“There is no universal human body, but a multiplicity of gendered, racialized, and sexualized living beings and organic tissue.” –Paul B. Preciado, Testo Junkie
"My gender does not belong to my family or to the state or to the pharmaceutical industry. My gender does not belong to feminism or the lesbian community or to queer theory...I don't recognize myself. Not when I'm on T, or when I'm not on T. I'm neither more nor less myself...It is fundamental not to recognize oneself."
What the controversy about trans women in professional sports says about modern cycling
CW : Transphobia, sexism, mentions of racism and eating disorders.
The United Kingdom, my friends, is a cesspool. Boris Johnson infamously exited 10 Downing Street on last July, humiliated by his own party. In between two scandals, Johnson did not care about raging inflation, rising energy prices, crisis in Northern Ireland, the collapse of the NHS, or kids getting fed at school. Instead, the former English PM opted to focus on a fringe issue : he declared that trans women, whom he deems to be "biological males", should not be allowed to compete in professional sports. One may wonder why BoJo cares so much about a group that makes up 1% of the total UK population (though the numbers might be slightly higher nowadays as the last survey on the matter goes back to 2018), and that can be so scarcely found in professional sports. But everything is possible in a country not-so-affectionately nicknamed “TERF Island”, in reference to their powerful trans-exclusionist radical feminist lobby, plaging every single major British political party at the detriment of more urgent social issues. It is sadly very likely that his replacement Liz Truss, who ignorantly declared that "a real woman has a cervix", will follow his way, on top of rightfully angering cis women who have undergone total hysterectomy for medical reasons.
Johnson’s senseless declarations came in last April, after 21 year-old cyclist Emily Bridges was deemed unfit to take part in competitive cycling races by both the UCI and British Cycling, despite having testosterone levels lower than the required 5g/mol. Hearing the latter institution coming at the “defense” of women’s sports while they allowed known sexist and racist Shane Sutton to operate as their coach for years sounds like peak hypocrisy. If transphobes made as much noise against bigoted or abusive coaches as they did for trans athletes, perhaps there would be less people like Sutton or Marc Braeke in women’s pelotons. Excluding trans athletes was never about protecting women’s sports, nor is it scientifically backed. As demonstrated in a 2021 study, testosterone does not improve grip strength or lean mass in cisgender women ; that role is taken over by estrogen and human growth hormone. Bridges herself had teamed up with a researcher from Longborough University to document her performance changes before and after starting hormone replacement therapy (HRT) : in two years, her values indicated a 13-16% drop in her power outputs across six-second, one-, five- and 20-minute durations. While she has retained her original bone structure, she has undoubtedly lost power, VO2 max, and many other components that make her competitive, including in women’s categories. Not to mention the alleviated risk of bone fracture, since testosterone, just like estrogen for cis women of reproductive age, acts like a protective agent for bone density. Yet, no legislation forbading cis women who use a contraceptive pill of taking part in competitive racing has ever been proposed. Thankfully, though, as cis men taking away the reproductive rights of people with uteruses has become a huge problem in the USA and Poland over the past decade. Because the issue isn’t really about trans women, but more about the ignorance of cis men on how categories of gender are policed.
In 2008, Spanish-French philosopher Paul B. Preciado published Testo Junkie, an arduous, 325-page long essay where he details his gender transition and its social, philosophical and physiological impacts. Inside, Preciado coined the term of "pharmacopornographic capitalism", describing the role played by the porn industry, the pharmaceutical industry and traditional gender roles in regulating people’s bodies, particularly their gender identity and their reproductive systems. The pharmacopornographic capitalism of cycling sounds like the subtitle of the biography of any 2000's rider. The porn, found in Thomas Dekker's stories of orgies with sex workers, the capitalism, as training methods became more tailored than ever for the sake of performance, excluding in the process riders with weakened mental states (which gets us to the tales of depression from Tyler Hamilton, and those of addiction from Frank Vanderbroucke and Marco Pantani), and of course, the pharmacology. At the time Testo Junkie was released, WADA’s biological passports weren’t officially implemented yet, though widely tested in professional cycling after the debacles of 2006 and 2007 Tour de France. Preciado still found time to comment on Floyd Landis’ defense after his positive testosterone sample :
Poor fools. It’s as if Pamela Anderson tried to pass off her 115E silicone prosthetics for natural breasts under the pretense that she is a biological woman.
He also mentioned that a the time of Landis’ test, four million of cisgender males in the United States were undergoing a testosterone-based medical treatment ; in 2019, these rates climbed to more than 5 million prescriptions, making of T the 126th most commonly prescribed medication in the United-States. While female-to-male transition methods were made more accessible in this 13-year span, it is not enough to explain this uptick in prescriptions, as trans people in general only make up one million of USA’s general population, and there’s fewer trans males & female-to-non-binary transgender people than there is trans women. That makes of cisgender men the biggest receivers of hormone replacement therapy. They are notably treated for hypogonadism, erectile dysfunction, or simply because “they were not producing enough testosterone”. As mentioned earlier, low-bone density in cis men is associated to unsufficent testosterone levels. That means that not all biological males have an higher bone density than cis women's. Equally, some cis women have naturally bigger bone density than other women, and even some cisgender men. Testosterone supplement therapy is only pathologized in two instances : for trans men, where it is seen, as Preciado describes, as a way of mutilating a "pure" female body through hair and muscle growth, and in sports, where using testosterone is considered as cheating, whether the gender of the user. The idea that trans men are "cheating" the female condition through medical and social transition is a common TERF diatribe ; it is therefore interesting to find this idea of cheating attributed to cis men athletes. Testosterone is considered with the same contempt as any Class-A drug. It makes people aggressive, smelly, hairy, inherently prone to hurt women. Sounds a lot like mediatic tales of people committing violent crimes under the influence of depressant drugs, isn't it? The demonisation of testosterone is a core value of transmisogyny. It's the argument used by transphobes to demine the identities of trans women and AMAB non-binary people, after all. Trans women are evil because their endocrine systems secrete testosterone. Trans men are becoming evil traitors to the “woman race” because they are using testosterone. Wait until they learn that cisgender women also produce T naturally!
Preciado could have much to say about the biological passports. Who decides which rates are acceptable, which amount of testosterone makes you an unsuspicious man or woman. A 2014 study 16,5% of surveyed male athletes had low testosterone levels, whereas 13,7% of surveyed women athletes had high levels with complete overlap between the sexes. The biological passport’s endocrine profiles are therefore not a convincing way to draw a line between the sexes. DNA tests would not work either, as 2% of the world’s population is intersex, having chromosomes that don’t match their official gender. Keep in mind that there's more intersex people in the world than there are twins, or redheads.
Biological passports can’t prove an athlete’s gender. Their values serve as a complement to the athlete’s physical appearance. If the crusade against “abnormal” hormone levels was truly about fairness, then Tadej Pogacar would have never been allowed to race because his VO2 max is higher than his counterparts. Michael Phelps should be stripped of all of his medals because his low levels of lactic acid allows him to recover faster than his opponents. Katie Ledecky should be banned from entering a swimming pool because she’s taller than her… Oh wait. That’s the argument that has been used against trans swimmer Lia Thomas. And the same that was used against cis, but hyperandrogenetic, athlete Caster Semenya. But I guess a tall, white, cis woman is not that suspicious, unless she comes from a country that is at odds with the United States like Russia. The Icarus documentary and the Russian athlete ban at the two last olympics come across as ironic considering the United States’ recent doping history. As if Balco, or Alberto Salazar had never existed, and Armstrong's Oprah confession was not even ten years ago. Throughout history, “Fairness” has been instrumentalized against athletes of color, or who do not hail from a Western country. Now, it’s also getting weaponized against gender non-conforming people.
Speaking of subverting gender norms, the aesthetics of cycling are particularly interesting. The sport's most celebrated heroes are glabrous, worryingly thin, cherubish-looking men who wear flashy Lycra jerseys. My gay mates would call them twinks, basically. No amount of homophobic banter off-stage or children before the age of 25 could make up for these looks (sorry Vingegaard!). Coincidentally, some of the past decade’s pop culture icons, from Tom Holland to Valentin Madouas’ brunette doppelgänger Timothée Chalamet, completely fit the description of a twink, despite being overwhelmingly straight. At an age where masculinity is redefined, the twink’s cuteness has a reassuring quality. Yet, in a cycling context, his characteristic appearance becomes somewhat of a mass destruction weapon. Thanks to his pocket size, Caleb Ewan can sneak between his opponent’s sprint trains. Esteban Chaves and Miguel Angel Lopez may not be taller than 165 centimeters, yet they remain a force to be reckoned with once the road rises (as you notice here, the “cycling twink”, unlike his gay counterpart, is not associated with whiteness). Even Tadej Pogacar could be considered as a twink due to his youthful, somewhat androgynous looks. Men’s sports usually celebrate synthetic inflated muscles and taller frames, a prime example being rugby, where only pillars are allowed to be of "average" size (180cms, an average size, really?). Cycling is the counterpoint. Even though most sprinters and rouleurs have that “90s action movie star” look, sprinters aren’t as celebrated as they used to be three decades ago, while climbers, general classification riders and stage hunters are undoubtedly the sport’s most celebrated stars. At its core, cycling celebrates queer bodies, in the unusual and marginal sense of the word “queer”. After all, in its early days, cycling was a sport picked up by working class men and unruly women. The sport’s first global star was a Black man, Major Taylor. The legendary Alfonsina Morini Strada won 36 races against cisgender men, and was even allowed to take part in the men’s Giro in 1924 after the organisators mistook her for a man thanks to her tomboyish attitude.
The issue, though, is about women’s sports. Ah, women’s cycling, such an heteronormative place! Shanaze Reade, Judith Arndt, Ina-Yoko Teutenberg, Tayler Wiles, Georgia Simmerling, Giorgia Bronzini. All medal-collectors. All lesbians. The phenomenon is in no way recent as Alice Temple, UK’s first-ever women’s BMX champion, and Petra Rossner, gold medal at the 1992 Summer Olympics 3 km pursuit track cycling event, are also openly gay. Trans women are already present, such as Natalie Van Gogh, who was cherished by her Bingoal Casino–Chevalmeire teammates before retiring unbothered last year. A late-comer to the sport, as Van Gogh underwent sex-reassignement surgery in 2005, at a time where the vast majority of her teammates hadn’t started puberty yet, and who had likely been taking HRT from earlier than this date.
Back on the conversation of lesbian inclusion and erasure. During a MLA conference about her book The Straight Thought in 1978, French theorist Monique Wittig concluded that “Lesbians aren’t women, they’re lesbians”. An opinion that remains controversial and discussed to this date, often misinterpreted as lesbophobic due to the ongoing masculinization of lesbians in popular consciousness. What Wittig explained throughout her essay is that the category of “woman” was created by heterosexual men and only makes sense in their worldview. As a prerogative, all women must center men in their relationship (which also explains the disproportionate rates of domestic and sexual violence in bisexual women, but I digress). This centering of the cishet male thought also explains why transgender lesbians were refused gender-affirming care until the late 1970s, while straight trans women like Christine Morgensen had been allowed to medically transition two decades prior. As for their posture in sports, lesbians are tolerated in the “female” category because their birth certificates and ID cards classify them as such, and becaus their sexual characters matches with the binary “pussy-XX-chromosome” model implemented by male-dominated institutions. Otherwise, lesbians and straight women do not perform their gender the same way. That also explains why a huge amount of athletes recently banned from competition due to hyperandrogenism are lesbians, like Caster Semenya and Dutee Chand ; since the latter are simply tolerated in the women categories, they face more media and institutional scrutiny. Add the fact that they’re women of color and are not Westerners, and you get the sour Cocktail of Dope Suspicion.
Gender checks do not protect women. Gender checks undanger lesbian and bisexual women. Gender checks endanger women of color. It reinforces a landscape of fear and suspicion that has already pushed so many talented LGBTQ figures out of the sports. Remember that 68% of the LGBTQ youth abstain from sports. While the study did not survey on any possible factors, gender checks and a lack of action against casual homophobic & transphobic remarks might be plausible explainations. The same people who constantly whine about trans lesbians and trans men causing the “extinction of lesbians” are supporting measures that drive a younger generation of lesbians away from sports. Erasure happens when cisgender and heterosexual people ignore our struggles from the moment we don’t conform enough to their ideal of a feminine, upper-class white woman. Women’s sports are not the Blonde, white, straight, lithe and powerless Garden of Eden that their “defenders” are painting. Women’s sports are much more complex, much more diverse. Thankfully, all is not lost for queer women in sports. As a fellow sapphic, I can assure you that we’re fighting back to get our voices heard against this very loud minority who claims to speak for us.
With all of these theories in mind, pushing gender conformity in women’s cycling is nonsensical. Cycling was never meant to be understood by the elites and their uptight notions of gender, morality, and good taste. Women’s cycling in particular has been a celebration of diversity since its beginnings. Keeping these aesthetic values and this rich queer history in mind, no higher institution can regulate who can ride and who cannot, as these categories are not only arbitrary, flawed and biased, but also go against the philosophy of cycling. Furthermore, this issue is obviously used as a distraction to not tackle systemic bigotry in women’s cycling, reflected in the sexual harrasment scandals, the racism, the lower pays and undefunded races.
As final words, I’ll pay tribute to the man who inspired Preciado’s essay, Guillaume Dustan. A long-time AIDS sufferer, the openly gay writer was a victim of a media witch-hunt after he declared he conducted in barebacking practices on national television, a position that earned him ire from Act-Up Paris as well as from the uptight heterosexual Parisian elite. Dustan quit writing shortly afterwards and died in late 2005, following an excessive intake of antidepressants and interaction with his tritherapy meds. Looking back at the controversy after Dustan’s passing, Act-Up Paris’ then director Didier Lestran admitted that he had “spent more energy at fighting against [his] friends rather than [his] enemies.” That’s what we can learn from the controversy : trans athletes are not the enemies of sports. Cycling can only gain from more inclusion, as it will force institutions to strip off once for all their racist and heteronormative biases of what a “real woman” and a “real man” is, and return to its roots, where marginalized people could become heroes of a nation by triumphing over nature’s biggest obstacles. Trans cyclists are our friends, as they love cycling as much as we do.
