Cycling Time Trials: Transgender women can no longer compete in female events

Cugel wrote:

Cut the Gordian knot of this "problem". Make all sporting events "open category". Many already are, with the gender-police calmed by the awarding of "fastest man", fastest geriatric", "fastest woman" etc..  Personally I'd be happy with "fastest human".

Perform a mental experiment, if you will.  Imagine the TdF run without regard to the gender of the competitors. Would all the women be in the last half and all the men in the first half, for stages, the race as a whole and for the various jerseys?  One suspects not - especially after a few years, when the competitors had adapted to the wider context. After all, many women are very wily tacticians, unencumbered by foolish testosterone-driven "decisions". 

Trans-gender competitors are only "a problem" if officious little taxonomists insist on their Victorian diffentiations of everyone and their dog into a thousand spurious pidgeon holes. We British, especially, do so love our many class systems, eh?

 

Are trans women included in this "fastest woman" category?

If you think that female at birth cyclists would even make the cut-off most days of the TdF you delude yourself.

ShutTheFrontDawes wrote:

Cugel wrote:

Perform a mental experiment, if you will.  Imagine the TdF run without regard to the gender of the competitors. Would all the women be in the last half and all the men in the first half, for stages, the race as a whole and for the various jerseys?  One suspects not - especially after a few years, when the competitors had adapted to the wider context. After all, many women are very wily tacticians, unencumbered by foolish testosterone-driven "decisions". 

Are trans women included in this "fastest woman" category? If you think that female at birth cyclists would even make the cut-off most days of the TdF you delude yourself.

As I mentioned, I prefer a single category of competitor type: humans.

Is it impossible, do you think, for many or any women to ever approach the road-racing ability of men (or any other gender you care to invent)? We'll never know for sure unless competitions for all-comers (open-categoty) are made a norm.

I can tell you that I've been in mixed-gender road races and TTs in which not I but all the other male competitors were beaten by a woman.  It's unusual but not impossible, see? 

Open the door to mixed gender racing and what is actually possible will then occur.  Closing that door provides you gender-police with a nice self-fulfilling prophecy though, eh?  A woman will never win an open TdF as no such TdF is allowed to occur.

Cugel wrote:

ShutTheFrontDawes wrote:

Cugel wrote:

Perform a mental experiment, if you will.  Imagine the TdF run without regard to the gender of the competitors. Would all the women be in the last half and all the men in the first half, for stages, the race as a whole and for the various jerseys?  One suspects not - especially after a few years, when the competitors had adapted to the wider context. After all, many women are very wily tacticians, unencumbered by foolish testosterone-driven "decisions". 

Are trans women included in this "fastest woman" category? If you think that female at birth cyclists would even make the cut-off most days of the TdF you delude yourself.

As I mentioned, I prefer a single category of competitor type: humans.

Is it impossible, do you think, for many or any women to ever approach the road-racing ability of men (or any other gender you care to invent)? We'll never know for sure unless competitions for all-comers (open-categoty) are made a norm.

I can tell you that I've been in mixed-gender road races and TTs in which not I but all the other male competitors were beaten by a woman.  It's unusual but not impossible, see? 

Open the door to mixed gender racing and what is actually possible will then occur.  Closing that door provides you gender-police with a nice self-fulfilling prophecy though, eh?  A woman will never win an open TdF as no such TdF is allowed to occur.

So you think we should do away with "fastest woman" and just let women be on page 12 of the results listings and be happy with it?

I bet you're fun at parties.

ShutTheFrontDawes wrote:

Cugel wrote:

ShutTheFrontDawes wrote:

Cugel wrote:

Perform a mental experiment, if you will.  Imagine the TdF run without regard to the gender of the competitors. Would all the women be in the last half and all the men in the first half, for stages, the race as a whole and for the various jerseys?  One suspects not - especially after a few years, when the competitors had adapted to the wider context. After all, many women are very wily tacticians, unencumbered by foolish testosterone-driven "decisions". 

Are trans women included in this "fastest woman" category? If you think that female at birth cyclists would even make the cut-off most days of the TdF you delude yourself.

As I mentioned, I prefer a single category of competitor type: humans.

Is it impossible, do you think, for many or any women to ever approach the road-racing ability of men (or any other gender you care to invent)? We'll never know for sure unless competitions for all-comers (open-categoty) are made a norm.

I can tell you that I've been in mixed-gender road races and TTs in which not I but all the other male competitors were beaten by a woman.  It's unusual but not impossible, see? 

Open the door to mixed gender racing and what is actually possible will then occur.  Closing that door provides you gender-police with a nice self-fulfilling prophecy though, eh?  A woman will never win an open TdF as no such TdF is allowed to occur.

So you think we should do away with "fastest woman" and just let women be on page 12 of the results listings and be happy with it? I bet you're fun at parties.

Once upon a time, not so long ago, women were told by gender polis men (and even some gender polis women) that they couldn't be engineers, prime ministers, weight lifters and a vast list of other things which the patriarchy you are so enthusiatically a member of insisted were "impossible" for women to do.

One thing after another, women did them, often better than the blokes (especially the pompous ones claiming their male gender automatically made them better at ... whatever). What could be next revealed in this shocking list of abilities that womenfolk free of pompous wee males might demonstrate......?

*********

In all events one feels that Victorian definitions of gender are now somewhat hackneyed, disproved and generally best avoided, despite the effects on the fragile egos of a certain kind of male personality at having to admit they aren't actually superior, just very over-privileged compared to women.

I also wonder - what other classification schemes do you apply to humans that allows you to deny and decry opportunities to various of the queer classes defined within them?  The Victorians have plenty more such schemas besides their mad gender stuff. You could try phrenology, for example. There's also that stuff about "criminal facial features". "No entry to the sportive for you folk with a certain head bump or an inclination to gurn in these fashions (see illustrations)"!

Expectations do set people's performance to a degree.  And cultural "you can't" / "just don't bother" has certainly kept people down.

However at top level sport we've probably reached close to the maximum "marginal gains" for both sexes here, so a quick scan of the times / speeds should suffice to show how things lie.  Barring allowing things now seen as undesirable e.g. doping / implants / selective breeding programmes / recumbents.

chrisonatrike wrote:

Expectations do set people's performance to a degree.  And cultural "you can't" / "just don't bother" has certainly kept people down.

However at top level sport we've probably reached close to the maximum "marginal gains" for both sexes here, so a quick scan of the times / speeds should suffice to show how things lie.  Barring allowing things now seen as undesirable e.g. doping / implants / selective breeding programmes / recumbents.

As long as the cultural apparatus states that women can't beat men at whatever and therefore shouldn't be allowed to try, "people's performance will be kept down". 

It's been said forever that "we've probably reached close to the maximum .... " but then history convulses and .... we hadn't.

On challenging the bigger picture - e.g. why do we particularly want to split things depending on sex (and noting that some don't neatly fit our two-category system - although apparently very few).  That's a radical proposal, to be judged on some completely different criteria.  If you're up for that then possibly the whole concept of sport - as we understand it - is ripe for a review.

After all it has its origins in all kinds of odd rituals we might not want to continue.  For example religious observance, selecting people for war and maintaining martial fitness and attitude.

It's also associated with some equally odd things today (selling kit, selling media rights, international politics ...)

The funny thing about this is that your supposed position against the patriarchy would just completely kill womens sport at the elite level. There is a substantial difference in physical activities between men and women. Thats fact. This isn't some archaic idea of women and men being unable to do the same tasks mentally, its purely physiology. 

You make the erroneous suggestion that because at a lower level of racing a women beat the men that it would happen at the top levels. It wouldn't. This is a fact that has been proven time and time again. 

The US womens football team which was far and away the strongest in the world at the time was beated by an under 15 boys team... in the US. Mens football in the US is generally rubbish in the grand scheme of things. 

A slightly tipsy German tennis player beat both the Williams sisters 6-1 and 6-2. Two female tennis players who are unquestionably the best ever to play the womens game. He was 203rd in the world at the time in the mens rankings. 

Anyone who has played sports throughout their lives knows that boys hit a point in their development and just leave girls behind. At the top level men might be 5% better than the top women. The problem is that at the top level, 2% splits 1st and 50th. 

Womens sport should be supported and segregated because if you don't it will completely disappear. If girls can't see anything but biological men at the top of sports they simply won't bother to aim for that level. 

mctrials23 wrote:

A slightly tipsy German tennis player beat both the Williams sisters 6-1 and 6-2. Two female tennis players who are unquestionably the best ever to play the womens game. He was 203rd in the world at the time in the mens rankings. 

There is an interview with Serena Williams where she says that men's tennis is basically a completely different game. Men are so much stronger and faster, the game is orientated around the serve, and various other tactics and techniques change / are emphasised, cause of this. She says she'd have 0 chance against men. Don't know if this was before or after those matches.

Cugel wrote:

Let's destroy women's sports in the name of tearing down the patriarchy. Or some such.

[Granted I've taken a few liberties with that quote, but as long as we're throwing reality out the window, why not?]

This isn't like engineering and prime ministering in the sexist days of yore. The fact is that we have given women the chance to be cyclists, and they're simply not as good as men. Yes, men have a sociological advantage in that they're given more encouragement to play sports and a larger number of them participate, and no doubt if women were given more encouragement and more of them participated their group-level performance would improve somewhat. But the gap is so gaping that "somewhat" isn't going to be nearly enough to close it, and no amount of wishful or "right" thinking is going to change that.

This says nothing about the human or intrinsic or social value of women or about their ability to excel in other fields (where they often exceed the performance of men, as you correctly point out). It's just a physiological fact, and you're doing women themselves no favors by denying it.

LookAhead wrote:

Cugel wrote:

Let's destroy women's sports in the name of tearing down the patriarchy. Or some such.

[Granted I've taken a few liberties with that quote, but as long as we're throwing reality out the window, why not?]

You haven't taken any liberties. That's exactly what it is.

LookAhead wrote:

Cugel wrote:

Let's destroy women's sports in the name of tearing down the patriarchy. Or some such.

[Granted I've taken a few liberties with that quote, but as long as we're throwing reality out the window, why not?]

This isn't like engineering and prime ministering in the sexist days of yore. The fact is that we have given women the chance to be cyclists, and they're simply not as good as men. Yes, men have a sociological advantage in that they're given more encouragement to play sports and a larger number of them participate, and no doubt if women were given more encouragement and more of them participated their group-level performance would improve somewhat. But the gap is so gaping that "somewhat" isn't going to be nearly enough to close it, and no amount of wishful or "right" thinking is going to change that.

This says nothing about the human or intrinsic or social value of women or about their ability to excel in other fields (where they often exceed the performance of men, as you correctly point out). It's just a physiological fact, and you're doing women themselves no favors by denying it.

You're asuming that cycle racing is somehow soley about some sort of male-style strength. If you think that's it then you probably haven't raced a bike in a road race or similar event. Such sport is about a lot more than how much muscle you have or your VO2 max etc.. 

The problem here, though, isn't about womens' vs mens' relative strengths but about the denial of some genders the opportunity to try and beat members of the culturally dominant gender. You can theorise with that patriarchy ideology as much as you like that "best women can never beat best men" but the only true test is an ongoing equality of opportunity for them to try to.

"The problem here, though, isn't about womens' vs mens' relative strengths but about the denial of some genders the opportunity to try and beat members of the culturally dominant gender. You can theorise with that patriarchy ideology as much as you like that "best women can never beat best men" but the only true test is an ongoing equality of opportunity for them to try to."

And there we are. The nigh-incontrovertible physical evidence is brushed aside as irrelevant, decades of experience of women not being able to beat men in any sport (including cycling) is ignored: these girls just need to mix it with the best, and if they come up short I guess they just didn't want it as much as the guys did. 

All your "I only believe in humans" bullshit and at-best half-remembered bits of risible mid-century continental philosophy are just an attempt to give some intellectual cover to misogyny. You can't stand the idea of women having something for themselves, where they compete on their own merits rather than trailing in behind the men, and so you want to wreck it for them. It's a disgusting attitude. 

And since I'm here and pissed off, give us a link to this race where women beat all the men except you. Even if it was a while ago, it'll have been remarkable enough to be written up. I'm not saying I don't believe you (although I'm absolutely saying I don't believe you), but I'd like to see if these were athletes of similar calibre or top-class women racing against low-quality men (plus of course you). 

Cugel wrote:

The problem here, though, isn't about womens' vs mens' relative strengths but about the denial of some genders the opportunity to try and beat members of the culturally dominant gender. You can theorise with that patriarchy ideology as much as you like that "best women can never beat best men" but the only true test is an ongoing equality of opportunity for them to try to.

***tldr; I said a magic word--patriarchy--therefore I win.***

Look, if you just want to allow--rather than force--women to race against men (say in an open division, on an opt-in basis, while retaining the traditional women's category) to see what happens, I don't see any particular reason to object to that. Sorry to tell you, however, that it's effectively already been done and the results are in:

https://www.athlinks.com/event/174195/results/Event/1011764/Course/2222598/Results

I recommend checking out the standings for the 200 mile race, as that's the one with the strongest competitors from both genders (though all the distances tell the same story).

The top two women's finishers are extremely strong, experienced riders and excellent tacticians. They blow away the field in most races they enter.

In an open field, they finished 45th and 46th, more than 10% slower than the winners.

That's not to take anything away from them. They raced their asses off, and they beat a lot of men--they most certainly would have beat me. But if we condemn all women to only race men, it's not going to be pretty, and I'd expect it to actually decrease, rather than increase, women's participation in sport, and consequently to increase, rather than decrease, the performance gap between men and women.

It turns out biology and the universe care about facts, not ideals.

Cugel wrote:

A woman will never win an open TdF as no such TdF is allowed to occur.

Your thesis, which is superficially feminist in its claim that women could be the equal of men if allowed to compete with them, actually has a somewhat sexist and definitely patronising basis to it which is that female racers at the moment are not pushing themselves to the limits in training or racing in the way that males do and that being allowed to compete with men would somehow encourage them to be better. This is quite clearly nonsense, professional female racers train every bit as hard as their male counterparts.

Quote:

I can tell you that I've been in mixed-gender road races and TTs in which not I but all the other male competitors were beaten by a woman.  It's unusual but not impossible, see?

Nice bit of humble brag (everybody except me got beaten by a woman) but unless you were racing at the absolute top professional level your example is totally meaningless. There are countless women out there who can beat me on the road, there are also plenty of men that my wife can beat on the road, so what? Unless you're comparing individuals of the same status it's irrelevant.

The Strava KOM for Alpe d'Huez is held by Sepp Kuss at 39:54; the QOM is held by our own Illi Gardner at 49.22. Do you honestly believe that if Gardner raced with the men she would somehow find a way to cut her time by ten minutes?

"Do you honestly believe that if Gardner raced with the men she would somehow find a way to cut her time by ten minutes?"

If you argue with these misogynists* long enough, they'll often get to saying what they really mean which is that these women just aren't trying hard enough and so need to be forced into competition with men so they'll up their game. If women lose and complain, that only proves the point. 

*It's an overused word. But I can't think of a more accurate one for people who are apparently hell-bent on ignoring basic physiological truths and the considered wishes of many (probably most) sportswomen in order that a small subsection of men can wreck the aspirations of all women who want to be the best. 
 

Rendel Harris wrote:

Cugel wrote:

A woman will never win an open TdF as no such TdF is allowed to occur.

Your thesis, which is superficially feminist in its claim that women could be the equal of men if allowed to compete with them, actually has a somewhat sexist and definitely patronising basis to it which is that female racers at the moment are not pushing themselves to the limits in training or racing in the way that males do and that being allowed to compete with men would somehow encourage them to be better. This is quite clearly nonsense, professional female racers train every bit as hard as their male counterparts.

Quote:

I can tell you that I've been in mixed-gender road races and TTs in which not I but all the other male competitors were beaten by a woman.  It's unusual but not impossible, see?

Nice bit of humble brag (everybody except me got beaten by a woman) but unless you were racing at the absolute top professional level your example is totally meaningless. There are countless women out there who can beat me on the road, there are also plenty of men that my wife can beat on the road, so what? Unless you're comparing individuals of the same status it's irrelevant.

The Strava KOM for Alpe d'Huez is held by Sepp Kuss at 39:54; the QOM is held by our own Illi Gardner at 49.22. Do you honestly believe that if Gardner raced with the men she would somehow find a way to cut her time by ten minutes?

Training is one thing - and those who do train will do so within boundaries set by the sort of competitions they're training for. Even physical training conventions and techniques are culturally determined - by gender, in this case. If you're a woman and don't train to beat the men then .... you never will. Coversely ....

But what counts isn't how hard you train but whether you can beat someone else in an actual competition. Why not just let any and ever type of person compete to see what eventuates?

I recall those theories (still believed by many a dafty) that so-called "race" can determine which types are better than others at this and that. Should we keep certain races out of the big boys competitions 'cos it would be "patronising" to let them compete and be beaten by a members of "the master race"? That used to be the norm even in Blighty not very long ago .... and still is in some places.

Ity's hardly a humblebrag to state the simple fact that I've been beaten in (some quite hard) road races by women. And your suggestion that comparisons should only be made between "individuals of the same status" is the usual "reason" given by any supporter of a hierarchical class system for keeping everyone in their "natural" place. 

I didn't take you for a believer in The Great Chain of Being but I suppose even normally considerate folk can have their minds captured by the dominant epistemics of the time and place into which we're each born. 

Cugel wrote:

Ity's hardly a humblebrag to state the simple fact that I've been beaten in (some quite hard) road races by women. And your suggestion that comparisons should only be made between "individuals of the same status" is the usual "reason" given by any supporter of a hierarchical class system for keeping everyone in their "natural" place. 

I didn't take you for a believer in The Great Chain of Being but I suppose even normally considerate folk can have their minds captured by the dominant epistemics of the time and place into which we're each born. 

You didn't say you'd been beaten, you said "I can tell you that I've been in mixed-gender road races and TTs in which not I but all the other male competitors were beaten by a woman." Did you miss out an "only" before I?

It's surely clear to the dullest mind that the only way you can prove any validity in your claims is to pit riders of equal status against each other. If I (54-year-old hobbyist) raced Marianne Vos in an individual pursuit and she caught me inside the second lap, as she most assuredly would, would that prove that women can compete on equal terms with men? Or just that a very good woman can beat a very poor man?

There's no point in answering your risible allegations that saying women should have their own competitions is somehow on a par with racist eugenicists of yore, by resorting to such nonsense you are tacitly admitting the gaping holes in your own arguments that you're trying to cover.

But hey, let's not fall out, there's a simple way to settle this. You are positioning yourself as a great advocate for the abilities and rights of women, so you must surely believe that they have a right to make their own choices. Let's go to every rider on the women's world tour and say right, no more separate races, Cugel says you can race on equal terms with men so from now on you'll be competing with male riders for selection for places on WT races on performance alone. How much support do you think you'd get? 

Rendel Harris wrote:

But hey, let's not fall out, there' a simple way to settle this. You are positioning yourself as a great advocate for the abilities and rights of women, so you must surely believe that they have a right to make their own choices. Let's go to every rider on the women's world tour and say right, no more separate races, Cugel says you can race on equal terms with men so from now on you'll be competing with male riders for selection for places on WT races on performance alone. How much support do you think you'd get?

But we can already see the reply, can't we:

The women who object are only doing so because they themselves have internalized the patriarchy and are now unwitting propagators of same.

Those silly women, you see, have no brains or agency, but need their great savior to swoop in and save them.

Cugel wrote:

I can tell you that I've been in mixed-gender road races and TTs in which not I but all the other male competitors were beaten by a woman.  It's unusual but not impossible, see? 

I can only conclude it was the self-blowing trumpet you had attached to your bike that made all the difference.

mark1a wrote:

I can only conclude it was the self-blowing trumpet you had attached to your bike that made all the difference.

Er... where do you get one of those self-blowing trumpets?  Asking for a friend.

Cugel wrote:

Is it impossible, do you think, for many or any women to ever approach the road-racing ability of men (or any other gender you care to invent)? We'll never know for sure unless competitions for all-comers (open-categoty) are made a norm.

We do know, they'd be nowhere. Simply cause we can look at the road and TT times of women versus same-level men and compare. TT times are definitive - women have 0 chance. Road, we can easily extrapolate - women would easily be dropped by the men's bunch (as ~98% of amateur men would be a WT men's bunch).

Cugel wrote:

I can tell you that I've been in mixed-gender road races and TTs in which not I but all the other male competitors were beaten by a woman.  It's unusual but not impossible, see? 

You're simply confused in your head about the notion of population distributions.

That there exists a talented woman who can beat many men, in no way invalidates the FACT that all similar percentile men will beat her by miles, in any cycling scenario outside of ultra-ultra endurance (where women can be competitive, cause non-strength/aerobic-capacity factors become important, e.g. the mental component of endurance which women can be at least as good as men in, perhaps better). Top-level men significantly out-perform top-level women, average men significantly out-perform average women, etc. Average men will out-perform most women. Talented teenage boys will out-perform world class women who have years and years more training and experience behind them. Etc.

That you have a poor grasp of distributions doesn't change the fact the distribution of performance for men is significantly shifted from that of women. And hence women have no chance of competing against men in any sport where strength/power is important (even less if power/weight matters, like in many cycling disciplines).

Paul J wrote:

We do know, they'd be nowhere. Simply cause we can look at the road and TT times of women versus same-level men and compare. TT times are definitive - women have 0 chance. Road, we can easily extrapolate - women would easily be dropped by the men's bunch (as ~98% of amateur men would be a WT men's bunch).

He seems to concede, I think (though it's rather hard at this point to tell what he's saying), that women can't compete when it comes to "male-style strength" (his words)--so TTs are out.

(But what then, Cugel? Do women get their own TT category at least, or are they just de facto disqualified from placing well in TTs under your enlightened regime?)

But when it comes to road races, oh those guileful fems will find a way to outsmart and outclass the males just as soon as they're allowed to compete with them. Come to think of it, they'll probably find a way to cheat the wind as well, so perhaps TTs are fair game after all.

(Cugel, buddy, have you been hurt? Do you need someone to talk to?)

You had that in French cyclotouring in the 1930s, 40s, 50s, great camaraderie, everyone getting along with everybody, men and women, rich and poor, and a little friendly competition from time to time with everyone doing their best. One of the most interesting races were the mixed tandems for example.

But as the competition, this time for money, became fiercer, the FFCT had to give up organising competitions. Since then at brevets they give out awards for the largest club represented, the youngest rider, the oldest... Races can since then only be organised by the FFC and FFC licensed clubs, you need a FFC licence to compete in them.

Competition is based on clearly defined limits, between sexes, between clubs, between countries. And it exacerbates these limits. A game between the Three Lions and the Mannschaft is never just a game between two teams, it's England against Germany. PSG against Bayern is France against Germany, even if in reality it is Quatar against.... Quatar. It's a deeply darwinist, nationalist, capitalist exercice.

Competition purports to measure exactly, in millimetres and milliseconds if need be. No split victories, no grey zones. Something like the 3:2 (non)goal in 66 is an abhorrence, for and against evenly split along national boundaries. Hence the illusionarily objective VAR, even if everyone then laments the way it interferes with playing.

I've already said it under one of the last few articles on transgender issues in sport on here, something like your proposed "open category" system would set us on the way to ending competition. In a future society that rejects limits, between sexes, between genders, between "races", between countries, it would ultimately have no place. That would also mean that capitalism had ended. I'm all for it.

Welsh boy wrote:

I bet the CTT are glad that Beryl Burton is not racing in this current era, that would really make things difficult for them.  I wonder what Mike McNamara woud have had to say on the subject.

It wouldn't really. Beryl was a phenomenon. And would be dominant in women's cycling today. However, she still couldn't beat men.

Yes, she beat the local national-amateur level men. She was a generational (or more?) world-class talent, stuck (largely) with racing at national amateur level cause there were next-to-0 opportunities for women at world pro level.

Good, but not great, world level male pros still would beat hear easily. (Though, her time at the Grand Prix des Nations was probably ahead of the last place man another year - Gimondi's time was way ahead however).

Probably about as well as Serena Williams.

She had a fantastic career, made a huge fortune for being the world's best sportswoman, no doubt an inspiration to little girls the world over, and all credit to her. Amongst the greatest ever women's tennis players.

But she still couldn't beat a man in the top 200, in fact a German man ranked 203rd beat both the sisters in consecutive 'social' matches in 1998. 

This is all quite amusing though, watching these radical Lefties get twisted into knots trying to support "muh trans rights" then realising what a farcical anti-woman view that is. 

And Serena has said in interviews that male tennis is like another sport, cause of the strength of the men, and she wouldn't stand a chance.