ILLUSTRATION FERNANDO SAFONT
I never wanted to be an “activist” for athletes’ rights. I just wanted to race my bike and see how far I could advance in the sport I love. So far, this has led to a UCI Masters Track Cycling World Championship in 2018. I still have Olympic aspirations. It’s certainly hard enough to achieve such lofty goals, but it’s a lot harder when people are actively doing everything they can to ban you from competing, even when you’re following every rule under the strictest of scrutiny. They still call me a “cheater” just for existing.
There are a lot of arguments being bandied about on whether it’s fair for trans women to compete in women’s sport. Some people who oppose trans women’s inclusion in sport are increasingly, begrudgingly, willing to grant that trans women are women in terms of gender, but remain steadfast in their denial that trans women are not female in terms of sex. The idea is that we segregate sport on the basis of sex, and so, begrudgingly, while trans women may be women, they are not female and thereby shouldn’t be permitted into female-only sports categories.