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news
UCI world road race championships, Wollongong, 2022 (Simon Wilkinson/SWpix.com)UCI bans transgender female cyclists who have transitioned after puberty from competing in international women’s races
The UCI has updated its rules concerning the participation of female transgender cyclists in international competition, by prohibiting women who transitioned after male puberty from competing in all women’s events on the UCI calendar.
The world governing body’s decision, which comes into force on 17 July, follows British Cycling’s announcement in May that it was introducing a new ‘Open’ category to run alongside the women’s category as part of an update to its Transgender and Non-Binary Participation policies.
> British Cycling updates transgender policy, introduces new "Open" category
According to the UCI’s new rules, the men’s category at International Masters events will also be renamed ‘Men/Open’, permitting the participation of any athlete who does not meet the conditions for participation in women’s events.
The updated policy, which was agreed upon at an extraordinary meeting of the UCI on 5 July, follows a seminar organised by the governing body on the “conditions for the participation of transgender athletes in women's cycling events”, held on 21 June, which saw the “various stakeholders” in the debate present their respective positions.
According to a statement released by the UCI today, “From now on, female transgender athletes who have transitioned after (male) puberty will be prohibited from participating in women's events on the UCI International Calendar – in all categories – in the various disciplines.”
The banning of female trans cyclists from women’s events comes just over a year after the UCI tightened its own rules on transgender participation by doubling the time that an athlete transitioning from male to female needed to wait before being able to compete.
Those rules, which came into effect on 1 July 2022, stipulated that athletes transitioning from male to female needed to have had testosterone levels below 2.5 nanomoles per litre (nmol/L) for 24 months. Previously, the rules required testosterone levels below 5 nmol/L for 12 months.
> UCI tightens rules on transgender female cyclists by extending transition period to 24 months
However, the UCI has today stated that its management committee “has taken note of the state of scientific knowledge, which does not confirm that at least two years of gender-affirming hormone therapy with a target plasma testosterone concentration of 2.5 nmol/L is sufficient to completely eliminate the benefits of testosterone during puberty in men.”
The statement continued: “In addition, there is considerable inter-individual variability in response to gender-confirming hormone therapy, which makes it even more difficult to draw precise conclusions about the effects of such treatment.
“Given the current state of scientific knowledge, it is also impossible to rule out the possibility that biomechanical factors such as the shape and arrangement of the bones in their limbs may constitute a lasting advantage for female transgender athletes.”
Based on what it describes as these “remaining scientific uncertainties”, the UCI concluded that “it was necessary to take this measure to protect the female class and ensure equal opportunities”.
However, the governing body also emphasised that their stance on the matter “may change in the future as scientific knowledge evolves”.
“With this in mind”, the statement continues, “the UCI will begin discussions with other members of the international sporting movement on the co-financing of a research programme aimed at studying changes in the physical performance of highly-trained athletes undergoing transitional hormone treatment.”
UCI President David Lappartient added: "First of all, the UCI would like to reaffirm that cycling – as a competitive sport, leisure activity or means of transport – is open to everyone, including transgender people, whom we encourage like everyone else to take part in our sport.
“I would also like to reaffirm that the UCI fully respects and supports the right of individuals to choose the sex that corresponds to their gender identity, whatever sex they were assigned at birth. However, it has a duty to guarantee, above all, equal opportunities for all competitors in cycling competitions.
“It is this imperative that led the UCI to conclude that, given the current state of scientific knowledge does not guarantee such equality of opportunity between transgender female athletes and cisgender female participants, it was not possible, as a precautionary measure, to authorise the former to race in the female categories."
After obtaining a PhD, lecturing, and hosting a history podcast at Queen’s University Belfast, Ryan joined road.cc in December 2021 and since then has kept the site’s readers and listeners informed and enthralled (well at least occasionally) on news, the live blog, and the road.cc Podcast. After boarding a wrong bus at the world championships and ruining a good pair of jeans at the cyclocross, he now serves as road.cc’s senior news writer. Before his foray into cycling journalism, he wallowed in the equally pitiless world of academia, where he wrote a book about Victorian politics and droned on about cycling and bikes to classes of bored students (while taking every chance he could get to talk about cycling in print or on the radio). He can be found riding his bike very slowly around the narrow, scenic country lanes of Co. Down.
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Fortunately, we don't have to worry about all this dispute below- UCI has banned 'men-living-as-women' from competing against real women in cycling events under its control. Presumably men-living-as-women will win the Open category even if there's only one entrant, until the men-living-as-men start entering the Open events for some reason that I can only guess at.
As they said, they can't confirm either way that there is an advantage after 2 years, but, even if there were one, and it would be slight, I still don't think this should warrant barring a group of people from being in a sport just for "equality." No one is going to go through the effort of transitioning just to be better in a sport they will earn less in. No one. And there are already advantages that are given "unfairly" as I said below. Trans women weren't trying to get an advantage by transitioning, so here we just have advantages obtained ultimately by chance. I'm sure they would have much rather be born cis woman.
Considering the low numbers of trans athletes there will ever be at one time and how small the advantage must be (at most) so that they won't ever upend the sport, it really seems like the cost is much bigger than the gain.
They're not barred from sport, that's a lie. They are eligible to compete in an appropriate category.
Clarification: Lie is a strong word, but I know you've been involved in discussions here on the same BC policy before, and I am sure you know these policies do not stop anyone from competition.
I really don't understand you people. According to you, being in a competition where cis men can compete is not de facto banning them, but allowing trans women to compete in the women's category completely destroys women's sports, despite this not happening thus far. Some wins here and there is not dominating the sport.
Apparently the only way trans women can ever compete is if they won nothing, which is improbable at best.
So it's about the winning. Trans-MAB won't win competing against men, but they do win against women - ergo you say they should compete against women.
Never mind that they're winning against women at rates *way out of proportion* to the number of trans-MAB in society. Never mind we know they have an advantage over women, due to male puberty - a performance advantage you have acknowledged exists in your very comments here.
Sorry, it is patently and obviously unfair to women. And the majority of society agrees.
Women did not choose their situation. Trans-MAB may not have chosen GD, but they _did_ have a choice in medical treatments. They _could_ /not/ take hormones and suffer _no performance loss_ and keep competing against other men without any questions hanging over anyone about the performance implications of medical interventions (which we generally do not allow in sports, where they confer a benefit).
I've no idea how many readers and commentors are top women athletes (trans or not). Or trans. Or even women. Nor would I expect people to declare themselves, for a bunch of perfectly good reasons.
I can't say why but I suspect the vast majority posting on this issue are non-elite-athlete men (not trans). Perhaps a few might not have close trans friends?
I understand that something about this issue may affect all of us - or at least under the full extent of some of the social changes espoused by some people (which are pretty radical).
However - what about men doing their bit - our bit - to make sport, facilities and indeed spaces of all kinds (say... a forum?) a bit more friendly for women of any designation? Perhaps we could "share a bit more of the road" - regardless of whether you think that trans women should or shouldn't immediately / at some point have access to them?
Actually, sod it. Just let the squirrels decide who gets to do what, where and when...
Better yet my rabbit, who while missing two formerly cherished parts of himself, remains male.
I’m also of the sex which generally produces small motile gametes, non-elite-athlete division, though I’d be happy to challenge any of you up a hill on my singlespeed. Have no problem sharing my bit of the road.
Oh no! Those aren't the squirrels we're looking for! And we'll have that Germain Greer round here if you start bringing the eunachs into it, and she always upsets someone.
Anyway we had enough "I like to call a spayed a spayed" comments last one of these
shouting matchesdebatesthreads.Greer got it right - "Women have very little idea of how much men hate them." Lately I think a lot more are realising it.
Thanks for the Father Ted (appropriately enough) video, I'd forgotten about that one. Gives me an excuse to show off Chompsky again. He's one smart bunny.
Doing better than Chimpsky there. Someone really should have read Mark Twain on the subject of teaching pigs to sing. OTOH it probably kept everyone busier than even this thread and some people got grants...
Well I had to look that up. I just went there for the rabbits and the surreal yet downbeat comedy.
Did you fall into one of those rabbit hole thingies? (Bugs & Co. were my long ago introduction to the surreal.)
Nice chatting with you btw, though I suspect we wouldn't agree on some stuff...
My usual haunt is over here, as you may have guessed. Stop by if you ever want to chat about Chimpsky, Twain (Mark or Shania), or anything surreal. It's kind of my speciality.
Thanks, likewise. This site's frequented by cyclists, it's like hearding
catsrabbits. Except when it's the hive-mind of the cycling lobby obvs.Thank god, or whomever, for truly informed people in the comments section; it's been a long time coming.
The stories themselves are still invariably biased, e.g., the ludicrous headline here: 'transgender female' being mission creep from 'trans woman'. And I still remember when one of their reporters said Austin Killips was "perfectly entitled" to compete with the women, which while indeed the case as per the rules at the time, was a telling turn of phrase. This movement has "perfectly entitled" written all over it.
Once again we see they true side of many on here. SMDH.
Misinformation ! Ban them !
Crazy the amount of comments by people who openly claim to be terfs. I guess complete trash humans can be found everywhere, and with any group of people you'll find some ok with discrimination against some other group.
First of all, do people here think that any sport isn't inherently "unfair"? There will be people more athletically inclined for some sports, and no matter how hard you might work you'll never beat them. That's not unfair?
And if trans people pose such a huge threat to the sport, you'd expect the few that are trans and competing to steamroll the rest of the competitors but that doesn't happen.
I guess trans men should compete with women? Because that sure wouldn't give them an advantage...
Sport is unfair, in that we completely agree, most of us are never going to be elite athletes and no amount of training will change that.
If most men were to enter an elite women's sport event they wouldn't "steamroll" the competition.
Does that mean we should scrap the two categories?
If not, why not?
If men are allowed in women's competitions, it wouldn't be "most men" competing but the best at the sport so they would steamroll women's sports. Presumably the trans women competing are also some of the best in the sport but they aren't steamrolling.
The point is that a far higher percentage of men than women are capable of competing at the level of elite women.
Compare 100m sprint times as an easy example.
Male amatuer athletes regularly post times far faster than the women's world record. The fastest women's 100m sprint in history (itself the subject of doping speculation) would have been good enough for 21st place (out of 23) in a recent NCAA college men's sprint heat as an example.
Because preserved male physiology gives such a huge advantage a significantly higher percentage of transwomen will be capable of elite performance than cis women. Trans athletes might not win every single event but they will be significantly overrepresented and that in itself is unfair.
"They will be." Transwomen competing is not new though. This is just fear mongering based on a scenario that hasn't happened. What makes you think it will happen? Only 12 transwomen have olympic medals, out of thousands they could have won. That's under representation, not over.
"Because preserved male physiology gives such a huge advantage a significantly higher percentage of transwomen will be capable of elite performance than cis women." But again, UCI said it could not state for definite with the available evidence that post hormone therapy that trans women have an advantage, so it's not a huge advantage even if they have one.
So your example of 100m dash, any trans women would show a reduction in time after the therapy, and out of that 23 the chances that there is at least one transgender person (assuming 1/100 are trans) is about 21%, 11% if only 0.5/100 are trans. Not massive percentages. And any transgender person isn't guaranteed to win either. I don't know why that's the assumption as it hasn't been borne out at all.
But keep in mind that any win isn't evidence of anything as you'd expect some to win.
The point is that the women's (dubious) world record 100m time is so unremarkable in male sprinting that it doesn't even get into the top twenty of an amateur college heat.
Any averagely successful amateur male sprinter would likely be world champion even with a reasonable deterioration in performance post transition.
That's the point, the proportion of women who are physiologically capable of being a professional sprinter is much lower than the proportion of trans men who could do so.
12 transwomen have Olympic medals out of a global population of ? How many cis women have Olympic medals out of a population of roughly 4 bn? I seriously doubt that trans women are underrepresented.
No, it won't. Because if it takes some average transwomen sprinter to beat the record they would have done it, but they haven't. So you are again fearmongering based on nothing. How about, if they did start getting world records for a large proportion of sports then we say it is clearly a too big of an advantage? Until then there was no problem. They've been allowed to compete since 2004. It's only because of the anti trans culture war bullshit than this has even become a problem. Again, you'd expect some transwomen to win. It's ridiculous to think they would win nothing.
12 medals out of, something like 1500 to 1700 medals. So ~1%, which is the estimated percentage of transpeople. At at such low numbers you'd expect fluctuations.
You're missing the point.
In the entire history of women's athletics there has been 1 woman capable of running that time. At one single amateur athletics meet there are about 50 men capable of it.
The proportion of men capable of that time is many orders of magnitude greater than the proportion of women who are.
A trans woman is therefore massively more likely to be capable of elite level performance than a cis woman just based on simple probability.
If we allow trans women to compete in women's sports then, over time, every single world record will be held by a trans woman.
It's not fear mongering if it's already happened. We've already seen trans women start to win significant events despite the relatively tiny number of competitors, there's no need to wait until trans women hold a "large proportion" of world records. The direction of travel is clear.
If you're right and trans women somehow don't have an advantage then we will see that clearly after the open category is in use for a few years. At that point we can revisit the debate. I am certain we won't need to do that as the advantages are obvious.
No, I'm not missing the point at all. Why are you looking at cis men vs cis women times and not transwomen vs cis women times? That's the actual point of comparison. They were free to beat this record up till now. After they take 2 years of hormone therapy they won't have that time they had before but it will down. Down enough that they won't be able to win everything.
"The proportion of men capable of that time is many orders of magnitude greater than the proportion of women who are." And the proportion of transwomen is two orders of magnitude smaller than cis men, and they won't maintain their abilities.
"If we allow trans women to compete in women's sports then, over time, every single world record will be held by a trans woman." No that's not clear to happen at all. Lia Thomas did not win every race in the NCAA division 1 championships, just 1. So cis women beat her in everything else. And it's not like this is world championships or something.
"We've already seen trans women start to win significant events despite the relatively tiny number of competitors, " No, we haven't. There must be thousands of events every year. You've seen a few that have exploded. You see the same names repeated here again and again.
Since this only came about because of anti trans hysteria not and not really looking at any evidence, the only way it will go away is when the hysteria ends. And who knows when that will be considering how transphobic so many people are, including in these comments. But they are also pro forced birth so yeah...
Not all advantages disappear with hormone suppression.
Your lung capacity won't diminish, your cardiac stroke volume won't change, your height won't change.
Taking height as the most obvious example, a man who is on the 50% centile, would be on the 99th centile for women.
Height conveys an obvious advantage in multiple sports, an advantage that would not.diminish at all with transition.
You cannot deny that.
Those retained advantages would make trans women statistically far more likely to be capable of elite performance .
Lia Thomas actually proves my point. Pre transition she was a talented amateur swimmer but nowhere near elite. Post transition she was an elite amatuer athlete. How is that possible if hormone suppression removes retained advantages?
I'm sure I'm misunderstanding a world of nuance (and a range of perspectives), but I thought the point was such things are ultimately irrelevant to the core point of trans-inclusion? That is there should be a completely new way of defining women and men - assuming "self-identification" - which presumably is the point? (There seem to be some who say the whole binary classification is basically harmful and assorting based on your genitals etc. is bizarre - I'm leaving that one aside just now).
But given that, nothing's changed! You get to keep your men's and women's sport! It's all women in the women's race. There is just a slightly different selection of men and women in those categories than before.
Further - I guess this resolves "intersex" stuff as well as you can simply designate which group you're in.
To the concern that "then people can just pick or choose!" the argument seems to be "but people largely don't - they just are how they are. It's your physical embodiment and/or the reaction of everyone else which causes the issue. It is not something you 'choose' like a set of trainers".
Again I hope I'm not misrepresenting this? I'm still trying to get my head round these ideas. The full-strength version would appear to be invoking some pretty radical shifts compared to existing culture / social norms. It's way beyond just some new ways of addressing people and "making it fairer" / "stopping hate".
I can certainly agree there is a lot of prejudice, unfairness and indeed acceptance of violence inherent in our society as is. (More coming to light the more we look...) And that is predominantly bourne by decreasing sections of the population. Leaving aside other kinds of prejudice it's first women, then people with different sexualities, people who don't fit with gender categories etc.
While some disadvantages might appear, like having a larger skeletal frame with less muscle mass to support
You are comparing someone in 2019 to 2022. How do you know Thomas wouldn't have improved also as a cis male? Phelps was breaking records until 2009.
Also, Lia Thomas' times are not outrageous for a cis woman. If she were cis with those numbers no one would bat an eye. Most of the races cis women beat her. And her numbers are worse across the board compared to pre transition, with some very significant.
The argument here is that "it will destroy women's sports" is completely not borne in reality and won't be, despite your fear mongering. That's the only argument people have. The other is this ridiculous idea of "fairness" which never existed in sports to begin with. Sports was never fair (and not just because of biology either), so why should trans women be barred from it now for that reason? It's completely arbitrary and completely discriminatory and is an example of people wanting to cut of trans people from society.
Ultimately sports are not that important, certainly not more important than people feeling like they can live their life without fear, harrassment, and discrimination. Doing sports is something people do. When you start here, it won't stop but more discrimination will happen, including at lower levels (which are even less "important").
Lia Thomas was an also ran pre transition.
She's a champion post transition despite her times now being worse than when she was a man.
That's been my entire point all along.
Elite times in female competition are entirely average in male competition, when entirely average male athletes transition they become champions. Lia Thomas is a case in point.
Men are statistically far more likely to be capable of elite level female performance than women are. The gap is so vast that even after taking in to account performance deterioration post transition trans women are still statistically far more likely to be capable of elite performance.
Work out what percentage Lia Thomas' times increased by. Add a similar deterioration to male sprinting times and you will see that there are hundreds of amatuer male 100m sprinters easily capable of beating the women's world record.
That is why people are concerned.
If we're not concerned about fairness then why have separate male and female categories in the first place?
Those categories only exist because the gulf between male and female physiology is so vast.
Transwomen may close that physiological gap slightly post transition but the physiological gap between the average trans woman and the average cis woman is stil vast.
If we separate men and women based on average physiology why should we not separate trans and cis women on the same basis?
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