Transgender cyclist Emily Bridges insists she has no advantage over rivals

hirsute wrote:

This story was better when comments were not allowed.

This. This whole thread was more interesting, enlightening, and well-informed when it didn't exist.

I learnt a lot from not reading it, but even more from not reading the whole article.

In fact - road.cc could do better business just rolling out headlines and letting the mosh pit have at it.

Ah so seperate but equal? Good to know 

No one is really equal and life is not fair. How have you not understood these concepts into adulthood? 
Also I should imagine most biological females from birth feel it is pretty damn unfair when they have to compete with individuals who are physically different when born and when through puberty have significantly different body structures/attributes before re-gendering... but you know maybe you carry on ignoring their rights and feelings of inequality nosferatu1001.  I would not call you a misogynist though. I will leave you to brand others with names. 

I'm not ignoring their rights or feelings, but thanks for the snidery. Really helps. 
 

you're JUST about understanding, so close but so far!

the gender split in sport is a crude "ability" split, in part from the patriarchal shitshow of a society we've inherited. 
 

why not have a real ability split? As you say, life isn't fair, but we split eg boxing up into categories based on physicality, why not in all sports? 

Boxing is based on weights AFTER it first being based on biological sex. 

Equal but different. 

sparrowlegs wrote:

Equal but different. 

so that woman over there isn't a true woman, so can't compete?

poster meet fallacy....

Does the woman have or ever had a penis?

Ideology meet biology

You and your bollox about "biological female" again. 
 

you're unable to give a definiton of it that is accepted by actual science. The last few times you've then decided that the capacity to bear children is what matters. 

Haha! Get the links to transgender vikings and 2 spirit pharaohs at the ready Nos. That'll prove science and biology wrong. 

Only 0.0018 of people are born DSD and of those there are 14 differentiations within the DSD spectrum. What het-hating misogynistic radicals like yourself rely on is operating in the shallow end of the information and evidence spectrum. 

Emily cannot prove that being a biological male doesn't give her any advantages... It does. It is a simple biological truth.

As a society we can fully embrace emily's descision to be a woman, that is not the same thing as fair competition.

My point exactly. Being born a biological male stops her from competing against biological females. 

I say this ALL the time, but sport is practically built on the precedent that people have a biological advantage over others. I, a relatively athletic and physically able person, could train for decades but may still never have the altitude adaptations of Nairo Quintana, the long torso of Michael Phelps, the natural physical strength and fitness of Serena Williams or the resistance to fatigue of Lael Wilcox. 

It strikes me as strange that the most vocal critics of biological advantages only come forward when trans athletes participate in sport (and not even when they win in sport), not for any of the above mentioned athletes or anyone else perceived as being biologically superior to others.

The only possible conclusion to this is that these critics are, by definition, transphobic.

vthejk wrote:

I say this ALL the time, but sport is practically built on the precedent that people have a biological advantage over others. I, a relatively athletic and physically able person, could train for decades but may still never have the altitude adaptations of Nairo Quintana, the long torso of Michael Phelps, the natural physical strength and fitness of Serena Williams or the resistance to fatigue of Lael Wilcox. 

It strikes me as strange that the most vocal critics of biological advantages only come forward when trans athletes participate in sport (and not even when they win in sport), not for any of the above mentioned athletes or anyone else perceived as being biologically superior to others.

The only possible conclusion to this is that these critics are, by definition, transphobic.

it's precisely that. They'll then cry about how it's unfair to be called transphobic when they post transphobic things. 

For "transphobic things" see anything that points out the obvious backed by evidence, science, biology etc.

sparrowlegs wrote:

For "transphobic things" see anything that points out the obvious backed by evidence, science, biology etc.

Source?

It's a complex issue, with valid points made on both sides. I don't have a side in this, I usually side with the oppressed or marginalised, and in this situation that seems to apply to both "sides". But I would say that name-calling does nothing to help your argument. It's possible to be supportive of trans-rights and yet aware of the complexity of the issue.

That is absolutley incorrect. Our species has more than two sexes (what you miscategorise as gender) and your gcse level biology is inadequate. 

Thank you for your comment "That is absolutley incorrect. Our species has more than two sexes" and on this basis... for competition to be fair we need more categories.

"Our species has more than two sexes". It doesn't. It has two, and a very small number of people who don't fit neatly into them. Just like pretty much every other mammalian species. 
Even if there were more than two sexes, this would be irrelevant to this case in which Emily is a member of the male sex who wants (and I don't doubt her sincerity) to compete against members of the female sex. 
The "multiple-sex" theory seems to me to hinder the trans-rights argument, as the overwhelming majority of trans people don't have biological markers at odds with their presumed sex: they would just prefer to be treated as if they were in another of the main two categories. 

No, our species has more than two sexes. Sorry, your pre 1960s understanding of biology isn't compatible with the actual state of human knowledge.  
 

sex and gender are not synonymous terms any longer.  Not in the scientific world. And Emily is a woman,,not a man. 

Up to and beyond 98.2% of the global population conform to one of two scientifically defined 'reproductive sexes'. Some studies suggest less than 0.2% of the poulation deviate from that. So I think Aspeers is mostly correct and for you to assert "That is absolutley incorrect" shows a tremendous bias on your part.