I found out today that Kelly Holmes, an inspiration of mine, believes that trans women are males and shouldn’t be allowed to compete. She agrees with this completely transphobic thread. “they would be my words exactly”
https://threadreaderapp.com/thread/1076276617041854464.html
I feel quite devastated by this.
I wrote :
“England is transphobic hell. Fellow athletes suggesting we are cheats without caring to look into any evidence. This is shocking from this person. A failure of empathy and a failure to look into the truth.”
“I am running the London Marathon this year for the LGBT foundation I currently compete against males, and will never win a race, but when I can I will run as female, I will take courage from people like Rosa Parks, I’m not going to give up my seat Just because I am trans. Shame on you all.“
I don’t really know how to handle this. It seems like every day or week the temperature is increasing another notch in hell. This is a problem pretty specific to England. I don’t really know how I am managing to be honest. Why am I still here? I want to do the London Marathon.
I linked the thread in question above. On twitter I also pointed towards the scientific studies around trans people participating in sports. Something surprisingly few (read none) are willing to do before using their platform to tell the world we are cheaters.
The links are here.
https://www.caaws.ca/e/wp-content/uploads/2013/02/Devries_lit_review2.pdf
https://sports.vice.com/en_uk/article/vv95a4/what-actually-happens-when-a-trans-athlete-transitions
That’s not exhaustive obviously.
Sans Shoelaces 
On the contrary I think things are much better today than they have been in previous generations. We still have a long way to go but it’s important to take heart from the good things and the progress we have made. I think it’s important to reach out to people like that, explain to them their mistakes and reassure them that we aren’t here to oppress women or anything and that there are facts and details they aren’t considering and are possibly unaware of. I think most people are sympathetic in nature but just don’t understand, and it’s up to us to help them understand, and to celebrate the progress we have made!
Keep your spirits up, we’re making progress one generation at a time. You climb mountains one step at a time!
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