a discussion for some kind of judgement?
hawkinspeter wrote:
So much so, that after a visit to the optician, my daughter was refered to a specialist for colour blindness, who declared she had no problem at all.
I swear they both used exactly the same dot test cards.
Mind you, I still have some doubts due to her description of the Picadilly line as purple on the underground map.
wycombewheeler wrote:
Reminds me of this interesting article: https://jamessevedge.com/articles/red-light-green-light/
cmedred wrote:
Inadvertent discrimination against colour blind people is really common. I was pretty ashamed when I realised how many dashboards I’ve created that are bloody useless to people with standard colour blindness. Just a bit of thought and courtesy could have avoided that like adding a letter R/A/G to colour graded risk ratings.
In a similar way, adding pronouns is a simple courtesy that does no harm and can do good. I do worry about the mental health of people who get upset about things like that.
*edit, I’m not sure I’ve seen any discrimination against colour blindness in this thread, just pointing out that the world is build in a way that disregards colour blindness
JustTryingToGetFromAtoB wrote
most color-blind people would be more likely to tell you the red is green and the blue is gray. color blindness is clearly not your forte. but that’s OK, color blind people are one of the few groups left on the planet against which it still seems OK to suggest prejudice.
— JustTryingToGetFromAtoB Inadvertent discrimination against colour blind people is really common. I was pretty ashamed when I realised how many dashboards I’ve created that are bloody useless to people with standard colour blindness. Just a bit of thought and courtesy could have avoided that like adding a letter R/A/G to colour graded risk ratings. In a similar way, adding pronouns is a simple courtesy that does no harm and can do good. I do worry about the mental health of people who get upset about things like that. *edit, I’m not sure I’ve seen any discrimination against colour blindness in this thread, just pointing out that the world is build in a way that disregards colour blindness— cmedred
I agree about discrimination against colour-blindness (that it happens, not that it’s a good thing) and designers will often make mistakes unless they consciously ensure that shapes and positions are used to convey information rather than just colour shades.
I don’t know why cmedred was banging on about prejudice though.
trinityboy wrote:
Actually, I can agree with this. Wait, hear me out.
Pretty much everyone starts out in life with someone at your birth pointing at your genitalia and assigning a man made category of male or female. Therefore everything that happens after is either in accordance with or goes against the initial classification of male or female, but that initial manmade classification remains.
Except for societies that do indeed have additional classifications over that male and female.
And except where someone looked at the baby genitalia and went ‘fucked if I know, you decide’ and gave the job to someone else.
Actually, scrap that, I can’t get on board
JustTryingToGetFromAtoB wrote
So if someone is born in a forest with no-one around to classify them, then they are neither male nor female?
hawkinspeter wrote:
So if someone is born in a forest with no-one around to classify them, then they are neither male nor female?— JustTryingToGetFromAtoB
That’s the other classification. Male, female and tarzan
Unless they’re Mowgli!
Unless they’re Mowgli!
Aaaw c’mon man, don’t ya
Aaaw c’mon man, don’t ya wanna fly? THIS is the really good stuff….
trinityboy wrote:
As a trinitarian have you at least considered the possibility that there may be more to it (one, the other, both)? I presume at least you agree that they partake of the same essence…?
chrisonatrike wrote:
Well they draw on the same source, but in different ways…
mdavidford wrote:
I really enjoyed that series, but then I haven’t read the books.
Me too!
Me too!
Apparently the books are, appropriately for this thread, a bit more binary in their approach to gender and magic
Just sticking to the basics.
Just sticking to the basics. I mean, do you believe in Road Tax?
trinityboy wrote:
FTFY
Not with you?
Not with you?
What twaddle. You are what
What twaddle. You are what you are basically born with an nowt else. If you are one of the very infitesimaally few who may have some variation to standard then there are several options. The main one being do something where it doesn’t matter. Race a car or play snooker. Alternatively go with what you popped out with. Don’t like it? Bloody well tough. Don’t get compplicated trying to find loop holes to sort your own little minority. Chosen to do some sort of swap? Absolutely tough. Don’t be an aberation then want things your own way as you no longer fit. And of course the nice thing is that as , in this day and age, we are all entitled to our our opinions aree we not, you lot can’t say a thing about this comment without being hypocritical. Either we all have freedom or we don’t.
That’s not really how it
That’s not really how it works – you can say, for example, that someone is being unpleasant, aggressive, arrogant, and prejudiced, without denying their right to be it.
mattsccm wrote:
Everyone has the freedom to say what they like about your comment, I think you’ll find. If you have the freedom to say it, others have the freedom to say it’s an illiterate, needlessly aggressive, rather stupid and pointless melange of argument-free drivel. That’s freedom for you.
I am free to say that this is
I am free to say that this is a post that is completely lacking in empathy, compassion and understanding.
I cannot imagine that you are pround of it on reflection.
It would be worth reviewing the issues that transgender/nonbinary individuals face and the mental health issues that they can have.
https://www.medicalnewstoday.com/articles/transgender-mental-health#suicide-prevention
mattsccm wrote:
Are you a member of some religion that doesn’t agree with surgery, blood transfusions, etc? The modern world is simply filled with people who adjust what they are born with (wearing clothes is just one of the most obvious ones). Anyhow, lucky you were born with an internet-enabled device in your hands otherwise you’d never have been able to post your twaddle.
trinityboy wrote:
Why, it’s almost as if our language and categorisations are subjective, undefined, and don’t necessarily have any foundation other than our own preconceptions….
We do have words that we use
We do have words that we use for the two sex classes, yes.
trinityboy wrote:
Mmmmmm. And they are subjective, ill-defined, and their use is based on little more than our preconceptions, yes.
trinityboy wrote:
Of course categories are man-made (including the category “mammals”).
Nature really doesn’t give a fack about how, or even whether, we understand things.
I appreciate this can be a
I appreciate this can be a fun philosophical exercise, but that doesn’t change anything about our real lives as humans.
I think you should look at
I think you should look at this a bit like school – y’know, you start out with your “folk physics”, then you learn some more detail (Galilean then Newtonian mechanics). Then you find out that while this isn’t a bad approximation at the scale of humans moving slowly on earth to understand more of the universe you need more refined and complicated models – relativity, simple then general.
At any point during that time you can still get hit on the head with a falling apple. Better knowledge can stop you crying “witchcraft!” so often and setting fire to someone’s relatives though.
Or maybe it’s better described by in the Hitch Hiker’s Guide to the Galaxy:
Yes, but in a sexually
Yes, but in a sexually reproducing mammalian species it’s not ‘more complicated’. We need two sex classes to reproduce, and that’s what we’ve got
trinityboy wrote:
Again, what are your definitions for each class?
How would you class any that fall outside of your definitions (“weird” probably isn’t a kind way to describe human beings that don’t fit your arbitrary classifications)
Do those that fall outside those classifications preclude the possibility others procreating?
trinityboy wrote:
Our “real” lives as humans are also constructs, and pretty subjective.
I think what you are trying to do is switch burden of evidence. You’ve made an assertion (2 sexes). now you have said that to disprove that someone else needs to provide a 3rd
I might accept that (the binary categorisation of humans) – only how did you define your categorisation? If anyone falls outside of it, your 2 sexes hypothesis is void unless taken as a mere generalisation
Nobody does fall outside it.
Nobody does fall outside it.
trinityboy wrote:
Depends on how you define it. Please define, and we’ll see. If someone does your hypothesis fails.
Captain Badger wrote:
Of course categories are man-made (including the category “mammals”).
Nature really doesn’t give a fack about how, or even whether, we understand things.— trinityboy
Well at least “mammals” is a clear-cut category – live birthing, hairy things that produce milk.
Except for the platypus – they lay eggs. And pigeons – they produce milk, but aren’t mammals as opposed to most men that don’t produce milk, but are still mammals. Also whales aren’t very hairy.
…Marmosets are essentially
…Marmosets are essentially aquatic animals.
And the noble bison.
(Misconceptions escalate until the thread implodes again).
chrisonatrike wrote:
Are you sure you’re not thinking of the wash bison?
hawkinspeter wrote:
Echidna too
trinityboy wrote:
Please educate yourself!
I’m not following your point?
I’m not following your point?
trinityboy wrote:
Obviously not.
So how do you classify an individual who is genetically XX/XY mosaic with one ovary and one testis?
Are they male or female in your binary classification?
They are one or the other,
They are one or the other, anyone who was capable of doing the tests to gather the information you have presented would be expert enough in their speciality to understand and advise. Not something I can do.
trinityboy wrote:
The experts I work with firmly believe that such individuals do not fit in to either a male or female category.
So will you now admit you are wrong?
trinityboy wrote:
Which expert told you this?
If you are unable to identify male/female/other, how can you with certainty say that “other” doesn’t exist?
trinityboy wrote:
And this is why science isn’t left to randoms on the net. Stay in school y’all.
I understand people think ‘it
I understand people think ‘it must be complicated’ but in this case it actually isn’t. There are no sex categories beyond the two existing ones. All sorts of urban myth and well-meaning confusion abound.
Honey, you could really set
Honey, you could really set the world on fire with this. Though you might want to a platform more suitable for groundbreaking scientific discoveries than a comments forum on a small uk cycling site.
It’s important to clarify
It’s important to clarify reality. We don’t accept it when people say that they pay ‘Road Tax’ because it was abolished in the 1930s etc. Same principle.
JustTryingToGetFromAtoB wrote
That’s rude! We’re in the shadow of the UK’s premier cycling website I’ll have you know.
peted76 wrote:
That’s rude! We’re in the shadow of the UK’s premier cycling website I’ll have you know.
— JustTryingToGetFromAtoB
trinityboy wrote:
Can you provide your definitions for each sex category such that every single one of the 7+billion people that inhabit this earth fall neatly and exclusively into either?
Captain Badger wrote:
Can you provide your definitions for each sex category such that every single one of the 7+billion people that inhabit this earth fall neatly and exclusively into either?
— trinityboy
Just realised I broke my earnest pledge in keeping shtum on this one….
trinityboy wrote:
Interesting. Just earlier you mentioned a 3rd – “weird”….
trinityboy wrote:
Just because you state that here doesn’t alter the fact that it’s wrong. Some people live their lives as neither sex. Unfortunately this isn’t recognised in UK law and they have to choose one or the other in certain circumstances.
I don’t want to wade into a
I don’t want to wade into a subject which – to be frank – I couldn’t give a monkey’s about and which has been completely overemphasized and blown out all proportion by the media.
However, there is a difference between having a generic anomaly where you are born intersex, and someone who has been born as a fully formed male or female and decides on an ad-hoc basis they want to live as the other sex or non-binary.
In terms of sport, the solution to all the above is simply to get them to compete against men, that way they can never gain an unfair advantage against women.
I wouldn’t endorse the
I wouldn’t endorse the phrasing because there isn’t ‘anything else’ alongside the two sex categories. It’s completely accurate to say that every human is either female (the slight majority) or male.
CXR94Di2 wrote:
What’s your view on general birth defects such as someone having a different number of fingers? Should they be rounded up and exterminated as per the Nazis or should we accept that human anatomy is surprisingly complex and doesn’t always conform to a narrow-minded view?
Played a Godwin early. Might
Played a Godwin early. Might save us from a return to the last thread.
PS I am not comfortable with the comment you were replying to either.
Are we the baddies (again)?
Are we the baddies (again)?
CXR94Di2 wrote:
Dunno about anyone else., but I’m saying nowt!
That’ll be a first !
That’ll be a first !
hirsute wrote:
And also inaccurate…
sigh…
CXR94Di2 wrote:
Fungi are weird, indeed [more detail] – but humans are weird if you’re a fungus.
As Nostrodamus predicted..
As Nostrodamus predicted..
peted76 wrote:
Is this how the other one
Is this how the other one went ?
Did it get completely removed?
Still up but closed for
Still up but closed for further comments, probably mercifully.
https://road.cc/content/news/cx-worlds-under-fire-due-anti-trans-laws-arkansas-289935
Also generally just to note
Also generally just to note that the term “intersex” has now fallen out of medical use; the term “differences in sex development” is now preferred in the UK.
Also the Barman says “Sorry, we don’t serve faster than light particles in here”
A tachyon walks in to a bar.
stomec wrote:
There’s also “nondimorphic sexual development” used in the wiki page.
Why do tachyons program in assembly?
Because it’s faster than C
hawkinspeter wrote:
Indeed with the terms… differences in sex development was a change from the old disorders of sex development (which I think is in the wiki page) but allowed the DSD TLA to be preserved (and hence avoid renaming the clinics!) whilst being less perjorative.
Thanks for bringing this to
Thanks for bringing this to my attention.
I cancelled my British cycling membership as I result, and it was double-satisfying because the person who confirmed the cancellation had one of those woke “preferred pronouns” signatures.
Garage at Large wrote:
Gonna be lonely times for you. That’s now so standard that even banks and law firms are regularly pasting it on. Don’t worry though, lots of these people haven’t thought about it either.
chrisonatrike wrote:
Do they know anything else?
(No subject)
chrisonatrike wrote:
Sorry.
I found a thread between Emma
I found a thread between Emma Hilton and Tom Hardwood useful with an explanation about how variations on XX and XY work with binary sex classification. Tom thinks that overlapping physical characteristics such as weight and height prove that sex is a spectrum.
Within her exploration is a neat summary.
“A tiny dog, is not, in fact, a rabbit”.
https://mobile.twitter.com/fondofbeetles/status/1478366851730227204
MsG wrote:
I think binary sex classification is a useful heuristic that works 99.9% (or whatever) of the time, but I have yet to see a definition of male and female that classifies everyone in to one category or another fully and consistently. As an example Sajid David’s moronic “scientific fact” that only women have a cervix…
I can’t find the reference
I can’t find the reference but I recall reading of someone who apparently had functional male and female organs. So that must be a “both” even by some of our “one or the other” definitions. Then there’s this Polish athelete just to show you how nature can mess with our hard-and-fast categories. Although to those with a hammer and a screwdriver I guess everything must be either a nail or a screw… and some folks are happy with just the hammer.
chrisonatrike wrote:
That’s interesting, I hadn’t seen that before.
It does make you wonder how many other athletes competing in women’s sports unwittingly have factors that blur the boundaries of what was previously understood to be a binary male/female distinction. At the moment though, chromosomes only appear to be considered when people don’t like how someone looks…. an unethical state of affairs that is ripe for abuse.
I think you could say the
I think you could say the same about almost any binary classification system for humans.
There are always going to be edge cases.
Rich_cb wrote:
Indeed. I’m unsure why some people have trouble grasping this concept.
Seems it doesn’t matter where
Seems it doesn’t matter where this comes up, the same type of people appear to remind you humanity sucks.
People don’t choose to be transgender on a whim. In terms of gender identity in general, we can never fully understand how another person sees the world, as mentioned in detail by hawkinspeter. Ultimately though, it achieves nothing to demean someone over their identity, and anyone who thinks this is OK should look at suicide stats for the LGBTQ+ community and rethink their behaviour.