I have never lived my truth and I’m not sure how. Perhaps it starts with telling everyone.” This the last line of Tory MP Jamie Wallis’s brave and sadly shocking statement to the public this week, in which he spoke movingly of his gender dysphoria and how he had felt this way since he was a child. “I’m trans. Or to be more accurate, I want to be.” He added he had been blackmailed and outed to his father, and then later also raped on a hook-up that went horrifically wrong. “Since then, things have taken a tumble. I am not OK.”
There was an immediate outpouring of support, including from people in Government. Let’s hope this starts his journey out of the psychological trauma he has described. His honesty briefly shone a light on the profound impact of gender dysphoria, both physical and mental, that can last for decades. His voice is what we need to hear more of because the debate on trans issues is filled with noisy toxicity. Accounts like this bring us back to the human.
On the same day Wallis was receiving 32,000 likes on his tweet — and in a week when people celebrated Trans Visibility Day — a late intervention from Union Cycliste Internationale (UCI) stopped Britain’s Emily Bridges, a trans cyclist, entering the National Omnium Championships. She had been due to compete as a woman for the first time against Dame Laura Kenny, the five-time Olympic champion. The participation of the 21-year-old, who had passed British Cycling compliance on testosterone levels, had been heralded as the “death of female sport”. A poisonous edge of panic entered the debate and the UCI acted as the row gathered momentum.
Two years ago, when Bridges first wrote about her transition and desire to keep riding, she offered herself up for research into the effect that a medical transition has on athletic performance. Like Wallis, Welsh-born Bridges described being crippled by self-doubt and gender dysphoria, which ultimately led to depression. And while Bridges says her transition has made her much happier, the critical opprobrium she attracted must be extremely challenging. There was no outpouring of sympathy for the cyclist on Wednesday.
In the past weeks we’ve heard that trans athletes are a threat to female sport, even though we are 20 years on from a change in International Olympic Committee rules to allow transgender athletes to compete. The Bridges furore was preceded by global outrage at the American trans swimmer Lia Thomas winning a major college race (she also lost two others), the first trans champion in National Collegiate history.
A photograph of Thomas on the top step of the podium made her appear imposingly tall with three other competitors posing below, as if cowering. The Olympic silver medallist Erica Sullivan tried to explain that the image distorted the truth, that she warmly congratulated Lia in other photographs. That didn’t stop this one going viral. How many people had their views shaped by that single image?
In international rugby, trans women are banned on safety grounds, even though there aren’t any competing at international level. Both in swimming and now in cycling, regulators are looking to tighten the rules against trans participation further, requiring three years of testosterone suppression.
Research by the Sports Council Equality Group led them to issue new guidance in January, “that testosterone suppression is unlikely to guarantee fairness”. What does guarantee it, no one is clear. Much attention is also paid to body parts — hips, length of femur. But the attributes of mental strength, often discussed as key to performance, are ignored. How strong do trans athletes feel mentally in the face of such opposition? Or every day in the face of societal oppression? Others like Sharron Davies writing in the Times this week compared transgender competitors to the cheating dopers she once faced. This is a rank and dangerous conflation of situations.
The current debate is tainted with prejudice and hysteria. There are few trans women competing at a senior level. But as they gain visibility in society, so fears grow. Just as new uses of pronouns are being equated to erasing women, outrage now is voiced by men who never cared about women’s equality before.
Tomorrow Bridges won’t compete in her first race living her “truth” and it’s increasingly likely she never will. We couldn’t allow her just one competition. She might have easily lost. But hey, at least female sport is saved from the hoard of conquering trans people coming over that hill. And meanwhile we are firmly sticking to our truths …
