- Tuesday, November 26, 2024
By: Shubham Ghosh
IT seems bad times are not yet over for British prime minister Boris Johnson. After narrowly surviving a no-confidence vote scare in his own party, the Conservative leader has faced flak from a transgender cyclist.
Emily Bridges, a 21-year-old athlete from Wales made the headlines in March this year when she was stopped from competing against Olympic medallion Dame Laura Kenny in the British National Omnium Championship at the last moment by the Union Cycliste Internationale, the sport’s global governing body.
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The move snowballed into a major controversy and Johnson also made himself a party to it by saying that biological males should not be permitted in women’s sporting events.
He also opined that guardians should have “involvement at the very least” in decisions made by children to change their gender.
“That’s as far as my thinking has developed on this issue. If that puts me in conflict with some others, then we have got to work it all out. That doesn’t mean that I’m not immensely sympathetic to people who want to change gender, to transition. It’s vital that we give people the maximum possible love and support in making those decisions,” Johnson, 57, said, adding, “But these are complex issues and I don’t think they can be solved with one swift, easy piece of legislation. It takes a lot of thought to get this right.”
According to Bridges, Johnson’s stance on the issue created difficulties for her. Speaking to ITV News, she slammed the prime minister saying the latter’s take made her face immense threats, including those of physical violence, which made her “scared” to venture out.
She said the “most famous men in Britain” were harbouring “an opinion on something” they “doesn’t know anything about”.
“It’s really strange to see, probably the most famous man in Britain, talking about you and having an opinion on something he doesn’t know anything about. The response after that was as expected. I had threats of physical violence made against me, and by complete strangers online, and I’m scared a lot of the time about being who I am in public,” she said.
“People are always going to have an opinion about it. They’re entitled to hold an opinion about it – but there’s a way to go about voicing that opinion and threatening to kneecap me is not that way,” Bridges added.
According to a Daily Mail report, British Cycling recently suspended its trans policy and blocked athletes from changing their racing licence from male to female until they had reviewed the rules.
Bridges was on British Cycling’s senior academy in 2019 and came out as a transgender woman in October 2020. She claimed the organisation pulled its policy under public pressure.
