Pride Month this year ends with one of the more ironic examples of transphobia in sports I’ve seen so far. The embarrassing hot take came courtesy of Lance Armstrong, who decided to jump into the “debate” about whether trans women belong in women’s sports.
On Saturday, he tweeted a video of him heading to speak with Caitlyn Jenner, a deeply conservative, wealthy trans woman who has repeatedly claimed that it’s unfair for trans women to compete in some women’s sports. (Jenner herself plays in golf tournaments within the women’s category, claiming that sport is somehow different.)
In his initial tweet, Armstrong gave a master class in the “just asking questions” charade so often used to cloak bigotry and bad intentions. The disgraced cyclist wrote: “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.”
He followed this up with more musings, culminating in a tweet asking, “Is there not a world in which one can be supportive of the transgender community and curious about the fairness of Trans athletes in sport yet not be labeled a transphobe or a bigot as we ask questions? Do we yet know the answers? And do we even want to know the answers?”
How do I put this delicately? Please, sit down the hell down. You are literally the last person on the planet, let alone within cycling, to publicly question the “fairness” of performance advantages, real or imagined.
I’ll happily answer Armstrong’s “questions.” But first, he wasn’t “cancelled.” And while he was fired, and certainly shamed, those were consequences. He is likely going to go down in history as the most prolifically doped athlete ever. He professionalized doping within cycling. He lost every one of his seven Tour de France titles and was banned from the sport for life. He did this to himself and has admitted as much.
(Armstrong, notably, was famous for allegedly trying to undermine the careers of — that is, cancel — fellow riders, from Filippo Simeoni to Frankie Andreu, among countless others.)
Armstrong also acts as if he’s the first to ask these kinds of questions. Of course, in reality, many people with far more integrity and actually relevant expertise have been debating this issue for years. No, being banned for doping with performance-enhancing drugs doesn’t mean you know a thing about trans women’s physiology or the level of hate we have to put up with.
Being banned for doping with performance-enhancing drugs doesn’t mean you know a thing about trans women’s physiology or the level of hate we have to put up with.
The International Olympic Committee and international sport federations have been grappling with inclusion policies for at least 20 years.
Honestly, I’m really tired of repeating myself. People keep telling me that the topic of including trans and/or intersex women in women’s sport is “complicated.”
Are trans women really women? If you think they are, then there’s no real debate here.
If you think they aren’t, then there’s likely nothing I can say that will change your mind. It’s a little like arguing with a flat-Earther: If someone is convinced that the Earth is flat, then they will likely find any reason, no matter how irrational, to hold on to that belief, even in the face of overwhelming evidence.
And speaking of evidence, people who oppose trans women’s inclusion in women’s sports often claim that these athletes have an unfair performance advantage. But as I’ve noted repeatedly, there are no sport-specific studies comparing cis and trans women athletes (and certainly none with a control group, which is a necessity for scientific validity). This is why the International Olympic Committee released its most progressive policy recommendations for trans inclusion, for which I was a consultant, in 2021.
Trans women are women. Trans women are female. Our sport’s governing body (cycling’s Union Cycliste Internationale, the one that banned Armstrong for life) says I’m female. My U.S. and Canadian identification documents say I’m female, including my birth certificate. My medical records all list me as female. So officials in sports, government and medicine all consider me, a trans woman, to be female. The people who disagree are just wrong.
And this brings us to Armstrong’s point about supporting the trans community while effectively asking whether trans women are real women. Moreover, he seems to compare his extensively documented cheating to a trans woman’s just existing. These are not comparable.
These questions demonstrably harm trans women, because they cast trans women as “other,” at best.
These sorts of questions demonstrably harm trans women, because they cast trans women as “other,” at best. At worst, they can feed into the irrational fearfulness and suspicion that form the foundation of a lot of transphobia in America and, indeed, the world over. This is especially true if you are asking these “questions” on a platform like Twitter, which has increasingly become a hotbed of bigotry and intolerance. (Elon Musk just declared the words “cis” and “cisgender” to be slurs, which is the second dumbest thing I read this week, after Lance’s tweets.)
So no, you can’t fully support trans women and think that we don’t belong in women’s sport.
Martina Navratilova effectively called me a cheater for being a trans woman and following all the UCI rules — and passing all my drugs tests — en route to my Masters Track Cycling World Championships.
World champion jerseys in cycling are known as the “rainbow stripes,” and anyone who has won one is allowed to wear the stripes on the sleeve and collar of their cycling jerseys for life. They’re a badge of honor. It’s interesting that even though Armstrong has been banned from sanctioned racing, he still wears the distinctive colored bands from his 1993 World Championship win. (That’s one win that wasn’t stripped.) He clearly cares about the rainbow stripes.
So from one rainbow stripes wearer to another: Stay in your lane, Lance. Leave the rule-abiding trans women alone. I still have all my titles. You’re the one who had the unfair advantage.