Rachel McKinnon made history last weekend in Los Angeles when she became the first trans woman to win the 2018 UCI Masters Track Cycling World Championships.
But instead of being toasted for her victory, the South Carolina gender studies professor — who hails from Canada and competed as a Canadian — has been inundated with hate and transphobia on Twitter.
In addition to her victory, McKinnon set a new world record Sunday during the women’s 34-39 sprint qualifying flying 200m, with a time of 0:00:11.92, according to Cycling News (which noted that McKinnon's record was later broken by another cyclist that weekend).
But after tweeting about her record and victory on Saturday, McKinnon was soon met with an avalanche of hate. The Advocate is not sharing the cruel tweets, many of which accused McKinnon of "being a man" and cheating. The UCI cycling championship adheres to the same rules on trans athletes as the International Olympic Committee, which requires trans women maintain low levels of testosterone for at least a year prior to competing.
For the past five days, McKinnon has been forced to defend herself.
Lots of transphobic bigots are responding to my world championship win saying that 'Next up, the paralympics.' Hey women, you realize that ALL of these people (many of them women) are comparing you to disabled people...right? Women = 'disabled men' they think. Wow. Offensive. pic.twitter.com/K5cbZgaOMc
— Dr. Rachel McKinnon (@rachelvmckinnon) October 14, 2018
The offensive part is not 'being compared to disabled people' because disabled people are contemptible. No, that's super ableist. But effectively saying that women are 'disabled men' is both deeply misogynistic *and* ableist. Double-whammy. Bigots are horrible people.
— Dr. Rachel McKinnon (@rachelvmckinnon) October 14, 2018
Funny how all these people are speaking for my competitors. 2nd place is a FRIEND and is extremely supportive of me. So you transphobic bigots are objectifying real humans who aren't bigoted like you. https://t.co/X3lOBivvNU
— Dr. Rachel McKinnon (@rachelvmckinnon) October 14, 2018
I train 15-20hrs/week, twice/day 5-6 days/week. Yeah...I just jumped off the couch and won. Transphobic bigots, y'all. https://t.co/hLMquSswKA
— Dr. Rachel McKinnon (@rachelvmckinnon) October 14, 2018
Well, no, I'm still forced to have an unhealthily low endogenous testosterone value...it's virtually undetectable it's so low...way below the average for women. https://t.co/yoSsTF6BI5
— Dr. Rachel McKinnon (@rachelvmckinnon) October 14, 2018
3rd place (Jennifer Wagner) claims it's unfair for me to compete. At Masters Worlds, she beat me in the 500m TT. She beat me in 6 of 7 races at the 2017 Intelligentsia Cup. In 2016 she beat me in all 3 Speed Week crits. She's won 11 of our 13 races
...and it's unfair? Excuse me?— Dr. Rachel McKinnon (@rachelvmckinnon) October 16, 2018
This is what the double-bind for trans women athletes looks like: when we win, it's because we're transgender and it's unfair; when we lose, no one notices (and it's because we're just not that good anyway). Even when it's the SAME racer. That's what transphobia looks like.
— Dr. Rachel McKinnon (@rachelvmckinnon) October 16, 2018
Umm, I trained 15 months *straight* to be able to go 100% and barely make this pass in the final 50m of a race. I train 15-20hrs per week, week in and week out, usually training twice/day. There was nothing easy about this. I barely won. https://t.co/OPCkxNa48X
— Dr. Rachel McKinnon (@rachelvmckinnon) October 17, 2018
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