On BlueSky,<\/a> Councillor Heijltjes said, \u201cLike many others, I am disappointed and angry about the decision by Cycling UK to change the eligibility criteria for Women in Cycling 2025 to exclude trans women.<\/p>\n “Trans women are women\ud83c\udff3\ufe0f\u200d\u26a7\ufe0f”\u00a0<\/p>\n I am a little late to this, but I have also requested my name and face to be removed from @cyclinguk.bsky.social publicity due to the decision to remove trans women from their awards. Trans women are women, gender is on a spectrum (and I did a genetics degree), and cycling is for everyone. \ud83c\udff3\ufe0f\u200d\u26a7\ufe0f\ud83d\udeb2\u2764\ufe0f<\/p>\n [image or embed]<\/a><\/p>\n \u2014 Cllr Emily Kerr \ud83d\udc9a (@emilykerr36.bsky.social<\/a>) 7 November 2025 at 13:42<\/a><\/p>\n The announcement has led to several women who were nominated or selected for the award to publicly declined or withdrawn their names in protest of this decision.<\/p>\n Other members of Cycling UK have admitted to cancelling their memberships.\u00a0\u00a0<\/p>\n Fredfelt.bsky.social commented on Cllr Kerr\u2019s post: \u201cI\u2019ve just cancelled my membership. I understand that the reason may have been based in their seeking to comply with a dubious ruling, but I\u2019d expect better from this organisation.\u201d\u00a0<\/p>\n Cllr Kerr responded: \u201cSo my honest guess is the legal advice is probably sound, cos that\u2019s what the Supreme Court ruled.\u00a0<\/p>\n \u201cHowever, I would have liked to see more imagination in response: cancelling the awards for 2025 or delaying them and coming up with a different format to stay inclusive.<\/p>\n Cycling UK said they \u201creceived legal advice that very clearly says that for our awards to comply with the law,” transgender or non-binary cyclists could not be included in the 2025.\u00a0<\/p>\n The Supreme Court ruling, delivered earlier this year, found that the word \u2018sex\u2019, in the Equality Act refers to \u2018biological\u2019 sex only.\u00a0<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Councillor for Oxford City, Emily Kerr, and Councillor for Lambridge, Bath and Northeast Somerset, Saskia Heijltjes, have announced…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":271440,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[569],"tags":[64,63,784,85],"class_list":{"0":"post-271439","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-cycling","8":"tag-au","9":"tag-australia","10":"tag-cycling","11":"tag-sports"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/271439","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=271439"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/271439\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/271440"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=271439"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=271439"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=271439"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}![\"100](\"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-content\/uploads\/2025\/11\/100-women-cycling-cycling-uk.png\" "\\"100")
100 Women in Cycling (Cycling UK) (credit: road.cc)<\/p>\n