Emily Bridges and the ever-present trolls.
I like Emily Bridges. She is smart, tough, and a fellow athlete, though on a much higher level than me. As part of my research I have dug into the media coverage of her, and it is interesting to see the evolution from trans woman coming out in cycling to the current bete noire of exclusionary feminism. Her Vogue article is simply stunning, a fierce rebuttal to all those who deny her womanhood and chosen career. Yet, Twitter and the news media trolls crept out from under their bridges in droves to harangue and hound anyone who defended her.
This anti-trans women in sport is nothing new. Rene Richards in the late 1970s had to take tennis authorities to court to be allowed to play. Lia Thomas, Laural Hubbard, and Veronica Ivy are some of the more recent public trans female athletes, all of who have been pilloried, derided, and abused by people claiming to care about women’s sports. While this issue is complex and no two trans women are the same, the reality is that trolls do not care for the subtly or nuance involved, they claim that trans women are men invading women’s sport and that the only way that trans women can win a medal is by transitioning and cheating a woman out of hers.
Of course this is false, because who transitions other than for personal reasons? No trans woman goes through years of HRT, jumping through psychiatric and sports governing bodies hoops just to have the off-chance of maybe winning a medal. Trans women are damning if they win, and treated as pathetic is they lose. There is no middle ground. Hubbard came last at the Olympics, Thomas lost regularly to women in the pool, and Bridges was not given the chance to compete. No trans woman has been dominant in their sport, they have been towards the top end of average, but still within the expected range. Anne Angers is an exception in powerlifting, which is where the nuance and complexity comes in.
Emily’s case is exceptional because she was already an exceptional athlete. Every exclusionary feminist commentator rode in on their white horses to defend women’s sports, often using pictures of Emily pre-transition to show how male she actually was. It was Astro turfed false concern for women’s sports because they saw what they wanted to see, not the reality of Emily’s personal experiences. Trans women get called narcissistic for simply wanting to be themselves, to do the activities that women take for granted, yet when they comply with whatever rules are set over them they are still demonised. It is never enough, the trolls will always want more flesh.
Being a trans woman is always a balance between how you want to live your life and how others project their conception of gender onto you. You are damned if you try to assimilate into normative gender roles, and condemned for being ugly and a male facsimile of womanhood if you tack your own course into womanhood. Emily’s outfit in the Vogue suit featured trousers and a nice top, suiting her personal tastes and styles, feminine without screaming femme. Yet, all the trolls care about is that is her trans history, not the woman she is today.
I defend her because she has every right to play within the rules set down at the time she transitioned. The knee-jerk reaction by World Cycling harms more than just trans women, it sets the stage for controlling ever more women’s bodies. Emily played by the rules, did her time in purgatory, yet was cast aside because the right wing media hounded the governing body. If the rules can be changed because of one person, what is to stop further exclusion of women when they do not fit an idealised type?
The point remains that sport is never fair, all sport is sport because someone has to win and many others potentially lose, especially in individual sports. Funding, access, parental willingness to engage, age when you started, and coaching all play a significant role in how well people perform at a given sport, as does natural talent and willingness to push yourself in training. Genetics are important, but getting good and staying good takes a whole lot more. Those who criticize Emily forget this; her biology is just one part of a more complex whole, and in denying her the opportunity to even be on the starting line they are denying her the chance to put into action all the training and opportunities she has been given. Emily Bridges is a woman, and deserves to compete alongside other women in the sport she has dedicated her whole life to.
