Banning transgender athletes is not helping us in any way

The internet needs a picture for these things, so here’s me looking raggedy just like this situation.

As always, my thoughts are my own.

I put my heart and soul into this sport every single day. I’ve spent years trying to bring more people in and encourage more diversity in cycling in both participation and viewership. I LOVE to ride and race bicycles, and I know there is so much potential in this community. But if I’m being blatantly honest, It’s pretty frustrating to tell people “Hey, come one, come all…it’s great here”, only to be made to look like Boo Boo the damn fool when “here” is stripping away human rights. 

It’s so exhausting as an athlete and an ambassador to have to constantly navigate the minefield of politics knowing that at any minute an affiliation could put you in a representative position you don’t recall signing up for. 

To be clear, I always have and always will acknowledge and agree that trans women are women, that sport is a human right, and that this ban on transgender athletes from cycling and other women’s sports is bullshit. I hate it with every fiber of my being and I don’t agree with it even a little bit. 

I can imagine there is genuine confusion from folks and that there are women in the peloton that agree that the inclusion of trans athletes in the women’s field is unfair, however, I’ve only ever heard it brought up in surveys from outside entities asking what we think about it. The topics usually being discussed as immediate threats to women's cycling are course safety, race organization, financial support for riders, teams, and races, better agency for contracts, better baseline conditions as professional athletes, etc. And none of that includes the energy that goes into training, preparing, and funding the training and preparing.

Riders often have to organize and pay for stuff like physiotherapy, nutrition, massages, gym memberships, mental health support, and altitude camps. Riders are often also concerned with maintaining basic needs like food and housing. Sometimes a team will cover some of these things, but most of the peloton is not on a team that can afford to do so. Many members of the professional women’s peloton are still working a second job. All this to say, the women of the pro peloton are busy taking care of themselves in the most basic ways.

Removing transgender athletes from competing has never been about saving women’s sports. I don’t think I can be any clearer about that. This is something else. Something worse. 

Especially as a Black woman, I’d be an even bigger fool to pretend that banning transgender women from competitive cycling isn’t a problem that affects me. My folks (Black folks) have been persecuted under the false pretenses of “rules” and often under a veil of shady “science” for centuries. As a cis-presenting woman who’s been misgendered many times, I know this isn’t none of my business.

Folks called Serena Williams everything under the sun. They repeatedly accused her of being a man because her body type didn’t make sense to them for what she was able to do with it as a woman. Caster Semenya has been fighting for years for the right to practice her sport. She recently won an appeal to the European Court of Human Rights to end “discriminatory” testosterone limits imposed on female athletes. It likely won’t be enough to allow her to run in the Paris Olympics, but it’s something.

My point is, this is an everybody problem, even if folks don’t realize it yet. 

I hate that folks can now hide behind the newly instated “rules” and use them as an excuse to be transphobic and terrible. And I don’t think that because there is a “differing of opinion”. I KNOW it because of the disgusting disrespect that is being splattered throughout the comments on most posts covering the topic. Pictures of athletes being plastered over the internet without their permission, watching them constantly be dehumanized, misgendered, slandered, and accused of heinous things that don’t even have anything to do with the sport.

People and institutions who are willing to implement bans like this, never stop. There’s always a next step, always more rules to put in place to discriminate, and always more rights to take away. It’s never just one thing. It’s never enough. 

I’m foolish enough to believe there’s still a way to save this space and make it better. I also know that it will be less likely to happen if the people inside continue to be unwilling to at minimum say when they don’t agree with something. It’s a smaller scale for sure, but similar to the human rights being stripped from marginalized citizens of America. The rules are in place, but that doesn’t make them right.

If you love something, you should be willing to fight to make it better.

I never have nor will I ever appeal to everyone. That is not nor has it ever been my goal. I’m here despite many people feeling I shouldn’t be. Life has dealt my body a terrible past few years, and my results have reflected as much. But I also know this is bigger than results, and if folks are going to penalize me for thinking this is garbage, then that’s a larger reflection of them than it is of me. 

Don’t @ me pretending to be a scientist, a member of the peloton, or even a savior for women’s sports. Women athletes are underpaid (if at all), under-supported, underestimated, and face a world of very real problems in the present that actually need solving. Banning transgender athletes is not helping us in any way. It’s cruel and sad and wrong. 

If you really want to save women’s sports, learn ways to help solve the problems we are actually facing.