Man claiming to be female wins women’s world cycling race, accuses critics of ‘transphobia’
In a development that some have decried as a harbinger of the death of women’s sports, biological male Rachel McKinnon won a gold medal this weekend at the Masters Track Cycling World Championships.
The Canadian-born McKinnon, who is also a philosophy professor on the faculty at South Carolina’s College of Charleston, first won the women’s sprint 35-39 age bracket last year, and won a gold medal again this weekend while setting a new best time, Cycling Weekly reported. He also won a silver medal in the 500-meter time trial earlier in the week.
“Way too many people to thank,” McKinnon wrote on Instagram. “Thank you especially to the dozens of fans cheering your heads off, and I'm glad to have met a new friend Kirsten (Herup Sovang), who took bronze.” He declared in a follow-up that this year’s jersey, medals, and record “mean a whole lot more to me than my first.”
In another pair of posts, McKinnon highlighted photos of the three medalists posing for photos, in which Sovang puts her arm around him but silver medalist Dawn Orwick held her left arm behind her back while smiling and waving politely. McKinnon accused Orwick of “bad sportsmanship,” claimed he “had hoped for better from her,” and teased that he has “a LOT more to say about this long mess of a week and how much transphobia was just EVERYWHERE.”
McKinnon’s previous victory was controversial at the time, and this year’s repeat is the latest in a series of controversies over “transgender” biological males participating in athletic events meant for women, which critics say undermines competition and ignores biological differences between the sexes in order to appear politically correct and appease pro-LGBT activists.
Among his critics this year was former women’s cycling champion Victoria Hood, who said “the science is there and it says that it is unfair. The male body, which has been through male puberty, still retains its advantage That doesn’t go away. I have sympathy for them. They have a right to do sport but not a right to go into any category they want.”
McKinnon responded to critics generally by tweeting that his body “doesn't produce testosterone anymore” and “hasn't for nearly a decade,” and to Hood specifically with a statement accusing her of “irrational fear of trans women,” which “is the dictionary definition of transphobia” and “has no place in sport.”
But testosterone production is not the only source of different physical abilities between men and women. In June, the Journal of Medical Ethics published a paper by researchers in New Zealand finding that “healthy young men (do) not lose significant muscle mass (or power) when their circulating testosterone levels were reduced to (below International Olympic Committee guidelines) for 20 weeks,” and “indirect effects of testosterone” on factors such as bone structure, lung volume, and heart size “will not be altered by hormone therapy”; therefore “the advantage to transwomen (men) afforded by the (International Olympic Committee) guidelines is an intolerable unfairness.”
Such findings are consistent with those of organizations like USA Powerlifting, which contends that “men naturally have a larger bone structure, higher bone density, stronger connective tissue and higher muscle density than women. These traits, even with reduced levels of testosterone, do not go away. While MTF (male-to-female) may be weaker and less muscle than they once were, the biological benefits have given them at birth still remain over (sic) of a female.”
McKinnon’s Twitter profile indicates that he also dabbles in some of transgender activism’s most extreme propositions, including the idea that natural “genital preferences” are “transphobic.”
