Poisonous fuel in Portland: Studies show that many of the cars raced in Kenton at Portland International Raceway (a city-owned facility!) still use fuel that contains lead, a substance known to damage kids’ brains. (The Guardian)
Money saved, money earned: Love how this person broke down their e-bike usage into how much it cost them. Bookmark this when the haters try to paint cycling as something only rich people can afford to do. (Triangle Blog Blog)
The Big Lie: Decades of DOT-think has convinced many people that catastrophic traffic would exist without precious freeways; but once again we find out that without them, people simply adjust their behaviors. (Vice)
Lance and fairness: Disgraced cycling icon Lance Armstrong entered the debate over transgender athletes with a series of tweets meant to promote an upcoming interview about fairness with Caitlin Jenner. (Twitter)
Tour preview: The biggest bike race in the world is about to launch. Here’s a good primer on the racers to watch this year. (Cycling Weekly)
Cost of cheap batteries: Another tragic e-bike batter fire in New York City underscores the threat posed by cheap batteries and should heighten urgency for federal subsidy programs that could help more people purchase safer ones. (NY Times)
Teen tragedy: A fatal traffic collision that involved a 15-year-old on an e-bike in Bend has sparked a big discussion over safety — and it validated some of the worst fears held by many bike advocates. (Bend Bulletin)
Induced demand science: “Our [study] results suggest that capacity expansions do not lead to substantial changes in the average travel speed in the network.” (Science Direct)
Pay-per-mile: Good to see that the idea of a mileage-based fee is gaining momentum. Oregon has worked on this forever and it’s frustrating that the program isn’t more mature by now. (AP)
Oregon’s deadly roads: New pedestrian fatality numbers show that Oregon is one of the states where deaths have spiked. Meanwhile, lawmakers just voted on $1 billion for a freeway expansion. Make it make sense. (Ars Technica)
Founder of BikePortland (in 2005). Father of three. North Portlander. Basketball lover. Car driver. If you have questions or feedback about this site or my work, contact me via email at maus.jonathan@gmail.com, or phone/text at 503-706-8804. Also, if you read and appreciate this site, please become a paying subscriber.
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Completely agree with you on this! When I was little before unleaded gas we weren’t allowed to eat blackberries on the side of the road, I didn’t know why till I was older. It’s just ridiculous to keep carving out waivers for the well off to play their games (racing and flying) at the expense of the health of so many.
Something I never really knew and I thank you for linking that article! I live near two retirement village airfields and it’s nice to see the older planes flying slowly around, but now after reading that it is a bit unsettling to know they’re raining minuscule lead vapors on us and the pilots know that they are doing that.
Nick, great point…I wonder if anyone at the City of Vancouver has studied this aspect of the Pierson Air ‘Park’? The flight traffic – especially of the heritage aircraft with older engines / leaded fuel – is pretty heavy over Hough/ Hough Elementary (highest impact on childhood development) vs Carter Park or Shumway…from my 20 years of watching the fair weather air traffic routes…
It’s interesting how mealy-mouthed folks are when they want to have a “conversation in and around trans in sport” (that phrasing is itself a perfect example). Couching it as “sensitive conversations because people are afraid to be fired, shamed or canceled.” (sir….lol, you were not canceled). “Fearless” lance armstrong, i’m curious if he’s going to be honest about the actual position against trans people in sports, which is that they don’t think trans people exist, it’s just a delusion that does not need to be enabled. You either think trans men are men and trans women are women or you don’t. If you think trans men aren’t men, then that goes far beyond sports and is an existential issue that we are seeing play out across the country.
There is no benefit in conversations that basically end up splitting hairs over which biological advantages are ok and which ones aren’t. We accept innate biological advantages in professional athletes all the time. Why we even care about it at any level below that is confounding. Children will not be harmed in any way by competing with or against trans kids.
Why have gender-based categories at all? Rather than splitting hairs over biological advantages, let’s just have everyone compete against one another and be done with it. Why would non-professionals even care?
Why have age or weight brackets either then? It sounds like you are eager to force a lot of people out of competition (which can indeed promote teamwork, discipline and build character) by lumping all together where only a few are competitive and the rest quit because competing with little to no chance of doing well over and over is not fun.
“…only a few are competitive and the rest quit because competing with little to no chance of doing well over and over is not fun.”
The question our socialist friend was posing is which biological advantages are “fair” and which are “unfair”. Is it “fair” that Lance Armstrong can convert calories to energy more efficiently than I can, or that I’ll never be as tall as LeBron James? Is being a man “unfair” in a competition against women? Why or why not? Do any of those issues also impact trans female athletes?
I don’t know the answers, but I think you correctly identified the issue.
Nobody is saying they will be harmed; nice attempt at creating a straw man. They are saying that it denies girls a fair shot at being the victors in competition.
I interpret”harm” in the legal sense, and I was surprised that the article didn’t mention the obvious — college admissions. (Woops, I realize I’m conflating two articles I read today on the topic. There is a more in-depth piece in NYT. )
Many college-bound students use athletic achievements to bolster their applications. If a girl cannot say she is the city champ of the 100 meter freestyle, she might not have as strong an application, or get as big a scholarship, or whatever.
I suppose her application could come with an asterisk about who she lost to, but that in itself presents a quandary in that it might be offensive to the admission committee.
This is the most made up astroturfed issue, a complete non story except for Fox news and now people like Armstrong, who used synthetic drugs to almost entirely fuel his career, are just trying for clicks….
Since Roe v Wade was extinguished they need an issue that fires up the Christian nut jobs and this is it.
About 10 people in the world do something which effects almost no one and we have to hear about it…
The wording of your post betrays its inaccuracy…”to almost entirely fuel his career”….No, even his opponents agree that he would still have dominated the field without drugs…just not as much AND, even more importantly…he competed in the Olympics and was World Professional Champion before he started doping…so, he was already arguably the best; he just ‘enhanced’ his success.
There are most likely not enough transgender girls competing to get a large enough sample to have the “power” to reach statistical significance. That doesn’t mean trans-girls don’t have an advantage, just that the population isn’t large enough to prove anything.
Also, sex differences don’t begin at puberty, and they aren’t limited to muscle mass. Males and females have different brains, different immune systems. They get different diseases. Research into sex differences only began about 15 years ago. A lot isn’t known yet.
So the entire “debate” about trans women athletes, including legislation banning their participation in school sports, centers on a tiny group of people with no statistical relevance. Doesn’t that seem a little absurd?
… if trans women athletes had a demonstrated advantage …
To demonstrate an advantage requires statistics, and the mathematics of statistics requires a large enough set to reach “significance,” which is a mathematical result with a numeric value. If you don’t have a big enough set, you can’t demonstrate anything.
Exactly. Transgender women athletes don’t represent a big enough “set” to have any demonstrable superiority over non–transgender women. But somehow we’re supposed to believe this tiny minority poses a potentially significant threat to women’s athletics? Sorry, not buying it.
Should we not let people with different IQs play together? Or immuno-compromised people play with those with functioning immune systems? This is just thinly veiled transphobia.
1.) Trans women taking feminizing hormones are not equivalent to “men” either medically or socially.
2.) The soccer match story is from 2017. Seemingly the last half decade has produced no better “evidence” that trans women (who are not boys) are physically superior. Of course the story doesn’t say that:
“This match against the academy team was very informal and should not be a major cause for alarm. The U.S. surely wasn’t going all out, with the main goal being to get some minutes on the pitch, build chemistry when it comes to moving the ball around, improve defensive shape and get ready for Russia.
“The game will, however, serve as a great anecdote for the kids on the FC Dallas squad to tell their grandchildren about one day. It also speaks highly of the level of academy development MLS teams are doing these days.”
1) I disagree and believe that they are still men taking hormones. The hormones might prevent them from effectively competing against other men, but it will still place them stronger than women. The men taking hormones have infinitely more in common with other men than they do with women which they are not similar to either physically or socially.
The solution as far as competition is already starting to happen as the introduction of an Open category
That story is about a male powerlifter who identified as a woman for one specific meet *in an act of protest* and beat the bench press record held by a transgender woman powerlifter. Showing once again that transgender women are not physically equivalent to men, thank you.
The hormones might prevent them from effectively competing against other men, but it will still place them stronger than women.
Did you bother to read anything I wrote? I mentioned that. It’d be polite to debate me with what I’ve actually written rather than what you want me to be writing.
You’re assuming the transgender woman powerlifter achieved her record because she is transgender, not because she trained harder or has more talent. Would you be happier if trans women competing with other women always lost?
To give young women an outlet for their energy where they will not be eclipsed constantly by young men. I do not know why people want to enforce a patriarchal system of might makes right from a young age. I acknowledge that boys and girls up to a certain age are very competitive with each other and it shouldn’t be a worry, but after that I would hope that as a society we would want women to have sports victories as well as men having sports victories to build confidence and provide life lessons for.
Regarding college admissions, athletic scholarships already privilege wealthy white students, especially at elite schools. It certainly helps if a young athlete has ample time and resources to practice sports instead of, say, working to support their family. Yet there’s no urgent public debate about college sports discriminating against poor kids.
I thought the topic was supposed to be “fairness”. If that’s the case, where’s the uproar over the wealth and class disparity in youth and collegiate sports?
Once again I am in complete agreement with you. Sports in higher education that go past intramural events take away from society as a whole. So much time and money wasted focusing on college athletes.
But until that happy time when there are no more sports scholarships and those that want to attend a 4 year (or 2 year) school can, women need the chance to compete for them with other women.
Yeah, with NIL and the transfer portal, I kinda wish that colleges only had intramural and club sports; at least in the big ‘revenue’ sports, football and basketball.
Lisa, now add up the harm to trans kids from all the harassment they get from folks speculating about things like this. The cost to kids in families that have to move to new communities or states to get their kids to a safer place.
Cis girls are not harmed by trans girls competing in sports. Cis girls are harmed by homophobia and transphobia, and by laws that would force all girls to prove their female-ness via genital inspection.
Trans kids are some of our most vulnerable and harassed kids. Look at suicide rates of trans and LGBTQ kids. That’s the harm that bigotry perpetuates.
When I was growing up, half the women on my street didn’t have driver’s licenses. Husband’s drove. Women couldn’t get a credit card without a husband’s signature.
My junior high school wouldn’t let my best friend take the bicycle repair shop class because it was for boys only, home economics or sewing were for the girls.
Opportunities for girls in sports started to open up in the mid-seventies, but it was a battle. What I badly wanted for my 14th birthday was for Billie Jean King to beat Bobby Riggs.
Another friend of mine, a gifted athlete, wanted to play soccer in high school, but there was no girl’s team, so Michelle played on the boys team. (This was a big high school with 4,000 students.)
The college I went to had been an all-men’s school until a decade earlier, the number of women on campus hadn’t yet reached parity with men when I was there.
Women still earn 84 cents for every dollar a man earns, been that way for decades. There still hasn’t been a female president. Hundreds of thousands of rape kits sit untested in crime lab storage. One in four women have been victims of intimate partner violence.
The hard-won rights of women feel recent and fragile to me. Sports are a safe place for women and girls to find joy in their physical abilities and to compete and succeed.
Your experiences are valid and we should recognize and acknowledge the progress that has been made in gender equality (and the inequality that still exists). Women rights and trans rights are not mutually exclusive and treating trans people with respect does not erode the rights of women. With such a recent experience the second wave feminists faced, I would hope they recognize the same discrimination facing trans people today. However, we often see trans-exclusionary feminists that believe trans woman are not woman and shouldn’t be treated the same.
I beg you to approach this issue with an open mind Lisa. Don’t look for stats or science studies, that is a fools errand. Come at this with empathy and compassion.
Here’s the thing Daniel, I do have an open mind. And most people who know me would think I am empathetic and compassionate.
I disagree with you, but that doesn’t make me close-minded or lacking in compassion. I don‘t believe that trans-women are women. Biology says they are not. But I’ll call them “she” if they want.
The first time I encountered a man transitioning was in 1978. I thought it was really cool.
As far as stats and science, I brought the stats up in response to the other Daniel who wanted a “demonstrated advantage.” That requires some stats, and might not be possible to demonstrate depending on the size of the sample.
This is the root of this discussion. Gender is not determined by biology and it is crucial to recognize and respect their identity. What you said is incredibly disrespectful to trans women and invalidates individuals deeply felt sense of self.
Thank you for that article, Pierre, I’d been looking for something like that.
I was in the room at Salk when Simon LeVay presented his data that the hypothalamus of gay men differed anatomically from that of straight men (late 80s, maybe 1990). I don’t know if his research has held over the years, but at the time it immediately made international news, and was the first scientific evidence that being gay wasn’t a choice.
It was a huge deal and an important breakthrough for getting homosexuality accepted. You could hear a pin drop in that room.
You are missing the point of that article. Identification of “women” based on some set of traits is a social construct. There are many millions of people that you would almost certainly characterize as “women” despite the fact that they have both “male” and “female” traits or genetics. ~2% of the population is intersex and an even higher percentage has some level of mosaicism.
For example, model Hanne Gaby Odiele’s is an X,Y intersex woman with androgen insensitivity syndrome:
I’m not missing the point of the article. But I do distinguish between between genetically detectable intersex presentations and gender dysphoria, in which individuals clearly have vanilla XX or XY chromosomes (and no underlying inability to process estrogen or testosterone).
The intersex issues are tough. A better example than your model would be the South African track star Caster Semenya — https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Caster_Semenya. She has XY chromosomes but can’t catalyze testosterone. She was raised as a girl, understood herself to be a girl, and won Olympic gold medals as a woman.
I’ll let the various sports bodies decide how to regulate those cases. I think her story is heart-wrenching and requires the wisdom of Solomon to decide fairly.
Gender dysphoria is a different matter. Those individuals are clearly biologically male or female, but they have a strong aversion to their sex. Here is the DSM 5 entry:
Possibly there are biological underpinnings which have yet to be discovered. But Europe is walking back on the “Dutch Protocol” of hormones and surgery for young people:
There are many concerns, but the one which jumped out at me was the increased percentage of girls seeking treatment, especially at puberty. The article doesn’t say anything about it, this is my own idea, but that corresponds to the years girls present with anorexia.
I think you two are arguing over whether the word “woman” refers to socially constructed gender or biologically determined sex. It can be either, as determined by context, so you’re both right.
That “saying that aloud” should be met by an implied threat speaks to a deeper problem.
Trans women are women no matter the context. If you want to refer to the biologically determined sex of a trans woman, you can use the term “assigned male at birth”. It acknowledges that they are no longer a man, it wasn’t a choice, and that they have a new identity now.
That suggestion to not say it out loud is because in many social circles, it would be considered hate speech. And with as many trans people there are in Portland, you never know who will hear it and the psychological harm it can do to an individual. Many would consider it the equivalent of going up to a gay guy and saying “being gay is a choice”. It completely undermines and disrespects an individuals identity.
Therein lies the problem. There is nothing at all hateful about anything Lisa has written.
Even you acknowledge that there is such a thing as biologically determined sex. Whether that has anything to do with the word “man” or “woman” is one of definition, context, and semantics, not some irrefutable scientific fact.
I don’t think anyone here, and especially not Lisa, is saying that trans women are not real women in any non-biological sense.
I was a college athlete and then helped coach a college team. I have yet to speak to a former teammate or athlete that I’ve coached who isn’t in favor of allowing trans women to compete. Much of the hand wringing about this seems to be coming from male politicians and stage parents of athletic girls. The actual athletes are seemingly indifferent or supportive.
Women’s sports are made no less safe for women by including trans women in them. They are made no less joyous. Trans women have the same need for a “…safe place…to find joy in their physical abilities and to compete and succeed” that cis women do. They face many of the same barriers and hardships that cis women do. Trans women earn 60 cents for every dollar a typical worker earns. There has never been a trans President (as of 2021, there were a total of 77 trans, non-binary, or intersex people in elected positions total in the whole country. Trans women are victims of violent crime at a rate that is 3.5 times higher than cis women. 50% of trans women will be sexually assaulted in their lifetime. One third will be victimized by intimate partner violence.
Trans women are not a threat to cis women. Their liberation does not and need not come at the expense of cis women’s liberation, and their exclusion from opportunities granted to cis women does not strengthen the place of cis women in society.
Thank you for the thoughtful response. I think we just disagree. I understand that trans- people are bullied and face barriers, and I think that is repugnant.
I’m not an athlete, so I don’t know anything about college sports. But my back neighbor mentioned that her son got an ice hockey scholarship to an east coast school, and that “he wasn’t even very good.” So I imagine it depends on the sport and the school.
I like the solution British Cycling came up with. That they spent nine-months reviewing the subject leads me to believe that the trans racing issue is controversial among athletes.
I can’t speak for cycling, but for track it really isn’t controversial amongst athletes, it’s ‘controversial’ for World Athletics. It’s a mistake to conflate a sports’ governing body with the athletes that they govern. We rarely see eye to eye.
Lisa, the hard-won rights of cis women are intrinsically linked to the rights of all folks who don’t conform to patriarchal norms of gender and sexuality. I grew up a feminist in the 80s and 90s (I’m not that young, and, as a college women’s studies major, do not need your lectures on the history of women’s rights) and it was clear to me as a girl and young woman that trans folks are fighting for us too. By defying societal norms of sex and gender, they are making space for all of us, including cis girls who kick ass in sports, to be our most authentic selves. When patriarchal norms won’t let gay men love gay men, or trans women live as their authentic selves, it’s also why they want cis girls in sewing and for cis women to be married to men without access to abortion or credit cards. It’s the same fight, whether it’s to be in a bicycle repair class or wear a dress without harassment. The fight is to control our own identities and bodies. I wish you’d spare a moment of concern and some compassion for the little kids who grow up being told that what they are is not who they know they are. These are real kids who need our love and respect too.
And, here’s the thing: you stepped into this fight! You are bickering back and forth and doubling down on this when you didn’t have to say a thing (and exactly like you scolded folks for doing!). You waded into the comments to deny trans women their womanhood. By refusing to acknowledge trans women as women, you align yourself with the transphobes and the bigots. You have some pretty ugly company! And, you didn’t have to say a word.
Your transphobia is important enough to you to bring to the comments section. I’m sorry for you, that you can’t widen your perspective on this issue and understand that trans folks aren’t a threat to you, but rather are part of a fight to broaden our understandings of gender and sex and make the world more accepting of all of us.
You spoke of harm. The arguments you make here aren’t doing anything to help cis girls in sports. You are causing further harm to all trans kids and cis kids who don’t fit into a narrow box of sex and gender.
I wasn’t lecturing anyone, just exposing myself by revealing my lived experience. I also haven’t called anybody a name or tried to stick a label on them.
It’s not a real financial harm. If someone is a good enough athlete that they’re going to be on scholarship, then the coaches will know exactly who they competed against and take that into account.
When this first came up in conversation my gut reaction was “well, surely a trans woman must have an advantage – in general people with XY chromosomes are able to build more muscle mass”.
When I really thought about it, however, I realized that was poor critical thinking on my part. There are so many confounding factors (including HRT, native talent and innate athletic ability) that I think any advantage (assuming there are any) will be lost in the noise.
I think the whole thing with the swimmer complaiing about a tie for 5th with a transgendered athlete is pretty telling – neither one of them was in the top 3 at the meet. If being trans gendered gave her opponent so much of an advantage, why wasn’t she first?
“ You either think trans men are men and trans women are women or you don’t.”
I feel the urge to point out that you’re using a very *binary* way of thinking when it comes to gender. Not, you know, a *nonbinary* point of view, eh?
As for myself, I’m just glad that I’m not a ciswoman athlete so I don’t personally have to worry about what’s fair or not.
David Hampsten
1 year ago
Money Saved, Money Earned: Harris Teeter is a high-end East Coast supermarket chain owned by Kroger’s, the same as who owns Fred Meyer and Quality Foods. They are notorious for not having bike racks.
John D.
1 year ago
It’s bonkers to me that the people running a city park are allowed to violate air and noise population laws.
I say this a a fan of motorsports (I was at the track for the electric car race this weekend), but the city leadership really needs to step up and hold PIR accountable.
I wonder if the candidates for the new North Portland city council district will be asked about this?
Food for thought: All motorsports (including electric) result in gratuitous pollution. Even if your battery charge came from solar power, wind power, or unicorn farts, your tires are still grinding themselves into microparticles that measurably contaminate the environment. And I doubt I need to point out: Racing wears tires down much more quickly than normal driving.
steve scarich
1 year ago
Enough with the ‘disgraced’ Lance Armstrong trope. By attaching that descriptive to him, JM, you betray your fear/unwillingness to debate the legitimate issue of trans women in women’s sports. You can do better.
I disagree Steve. I used “disgraced” because I believe that is an accurate and factual label for him. Regardless of what I might believe about him, he was definitely “disgraced” which means, “having fallen from favor or a position of power or honor; discredited.”
Your attempt to paint my use of that word as a way for me to avoid the debate about trans women is also wrong.
Talk to serious cyclists. Talk to former professional racers. I have worked beside, trained with, and been friends with many professionals, winners at Olympics, National Championships, competed at Tour de France, Giro d’Italia, etc etc. They all say the same thing ‘Everybody doped; Lance was just better at it AND he was a jerk’. I am so tired of the media deciding for me whether a person is telling the truth or not, is a good person or not. The mass media has decided that it is the arbiter of what is true and what is not; hence we get the ‘untrue’ or ‘lie’ in front of many statements by Republicans, Trump, et. al. I have never, and I mean, never, heard them judge a statement by Joe Biden or AOC or Kamala in that way…Does that mean they always tell the truth? Laughable…sorry, I got off on a tangent, but you are doing exactly the same thing…let the public, your readers make value judgements for themselves. I resent the media (you) trying to take away the agency of critical thinking from me. You will not succeed with me, but many will say to themselves ‘well, if JM says he is disgraced, then he must be’. Without context, your judgement just serves to stifle rational discussion.
News media publishing politicians’ lies without even hinting that they are lies is part of what led to the election of a certain *disgraced* former president. The whole “present both sides; we’ll let you decide” angle does a disservice to society. Truths can be objectively determined, and they are an obligatory part of any actual journalism.
Back to the original point, Mr. Maus provided the dictionary definition of “disgraced”–do you dispute that this applies objectively to a cyclist who had all of his TdF wins (honors) revoked?
Jonathan – steve has basically summed up the end point of the conversation by calling it a “legitimate issue of trans women in women’s sports.” As i commented above, this ‘conversation’ boils down to whether you think trans people are real. Would you in any other context say that trans women aren’t women? they are women but only not in sports? they are women but they mustn’t use the women’s bathroom? they are women but they can’t use women’s changing rooms? Do you see where I’m going with this? The legitimizing of that line of questioning has caused actual literal legal harm to trans people. Anti-trans people, TERFS, and the right wing have used bathroom bills and sports bills to basically wedge their way into a larger and terrifying plan to get rid of trans people altogether. That’s what’s at stake in this ‘conversation’.
I wish you would take this seriously, every time this comes up you stake a ‘middle of the road’ claim about this being a debate that’s worth having. What you’re doing is saying it’s a legitimate and worth-platforming position to take that trans people should not participate in competitive sports.
(i also find it interesting that many commenters assume this conversation only applies to trans women, because they care so much about women’s sports? but you don’t have to worry about cis men because trans men aren’t a threat?)
C’mon Jonathan, I‘m just a commenter pointing out that this is the nth story posted about trans people in sports that’s basically like “trans people? do they exist?”
it’s 2023 and this ‘conversation’ has been happening for many many years. i engaged with you because this is your platform, and i think this site offers a lot of value to the world of conversations around transportation. we are in a dangerous time and if you get defensive about my pointing out that there is real harm in legitimizing the position that jakeco969 has very helpfully laid out in these comments, then maybe consider some more self-reflection before sharing your feelings about this. or not! do whatever you want! i can’t tell you what to do.
I think you are projecting a lot of stuff into my words that are not accurate or true. I’m not defensive at all. I’m saying that I am still trying to figure out how I want to talk about this issue on here and that I feel like it’s my right to decide that and to sit down and not center myself in the conversation until I want to.
I think there is harm in not allowing people to share thoughts about this issue. That does not mean I will let folks say whatever they want to say. And I don’t need to be educated about the dangers of certain conversations on marginalized groups of people like folks who are trans. If you know my record, I also do everything I can to reduce harms to people — while trying to foster some dialogue on important issues like this so that we can hear various opinions and hopefully get to a better place at the end.
If I’m getting that balance wrong, I have folks like you to tell me and I consider it and adjust the scale.
It’s a complicated process. But yeah, at some point you just have to trust that my intentions are good.
when you said you’d state your position on your own terms without being pressured, that seemed defensive. but that is neither here nor there.
it’s clear to me that you and bikeportland do not support trans people. your remarks make it crystal clear you really do not understand the harm you are causing or the dangers of these conversations to marginalized people. this comment thread has been incredibly illustrative on your views and i learned you have a TERF on staff. so that’s more than enough for me to disengage from this site.
I don’t want to bring harm to anyone. I’m trying to allow people to share ideas and learn from one another in a constructive way. If I have that balance off, I can try and correct. Thanks for your feedback.
Having people, especially staff, deny people’s identity is pretty off balance.
I don’t like how bikeportland is trying to sponsor “both sides of the debate” when one side is spewing literal hate speech. What if instead of trans people, jakeco969 said “gay people have a mental illness” or “all black people have a mental illness”. That kind of comment would never be allowed here and would seem ridiculous to let such bigotry to be allowed here all in the name of “sharing ideas”.
I’m not trying to “sponsor both sides of a debate”!
This started with one tiny little mention of Lance Armstrong.
I read Lisa’s comment as her expressing her belief about biology. She also says she’s fine calling a trans person a “she”…so that sounds to me like she is acknowledging someone’s identity.
And did anyone on this thread say that trans people have a mental illness? If they did I would delete it immediately and would ban that person from commenting.
The greatest harm to affect kids is being experimented on by an out of control medical community that seem to think chemicals and surgical alteration are the way to cure a mental illness rather than coordinated mental health care and outreach programs to let these kids know that they will be okay.
Just catching up with this thread. Transphobia and sexism are long term and pervasive issues in the bicycling world broadly and in this community specifically. That the assistant editor is a TERF who opted to wade in and then continue to argue her bigoted, transphobic views perpetuates harm. She’s the one who told commenters a month or so back not to engage in back-and-forths in the comments, and yet this is an issue important enough to her that’s she violated her own commenting guidelines. That says a lot.
Thanks for sharing your thoughts. Lisa and I have been in contact about this thread and this issue in general and we continue to talk about it. I appreciate your feedback.
Also, this continued attempt to normalize the word TERF as if it is not a slur is rather unfortunate. It may not be a slur for some who use the word but it is considered a slur by many and to continually, blatantly use it against Lisa is extremely troubling! Especially in view of the veiled threat at least one poster has made in this very conversation.
Daniel Reimer
1 day ago
Reply to Lisa Caballero (Assistant Editor)
I don‘t believe that trans-women are women
This is the root of this discussion. Gender is not determined by biology and it is crucial to recognize and respect their identity. What you said is incredibly disrespectful to trans women and invalidates individuals deeply felt sense of self.
I recommend not saying that out loud in Portland.
(my emphasis)
Though TERF was created to be a “deliberately technically neutral description”, the term is now typically considered derogatory or disparaging.[4][5] People labeled TERFs often reject the label, instead describing their beliefs as gender critical.[6][7] In academic discourse, there is no clear consensus on whether TERF constitutes a slur. Critics of the label have said that it is used alongside insulting or abusive rhetoric[8][9][10] while other academics have argued that this alone does not make it a slur
Trans Exclusionary Radical Feminist….. I don’t know why the trans community felt the need to invent a term specifically attacking woman. It seems like the term exists to put women in their place which is very patriarchal. Since you used it can you expound on that a bit?
Anyone can be a feminist. If your view of feminism does not include trans women, then by definition you are exclusionary to trans.
It is not a way to put people in their place but more so to point out the oxymoronic belief that there should be gender equality (as long as they are not trans).
Feminism is to my understanding (and the computers)- the advocacy of women’s rights on the basis of the equality of the sexes.
Anyone can be a feminist.
I agree. Anyone can advocate for gender equality.
If your view of feminism does not include trans women, then by definition you are exclusionary to trans.
I don’t get this part. If anyone can be a feminist, how can anyone be excluded?
It is not a way to put people in their place but more so to point out the oxymoronic belief that there should be gender equality (as long as they are not trans).
Okay, so you want people to acknowledge that a man can become a woman and vice versa? If they don’t they are called a TERF?
In his brief tweet introducing his discussions, Armstrong immediately brings up his disgrace/fall, saying that experience makes him “uniquely positioned….”:
“Have we really come to a time and place where spirited debate is not only frowned upon, but feared? Where people’s greatest concern is being fired, shamed or cancelled? As someone all too familiar with this phenomenon, I feel I’m uniquely positioned to have these conversations.”
So even Armstrong himself realizes his self-created downfall is a central part of his identity. He’s not a “cycling icon”, he’s (what Jonathan wrote) a “disgraced cycling icon”.
Been to Bend lately? Ebikes zipping in and out of traffic, no signaling. Going way too fast. Not paying attention to stop signs or people in crosswalks. Worse than their car traffic nightmare. It’s a wonder more aren’t killed.
Like Nick points out, a similar effort in regards to small aircraft is gaining a little ground after many decades. Like racecars, operating an aircraft is expensive as hell. People with the means to run aircraft as a hobby and people with the means to run racecars as a hobby are people with the means to apply meaningful leverage where governance decisions are made. For example, see also the non-negotiable CRC design constraints set by Pearson Airpark.
Outside the elite racing circuits, I’m not sure your stereotype of car racing being the domain of social elites holds. I’m not into racing anymore, but it seemed to be a pretty blue collar enterprise. Likewise, 100% of those I’ve known who were into civil aviation were solid middle class folk.
I posted my unequivocal opinion on leaded gas above, and that holds regardless of who participates in the sport.
The only reason that the subject of lead fuel usage came up is that PIR actually has a web page dedicated to the subject. On their main page look under About and you will find a link to the leaded fuel page. On the page you will find a consultants study and yearly reports on leaded race fuel sales broken out by event. Looking at the 2019 report (last year prior to pandemic) shows 4 events with leaded fuel sales over 100 gallons. The largest sales numbers are for the Vintage Car Races and the Rose Cup Races. Most of the people racing vintage cars are more grass roots racing not the elite (except the guys racing old Ferraris). PIR was the only race track in the USA to provide information on leaded gas. If the Guardian is so concerned about lead particulates in the air then set up sensors to measure a nearby neighborhood on a non-race day and then during the SVRA/Trans Am race (most gallons of leaded race fuel sold) and show us the actual results.
Todd/Boulanger
1 year ago
BikePortland…nice find on the TheGuardian article (as I missed that one)…regarding ” Poisonous fuel in Portland” its really past time for Portland Parks to get out of the racing business which now creates even more identified poison for surrounding communities (lead fuel emission residue plus heavy metals from tires and brake wear plus engine noise, that latter of which makes it even more difficult to enjoy the green open public spaces on the trails and parks near by. Perverse ain’t it?
Middle o the Road Guy
1 year ago
Pay per mile will fail in Oregon once we try to make it equity-based.
Felice
1 year ago
It’s a bummer to see the victim blaming in the Bend story about the kid who died. I don’t know that intersection but the on ramps and turns on and off highways in Bend have really bad bike infrastructure. This kid was right-hooked, plain and simple. The helmet and their friend seem to be mostly irrelevant details.
X
1 year ago
“Teen tragedy: A fatal traffic collision that involved a 15-year-old on an e-bike in Bend has sparked a big discussion … ”
In journalism this is called ‘burying the lede’. In other words, the article went on for a while before mentioning that besides an e-bike the collision involved a motor vehicle. Only recently have motor vehicles been overtaken as the leading killers of youth, by guns. Guns were developed primarily to kill people while motor vehicles are supposedly primarily for transportation.
X
1 year ago
My ideas about the issue of people transitioning are definitely a work in progress. I have trans friends, neighbors, and least one close family member that I love. (People don’t always share everything about their lives immediately, it turns out.) Consequently I read, and re-read, the comments about trans people in sports and society with interest.
Maybe people without that deep interest moved on from this Monday Round-up because the articles about induced demand, including “The Big Lie” didn’t seem to catch much attention.
I appreciate Bike Portland as a forum for issues that sometimes only tangential to bikes or transportation but is there a way to branch a busy thread into its own post? Sometimes a thread gets heated in a way that leads to comments getting shut down and I understand that.
Thanks for reading.
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Leaded fuel should be banned. Period.
Completely agree with you on this! When I was little before unleaded gas we weren’t allowed to eat blackberries on the side of the road, I didn’t know why till I was older. It’s just ridiculous to keep carving out waivers for the well off to play their games (racing and flying) at the expense of the health of so many.
In Portland city parks you can burn leaded motor fuel but hey, take your hand off that mountain bike.
There’s also an ongoing lead issue with the fuel from small planes: https://www.politico.com/news/2023/02/20/aviation-lead-fuel-00081641
Something I never really knew and I thank you for linking that article! I live near two retirement village airfields and it’s nice to see the older planes flying slowly around, but now after reading that it is a bit unsettling to know they’re raining minuscule lead vapors on us and the pilots know that they are doing that.
Nick, great point…I wonder if anyone at the City of Vancouver has studied this aspect of the Pierson Air ‘Park’? The flight traffic – especially of the heritage aircraft with older engines / leaded fuel – is pretty heavy over Hough/ Hough Elementary (highest impact on childhood development) vs Carter Park or Shumway…from my 20 years of watching the fair weather air traffic routes…
The City’s Aviation Advisory Commission seems to be on a chronic “recess” since 2018…(I cannot seem to find any newer meetings)
https://www.cityofvancouver.us/aac
https://vancouver.municipal.codes/VMC/10.05
It’s interesting how mealy-mouthed folks are when they want to have a “conversation in and around trans in sport” (that phrasing is itself a perfect example). Couching it as “sensitive conversations because people are afraid to be fired, shamed or canceled.” (sir….lol, you were not canceled). “Fearless” lance armstrong, i’m curious if he’s going to be honest about the actual position against trans people in sports, which is that they don’t think trans people exist, it’s just a delusion that does not need to be enabled. You either think trans men are men and trans women are women or you don’t. If you think trans men aren’t men, then that goes far beyond sports and is an existential issue that we are seeing play out across the country.
There is no benefit in conversations that basically end up splitting hairs over which biological advantages are ok and which ones aren’t. We accept innate biological advantages in professional athletes all the time. Why we even care about it at any level below that is confounding. Children will not be harmed in any way by competing with or against trans kids.
Why have gender-based categories at all? Rather than splitting hairs over biological advantages, let’s just have everyone compete against one another and be done with it. Why would non-professionals even care?
Why have age or weight brackets either then? It sounds like you are eager to force a lot of people out of competition (which can indeed promote teamwork, discipline and build character) by lumping all together where only a few are competitive and the rest quit because competing with little to no chance of doing well over and over is not fun.
“…only a few are competitive and the rest quit because competing with little to no chance of doing well over and over is not fun.”
The question our socialist friend was posing is which biological advantages are “fair” and which are “unfair”. Is it “fair” that Lance Armstrong can convert calories to energy more efficiently than I can, or that I’ll never be as tall as LeBron James? Is being a man “unfair” in a competition against women? Why or why not? Do any of those issues also impact trans female athletes?
I don’t know the answers, but I think you correctly identified the issue.
Nobody is saying they will be harmed; nice attempt at creating a straw man. They are saying that it denies girls a fair shot at being the victors in competition.
Hi Steve,
I interpret”harm” in the legal sense, and I was surprised that the article didn’t mention the obvious — college admissions. (Woops, I realize I’m conflating two articles I read today on the topic. There is a more in-depth piece in NYT. )
Many college-bound students use athletic achievements to bolster their applications. If a girl cannot say she is the city champ of the 100 meter freestyle, she might not have as strong an application, or get as big a scholarship, or whatever.
I suppose her application could come with an asterisk about who she lost to, but that in itself presents a quandary in that it might be offensive to the admission committee.
It’s a real financial harm.
It *would* be a real harm if trans women athletes had a demonstrated advantage over non –trans women athletes, which they don’t:
https://www.scientificamerican.com/article/trans-girls-belong-on-girls-sports-teams
This is the most made up astroturfed issue, a complete non story except for Fox news and now people like Armstrong, who used synthetic drugs to almost entirely fuel his career, are just trying for clicks….
Since Roe v Wade was extinguished they need an issue that fires up the Christian nut jobs and this is it.
About 10 people in the world do something which effects almost no one and we have to hear about it…
The wording of your post betrays its inaccuracy…”to almost entirely fuel his career”….No, even his opponents agree that he would still have dominated the field without drugs…just not as much AND, even more importantly…he competed in the Olympics and was World Professional Champion before he started doping…so, he was already arguably the best; he just ‘enhanced’ his success.
Hi Daniel,
There are most likely not enough transgender girls competing to get a large enough sample to have the “power” to reach statistical significance. That doesn’t mean trans-girls don’t have an advantage, just that the population isn’t large enough to prove anything.
Also, sex differences don’t begin at puberty, and they aren’t limited to muscle mass. Males and females have different brains, different immune systems. They get different diseases. Research into sex differences only began about 15 years ago. A lot isn’t known yet.
So the entire “debate” about trans women athletes, including legislation banning their participation in school sports, centers on a tiny group of people with no statistical relevance. Doesn’t that seem a little absurd?
https://apnews.com/article/congress-transgender-women-sports-ban-athletes-1c58c20cac2b191e323e4376d7949a2d
That is not what I said Daniel. You wrote:
To demonstrate an advantage requires statistics, and the mathematics of statistics requires a large enough set to reach “significance,” which is a mathematical result with a numeric value. If you don’t have a big enough set, you can’t demonstrate anything.
Exactly. Transgender women athletes don’t represent a big enough “set” to have any demonstrable superiority over non–transgender women. But somehow we’re supposed to believe this tiny minority poses a potentially significant threat to women’s athletics? Sorry, not buying it.
How much data do you need to change your mind?
Should we not let people with different IQs play together? Or immuno-compromised people play with those with functioning immune systems? This is just thinly veiled transphobia.
The article you link to is a policy/opinion piece and is essentially the authors opinion only although they did use the word “scientific “ a lot.
Also, high school boys beat the women’s team…
FC Dallas under-15 boys squad beat the U.S. Women’s National Team in a scrimmage
https://www.cbssports.com/soccer/news/a-dallas-fc-under-15-boys-squad-beat-the-u-s-womens-national-team-in-a-scrimmage/amp/
I’m guessing you didn’t play many sports in HS or you’d be aware of the strength, endurance and coordination differences between men and women.
1.) Trans women taking feminizing hormones are not equivalent to “men” either medically or socially.
2.) The soccer match story is from 2017. Seemingly the last half decade has produced no better “evidence” that trans women (who are not boys) are physically superior. Of course the story doesn’t say that:
“This match against the academy team was very informal and should not be a major cause for alarm. The U.S. surely wasn’t going all out, with the main goal being to get some minutes on the pitch, build chemistry when it comes to moving the ball around, improve defensive shape and get ready for Russia.
“The game will, however, serve as a great anecdote for the kids on the FC Dallas squad to tell their grandchildren about one day. It also speaks highly of the level of academy development MLS teams are doing these days.”
1) I disagree and believe that they are still men taking hormones. The hormones might prevent them from effectively competing against other men, but it will still place them stronger than women. The men taking hormones have infinitely more in common with other men than they do with women which they are not similar to either physically or socially.
The solution as far as competition is already starting to happen as the introduction of an Open category
https://www.bicycling.com/news/a44040578/british-cycling-banning-transgender-athletes-from-participation/
which I hope will spread rapidly to avoid the ridiculousness of allowing men to compete in women’s categories
https://www.foxnews.com/sports/male-powerlifter-breaks-womens-record-held-by-biological-male-protest-transgender-policies
(apologies for the fox link, not a whole lot of left leaning publications carried this story)
That story is about a male powerlifter who identified as a woman for one specific meet *in an act of protest* and beat the bench press record held by a transgender woman powerlifter. Showing once again that transgender women are not physically equivalent to men, thank you.
Did you bother to read anything I wrote? I mentioned that. It’d be polite to debate me with what I’ve actually written rather than what you want me to be writing.
You’re assuming the transgender woman powerlifter achieved her record because she is transgender, not because she trained harder or has more talent. Would you be happier if trans women competing with other women always lost?
There are plenty more examples of the female teams getting clobbered.
What is the best case you can make for having different divisions for women and men? That opinion peice undermines every argument I can think of.
To give young women an outlet for their energy where they will not be eclipsed constantly by young men. I do not know why people want to enforce a patriarchal system of might makes right from a young age. I acknowledge that boys and girls up to a certain age are very competitive with each other and it shouldn’t be a worry, but after that I would hope that as a society we would want women to have sports victories as well as men having sports victories to build confidence and provide life lessons for.
Regarding college admissions, athletic scholarships already privilege wealthy white students, especially at elite schools. It certainly helps if a young athlete has ample time and resources to practice sports instead of, say, working to support their family. Yet there’s no urgent public debate about college sports discriminating against poor kids.
https://www.theatlantic.com/education/archive/2018/10/college-sports-benefits-white-students/573688/
https://www.theconversation.com/amp/why-some-college-sports-are-often-out-of-reach-for-students-from-low-income-families-167334
Wow, that got off topic really quick. Are we discussing poverty levels or trans strength disparities?
I thought the topic was supposed to be “fairness”. If that’s the case, where’s the uproar over the wealth and class disparity in youth and collegiate sports?
I would be happy to have sports play no role at all in college admissions.
Once again I am in complete agreement with you. Sports in higher education that go past intramural events take away from society as a whole. So much time and money wasted focusing on college athletes.
But until that happy time when there are no more sports scholarships and those that want to attend a 4 year (or 2 year) school can, women need the chance to compete for them with other women.
Yeah, with NIL and the transfer portal, I kinda wish that colleges only had intramural and club sports; at least in the big ‘revenue’ sports, football and basketball.
Yeah…all those white college basketball players, and track athletes, and football players (2/3 at the FBS level)….I could go on
Lisa, now add up the harm to trans kids from all the harassment they get from folks speculating about things like this. The cost to kids in families that have to move to new communities or states to get their kids to a safer place.
Cis girls are not harmed by trans girls competing in sports. Cis girls are harmed by homophobia and transphobia, and by laws that would force all girls to prove their female-ness via genital inspection.
Trans kids are some of our most vulnerable and harassed kids. Look at suicide rates of trans and LGBTQ kids. That’s the harm that bigotry perpetuates.
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When I was growing up, half the women on my street didn’t have driver’s licenses. Husband’s drove. Women couldn’t get a credit card without a husband’s signature.
My junior high school wouldn’t let my best friend take the bicycle repair shop class because it was for boys only, home economics or sewing were for the girls.
Opportunities for girls in sports started to open up in the mid-seventies, but it was a battle. What I badly wanted for my 14th birthday was for Billie Jean King to beat Bobby Riggs.
Another friend of mine, a gifted athlete, wanted to play soccer in high school, but there was no girl’s team, so Michelle played on the boys team. (This was a big high school with 4,000 students.)
The college I went to had been an all-men’s school until a decade earlier, the number of women on campus hadn’t yet reached parity with men when I was there.
Women still earn 84 cents for every dollar a man earns, been that way for decades. There still hasn’t been a female president. Hundreds of thousands of rape kits sit untested in crime lab storage. One in four women have been victims of intimate partner violence.
The hard-won rights of women feel recent and fragile to me. Sports are a safe place for women and girls to find joy in their physical abilities and to compete and succeed.
Your experiences are valid and we should recognize and acknowledge the progress that has been made in gender equality (and the inequality that still exists). Women rights and trans rights are not mutually exclusive and treating trans people with respect does not erode the rights of women. With such a recent experience the second wave feminists faced, I would hope they recognize the same discrimination facing trans people today. However, we often see trans-exclusionary feminists that believe trans woman are not woman and shouldn’t be treated the same.
I beg you to approach this issue with an open mind Lisa. Don’t look for stats or science studies, that is a fools errand. Come at this with empathy and compassion.
Here’s the thing Daniel, I do have an open mind. And most people who know me would think I am empathetic and compassionate.
I disagree with you, but that doesn’t make me close-minded or lacking in compassion. I don‘t believe that trans-women are women. Biology says they are not. But I’ll call them “she” if they want.
The first time I encountered a man transitioning was in 1978. I thought it was really cool.
As far as stats and science, I brought the stats up in response to the other Daniel who wanted a “demonstrated advantage.” That requires some stats, and might not be possible to demonstrate depending on the size of the sample.
This is the root of this discussion. Gender is not determined by biology and it is crucial to recognize and respect their identity. What you said is incredibly disrespectful to trans women and invalidates individuals deeply felt sense of self.
I recommend not saying that out loud in Portland.
Sex is determined by biology.
And biological sex is not binary.
https://www.scientificamerican.com/article/sex-redefined-the-idea-of-2-sexes-is-overly-simplistic1/
Thank you for that article, Pierre, I’d been looking for something like that.
I was in the room at Salk when Simon LeVay presented his data that the hypothalamus of gay men differed anatomically from that of straight men (late 80s, maybe 1990). I don’t know if his research has held over the years, but at the time it immediately made international news, and was the first scientific evidence that being gay wasn’t a choice.
It was a huge deal and an important breakthrough for getting homosexuality accepted. You could hear a pin drop in that room.
You are missing the point of that article. Identification of “women” based on some set of traits is a social construct. There are many millions of people that you would almost certainly characterize as “women” despite the fact that they have both “male” and “female” traits or genetics. ~2% of the population is intersex and an even higher percentage has some level of mosaicism.
For example, model Hanne Gaby Odiele’s is an X,Y intersex woman with androgen insensitivity syndrome:
https://www.vogue.com/article/hanne-gaby-odiele-model-intersex-interview
Would you deny Hanne her gender? If not, then why would you deny a trans woman her gender?
Hi Pierre,
I’m not missing the point of the article. But I do distinguish between between genetically detectable intersex presentations and gender dysphoria, in which individuals clearly have vanilla XX or XY chromosomes (and no underlying inability to process estrogen or testosterone).
The intersex issues are tough. A better example than your model would be the South African track star Caster Semenya — https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Caster_Semenya. She has XY chromosomes but can’t catalyze testosterone. She was raised as a girl, understood herself to be a girl, and won Olympic gold medals as a woman.
I’ll let the various sports bodies decide how to regulate those cases. I think her story is heart-wrenching and requires the wisdom of Solomon to decide fairly.
Gender dysphoria is a different matter. Those individuals are clearly biologically male or female, but they have a strong aversion to their sex. Here is the DSM 5 entry:
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/books/NBK577212/table/pediat_transgender.T.dsm5_criteria_for_g/
Possibly there are biological underpinnings which have yet to be discovered. But Europe is walking back on the “Dutch Protocol” of hormones and surgery for young people:
https://www.theatlantic.com/health/archive/2023/04/gender-affirming-care-debate-europe-dutch-protocol/673890/
There are many concerns, but the one which jumped out at me was the increased percentage of girls seeking treatment, especially at puberty. The article doesn’t say anything about it, this is my own idea, but that corresponds to the years girls present with anorexia.
“I recommend not saying that out loud in Portland.“
Or what happens??
I have a hard time thinking you are offering her some heartfelt advice to keep her thoughts to herself.
I think you two are arguing over whether the word “woman” refers to socially constructed gender or biologically determined sex. It can be either, as determined by context, so you’re both right.
That “saying that aloud” should be met by an implied threat speaks to a deeper problem.
Trans women are women no matter the context. If you want to refer to the biologically determined sex of a trans woman, you can use the term “assigned male at birth”. It acknowledges that they are no longer a man, it wasn’t a choice, and that they have a new identity now.
That suggestion to not say it out loud is because in many social circles, it would be considered hate speech. And with as many trans people there are in Portland, you never know who will hear it and the psychological harm it can do to an individual. Many would consider it the equivalent of going up to a gay guy and saying “being gay is a choice”. It completely undermines and disrespects an individuals identity.
Therein lies the problem. There is nothing at all hateful about anything Lisa has written.
Even you acknowledge that there is such a thing as biologically determined sex. Whether that has anything to do with the word “man” or “woman” is one of definition, context, and semantics, not some irrefutable scientific fact.
I don’t think anyone here, and especially not Lisa, is saying that trans women are not real women in any non-biological sense.
I was a college athlete and then helped coach a college team. I have yet to speak to a former teammate or athlete that I’ve coached who isn’t in favor of allowing trans women to compete. Much of the hand wringing about this seems to be coming from male politicians and stage parents of athletic girls. The actual athletes are seemingly indifferent or supportive.
Women’s sports are made no less safe for women by including trans women in them. They are made no less joyous. Trans women have the same need for a “…safe place…to find joy in their physical abilities and to compete and succeed” that cis women do. They face many of the same barriers and hardships that cis women do. Trans women earn 60 cents for every dollar a typical worker earns. There has never been a trans President (as of 2021, there were a total of 77 trans, non-binary, or intersex people in elected positions total in the whole country. Trans women are victims of violent crime at a rate that is 3.5 times higher than cis women. 50% of trans women will be sexually assaulted in their lifetime. One third will be victimized by intimate partner violence.
Trans women are not a threat to cis women. Their liberation does not and need not come at the expense of cis women’s liberation, and their exclusion from opportunities granted to cis women does not strengthen the place of cis women in society.
Hi Will,
Thank you for the thoughtful response. I think we just disagree. I understand that trans- people are bullied and face barriers, and I think that is repugnant.
I’m not an athlete, so I don’t know anything about college sports. But my back neighbor mentioned that her son got an ice hockey scholarship to an east coast school, and that “he wasn’t even very good.” So I imagine it depends on the sport and the school.
I like the solution British Cycling came up with. That they spent nine-months reviewing the subject leads me to believe that the trans racing issue is controversial among athletes.
I can’t speak for cycling, but for track it really isn’t controversial amongst athletes, it’s ‘controversial’ for World Athletics. It’s a mistake to conflate a sports’ governing body with the athletes that they govern. We rarely see eye to eye.
Lisa, the hard-won rights of cis women are intrinsically linked to the rights of all folks who don’t conform to patriarchal norms of gender and sexuality. I grew up a feminist in the 80s and 90s (I’m not that young, and, as a college women’s studies major, do not need your lectures on the history of women’s rights) and it was clear to me as a girl and young woman that trans folks are fighting for us too. By defying societal norms of sex and gender, they are making space for all of us, including cis girls who kick ass in sports, to be our most authentic selves. When patriarchal norms won’t let gay men love gay men, or trans women live as their authentic selves, it’s also why they want cis girls in sewing and for cis women to be married to men without access to abortion or credit cards. It’s the same fight, whether it’s to be in a bicycle repair class or wear a dress without harassment. The fight is to control our own identities and bodies. I wish you’d spare a moment of concern and some compassion for the little kids who grow up being told that what they are is not who they know they are. These are real kids who need our love and respect too.
And, here’s the thing: you stepped into this fight! You are bickering back and forth and doubling down on this when you didn’t have to say a thing (and exactly like you scolded folks for doing!). You waded into the comments to deny trans women their womanhood. By refusing to acknowledge trans women as women, you align yourself with the transphobes and the bigots. You have some pretty ugly company! And, you didn’t have to say a word.
Your transphobia is important enough to you to bring to the comments section. I’m sorry for you, that you can’t widen your perspective on this issue and understand that trans folks aren’t a threat to you, but rather are part of a fight to broaden our understandings of gender and sex and make the world more accepting of all of us.
You spoke of harm. The arguments you make here aren’t doing anything to help cis girls in sports. You are causing further harm to all trans kids and cis kids who don’t fit into a narrow box of sex and gender.
I wasn’t lecturing anyone, just exposing myself by revealing my lived experience. I also haven’t called anybody a name or tried to stick a label on them.
It’s not a real financial harm. If someone is a good enough athlete that they’re going to be on scholarship, then the coaches will know exactly who they competed against and take that into account.
When this first came up in conversation my gut reaction was “well, surely a trans woman must have an advantage – in general people with XY chromosomes are able to build more muscle mass”.
When I really thought about it, however, I realized that was poor critical thinking on my part. There are so many confounding factors (including HRT, native talent and innate athletic ability) that I think any advantage (assuming there are any) will be lost in the noise.
I think the whole thing with the swimmer complaiing about a tie for 5th with a transgendered athlete is pretty telling – neither one of them was in the top 3 at the meet. If being trans gendered gave her opponent so much of an advantage, why wasn’t she first?
“any advantage (assuming there are any) will be lost in the noise.”
Does that apply to men as well? Why or why not?
“ You either think trans men are men and trans women are women or you don’t.”
I feel the urge to point out that you’re using a very *binary* way of thinking when it comes to gender. Not, you know, a *nonbinary* point of view, eh?
As for myself, I’m just glad that I’m not a ciswoman athlete so I don’t personally have to worry about what’s fair or not.
Money Saved, Money Earned: Harris Teeter is a high-end East Coast supermarket chain owned by Kroger’s, the same as who owns Fred Meyer and Quality Foods. They are notorious for not having bike racks.
It’s bonkers to me that the people running a city park are allowed to violate air and noise population laws.
I say this a a fan of motorsports (I was at the track for the electric car race this weekend), but the city leadership really needs to step up and hold PIR accountable.
I wonder if the candidates for the new North Portland city council district will be asked about this?
Food for thought: All motorsports (including electric) result in gratuitous pollution. Even if your battery charge came from solar power, wind power, or unicorn farts, your tires are still grinding themselves into microparticles that measurably contaminate the environment. And I doubt I need to point out: Racing wears tires down much more quickly than normal driving.
Enough with the ‘disgraced’ Lance Armstrong trope. By attaching that descriptive to him, JM, you betray your fear/unwillingness to debate the legitimate issue of trans women in women’s sports. You can do better.
I disagree Steve. I used “disgraced” because I believe that is an accurate and factual label for him. Regardless of what I might believe about him, he was definitely “disgraced” which means, “having fallen from favor or a position of power or honor; discredited.”
Your attempt to paint my use of that word as a way for me to avoid the debate about trans women is also wrong.
Talk to serious cyclists. Talk to former professional racers. I have worked beside, trained with, and been friends with many professionals, winners at Olympics, National Championships, competed at Tour de France, Giro d’Italia, etc etc. They all say the same thing ‘Everybody doped; Lance was just better at it AND he was a jerk’. I am so tired of the media deciding for me whether a person is telling the truth or not, is a good person or not. The mass media has decided that it is the arbiter of what is true and what is not; hence we get the ‘untrue’ or ‘lie’ in front of many statements by Republicans, Trump, et. al. I have never, and I mean, never, heard them judge a statement by Joe Biden or AOC or Kamala in that way…Does that mean they always tell the truth? Laughable…sorry, I got off on a tangent, but you are doing exactly the same thing…let the public, your readers make value judgements for themselves. I resent the media (you) trying to take away the agency of critical thinking from me. You will not succeed with me, but many will say to themselves ‘well, if JM says he is disgraced, then he must be’. Without context, your judgement just serves to stifle rational discussion.
ok steve, I think I understand better where you are coming from now.
But the fact remains, he’s a disgraced sports icon. That is not a matter of opinion. It is a matter of fact.
a disgraced sports icon of an even more thoroughly disgraced sport.
Positing the observation that Lance is a disgraced cyclist does not seem to have stifled rational discussion
News media publishing politicians’ lies without even hinting that they are lies is part of what led to the election of a certain *disgraced* former president. The whole “present both sides; we’ll let you decide” angle does a disservice to society. Truths can be objectively determined, and they are an obligatory part of any actual journalism.
Back to the original point, Mr. Maus provided the dictionary definition of “disgraced”–do you dispute that this applies objectively to a cyclist who had all of his TdF wins (honors) revoked?
Jonathan – steve has basically summed up the end point of the conversation by calling it a “legitimate issue of trans women in women’s sports.” As i commented above, this ‘conversation’ boils down to whether you think trans people are real. Would you in any other context say that trans women aren’t women? they are women but only not in sports? they are women but they mustn’t use the women’s bathroom? they are women but they can’t use women’s changing rooms? Do you see where I’m going with this? The legitimizing of that line of questioning has caused actual literal legal harm to trans people. Anti-trans people, TERFS, and the right wing have used bathroom bills and sports bills to basically wedge their way into a larger and terrifying plan to get rid of trans people altogether. That’s what’s at stake in this ‘conversation’.
I wish you would take this seriously, every time this comes up you stake a ‘middle of the road’ claim about this being a debate that’s worth having. What you’re doing is saying it’s a legitimate and worth-platforming position to take that trans people should not participate in competitive sports.
(i also find it interesting that many commenters assume this conversation only applies to trans women, because they care so much about women’s sports? but you don’t have to worry about cis men because trans men aren’t a threat?)
Hi YrSocialistFrend,
I do take this conversation seriously and I will share my feelings about it on my own terms without being pressured into it. Thanks for your feedback.
C’mon Jonathan, I‘m just a commenter pointing out that this is the nth story posted about trans people in sports that’s basically like “trans people? do they exist?”
it’s 2023 and this ‘conversation’ has been happening for many many years. i engaged with you because this is your platform, and i think this site offers a lot of value to the world of conversations around transportation. we are in a dangerous time and if you get defensive about my pointing out that there is real harm in legitimizing the position that jakeco969 has very helpfully laid out in these comments, then maybe consider some more self-reflection before sharing your feelings about this. or not! do whatever you want! i can’t tell you what to do.
Hi,
I think you are projecting a lot of stuff into my words that are not accurate or true. I’m not defensive at all. I’m saying that I am still trying to figure out how I want to talk about this issue on here and that I feel like it’s my right to decide that and to sit down and not center myself in the conversation until I want to.
I think there is harm in not allowing people to share thoughts about this issue. That does not mean I will let folks say whatever they want to say. And I don’t need to be educated about the dangers of certain conversations on marginalized groups of people like folks who are trans. If you know my record, I also do everything I can to reduce harms to people — while trying to foster some dialogue on important issues like this so that we can hear various opinions and hopefully get to a better place at the end.
If I’m getting that balance wrong, I have folks like you to tell me and I consider it and adjust the scale.
It’s a complicated process. But yeah, at some point you just have to trust that my intentions are good.
You gotta love those people who try tell you what you are saying and then fit it into a framework they imagined.
when you said you’d state your position on your own terms without being pressured, that seemed defensive. but that is neither here nor there.
it’s clear to me that you and bikeportland do not support trans people. your remarks make it crystal clear you really do not understand the harm you are causing or the dangers of these conversations to marginalized people. this comment thread has been incredibly illustrative on your views and i learned you have a TERF on staff. so that’s more than enough for me to disengage from this site.
I don’t want to bring harm to anyone. I’m trying to allow people to share ideas and learn from one another in a constructive way. If I have that balance off, I can try and correct. Thanks for your feedback.
Having people, especially staff, deny people’s identity is pretty off balance.
I don’t like how bikeportland is trying to sponsor “both sides of the debate” when one side is spewing literal hate speech. What if instead of trans people, jakeco969 said “gay people have a mental illness” or “all black people have a mental illness”. That kind of comment would never be allowed here and would seem ridiculous to let such bigotry to be allowed here all in the name of “sharing ideas”.
I’m not trying to “sponsor both sides of a debate”!
This started with one tiny little mention of Lance Armstrong.
I read Lisa’s comment as her expressing her belief about biology. She also says she’s fine calling a trans person a “she”…so that sounds to me like she is acknowledging someone’s identity.
And did anyone on this thread say that trans people have a mental illness? If they did I would delete it immediately and would ban that person from commenting.
They sure did!
–
jakeco969
9 hours ago [emphasis added]
https://bikeportland.org/2023/06/26/monday-roundup-bend-tragedy-lance-induced-demand-and-more-376500#comment-7499273
oof. I missed that one. Very sorry. It has been deleted.
Just catching up with this thread. Transphobia and sexism are long term and pervasive issues in the bicycling world broadly and in this community specifically. That the assistant editor is a TERF who opted to wade in and then continue to argue her bigoted, transphobic views perpetuates harm. She’s the one who told commenters a month or so back not to engage in back-and-forths in the comments, and yet this is an issue important enough to her that’s she violated her own commenting guidelines. That says a lot.
Hi joan,
Thanks for sharing your thoughts. Lisa and I have been in contact about this thread and this issue in general and we continue to talk about it. I appreciate your feedback.
Also, this continued attempt to normalize the word TERF as if it is not a slur is rather unfortunate. It may not be a slur for some who use the word but it is considered a slur by many and to continually, blatantly use it against Lisa is extremely troubling! Especially in view of the veiled threat at least one poster has made in this very conversation.
(my emphasis)
Comment of the week!
Trans Exclusionary Radical Feminist…..
I don’t know why the trans community felt the need to invent a term specifically attacking woman. It seems like the term exists to put women in their place which is very patriarchal. Since you used it can you expound on that a bit?
Anyone can be a feminist. If your view of feminism does not include trans women, then by definition you are exclusionary to trans.
It is not a way to put people in their place but more so to point out the oxymoronic belief that there should be gender equality (as long as they are not trans).
Feminism is to my understanding (and the computers)-
the advocacy of women’s rights on the basis of the equality of the sexes.
I agree. Anyone can advocate for gender equality.
I don’t get this part. If anyone can be a feminist, how can anyone be excluded?
Okay, so you want people to acknowledge that a man can become a woman and vice versa? If they don’t they are called a TERF?
Are you suggesting all TERFs are women? It sounds like that’s what you’re saying.
Fair enough and I was. I’ve never heard the term used against a male before, only women. An assumption I will do my best to overcome.
This is a bicycling blog. Lance Armstrong is a disgrace to cycling. Just ask Greg LeMond!
In his brief tweet introducing his discussions, Armstrong immediately brings up his disgrace/fall, saying that experience makes him “uniquely positioned….”:
“Have we really come to a time and place where spirited debate is not only frowned upon, but feared? Where people’s greatest concern is being fired, shamed or cancelled? As someone all too familiar with this phenomenon, I feel I’m uniquely positioned to have these conversations.”
So even Armstrong himself realizes his self-created downfall is a central part of his identity. He’s not a “cycling icon”, he’s (what Jonathan wrote) a “disgraced cycling icon”.
Not amongst pro cyclists, just amongst the public.
I must have missed the results of that pro cyclist opinion poll–where was it published?
Many interviews over the years.
You’ve heard of Omerta, no?
“he’s (what Jonathan wrote) a “disgraced cycling icon” ”
So… An icon of disgraced cycling?
That works too. Maybe even better.
Been to Bend lately? Ebikes zipping in and out of traffic, no signaling. Going way too fast. Not paying attention to stop signs or people in crosswalks. Worse than their car traffic nightmare. It’s a wonder more aren’t killed.
All that but replace bikes with giant trucks and SUVs and you would also be describing Bend.
PIR – The same maps that led (no pun intended) to the Bullseye Glass outcomes drew an undisputable bullseye on PIR as well, 10 years ago.
https://projects.oregonlive.com/air-pollution/heavy-metals/
Like Nick points out, a similar effort in regards to small aircraft is gaining a little ground after many decades. Like racecars, operating an aircraft is expensive as hell. People with the means to run aircraft as a hobby and people with the means to run racecars as a hobby are people with the means to apply meaningful leverage where governance decisions are made. For example, see also the non-negotiable CRC design constraints set by Pearson Airpark.
Outside the elite racing circuits, I’m not sure your stereotype of car racing being the domain of social elites holds. I’m not into racing anymore, but it seemed to be a pretty blue collar enterprise. Likewise, 100% of those I’ve known who were into civil aviation were solid middle class folk.
I posted my unequivocal opinion on leaded gas above, and that holds regardless of who participates in the sport.
The only reason that the subject of lead fuel usage came up is that PIR actually has a web page dedicated to the subject. On their main page look under About and you will find a link to the leaded fuel page. On the page you will find a consultants study and yearly reports on leaded race fuel sales broken out by event. Looking at the 2019 report (last year prior to pandemic) shows 4 events with leaded fuel sales over 100 gallons. The largest sales numbers are for the Vintage Car Races and the Rose Cup Races. Most of the people racing vintage cars are more grass roots racing not the elite (except the guys racing old Ferraris). PIR was the only race track in the USA to provide information on leaded gas. If the Guardian is so concerned about lead particulates in the air then set up sensors to measure a nearby neighborhood on a non-race day and then during the SVRA/Trans Am race (most gallons of leaded race fuel sold) and show us the actual results.
BikePortland…nice find on the TheGuardian article (as I missed that one)…regarding ” Poisonous fuel in Portland” its really past time for Portland Parks to get out of the racing business which now creates even more identified poison for surrounding communities (lead fuel emission residue plus heavy metals from tires and brake wear plus engine noise, that latter of which makes it even more difficult to enjoy the green open public spaces on the trails and parks near by. Perverse ain’t it?
Pay per mile will fail in Oregon once we try to make it equity-based.
It’s a bummer to see the victim blaming in the Bend story about the kid who died. I don’t know that intersection but the on ramps and turns on and off highways in Bend have really bad bike infrastructure. This kid was right-hooked, plain and simple. The helmet and their friend seem to be mostly irrelevant details.
“Teen tragedy: A fatal traffic collision that involved a 15-year-old on an e-bike in Bend has sparked a big discussion … ”
In journalism this is called ‘burying the lede’. In other words, the article went on for a while before mentioning that besides an e-bike the collision involved a motor vehicle. Only recently have motor vehicles been overtaken as the leading killers of youth, by guns. Guns were developed primarily to kill people while motor vehicles are supposedly primarily for transportation.
My ideas about the issue of people transitioning are definitely a work in progress. I have trans friends, neighbors, and least one close family member that I love. (People don’t always share everything about their lives immediately, it turns out.) Consequently I read, and re-read, the comments about trans people in sports and society with interest.
Maybe people without that deep interest moved on from this Monday Round-up because the articles about induced demand, including “The Big Lie” didn’t seem to catch much attention.
I appreciate Bike Portland as a forum for issues that sometimes only tangential to bikes or transportation but is there a way to branch a busy thread into its own post? Sometimes a thread gets heated in a way that leads to comments getting shut down and I understand that.