Why is the parkrun decision wrong?

I do wish that all organisations would refer to the guidance published in September 2021 by the Sporting Bodies of England, Scotland and Wales and that these bodies would remind sporting organisations of their obligations under that guidance. Parkrun, Football, Hockey and whatever other sporting organisations who have not yet reflected this guidance in their communications do not have to make this up on their own, the guidance is abundantly clear:

1. All of the Sports Councils are committed to the inclusion of transgender people in sport and physical activity.
2. In keeping with the findings of this review, the goals of acceptance, social inclusion and physical activity may be best achieved outside of the sex binary in grassroots and domestic sport. The introduction of new and different models within sport offers an alternative option to meet the needs of people across all the strands of the Equality Act.
3. Categorisation within the sex binary is and remains the most useful and functional division relative to sporting performance.
4. This categorisation acknowledges the broad ranging and significant performance differences between the sexes. Hence, sports should retain sex categorisation, along with age and disability (and weight as appropriate) categories.
5. Evidence indicates it is fair and safe for transgender people to be included within the male category in most sports.
6. Competitive fairness cannot be reconciled with self-identification into the female category in gender- affected sport.

(If I can find this guidance, it is not beyond the capabilities of their organisations and all of the reporters commenting on this, to find it too!)

Yes she knows

it was a reply to the person who thought that the reporters were unable to find anyone who disagreed

as you rightly say its who you speak to (and who is afraid to speak as they will be called a bigot….or how you ask the question)

whatever they do they're screwed as there's always going to be someone moaning.

But isn't it funny who, when they moan, get Park Run jumping to their tune, and who gets groaned at for being a pain and moaning and just needs to shut up, suck it up, it's just a bit of fun?

Yet again, TQ political people have successfully fucked things up for everyone, and made something that many enjoyed less enjoyable because they wanted to be allowed to harm women and this to be ok. And they don't care, because managing to consider anyone else's interests or equality at any time never happens. Never appears. It's like there's no capacity for it.

People are noticing. And this is more people now who have directly experienced that when the TQ+ politics get involved, they get unfairly treated and things get worse for them. The TQ+ lobby don't appear to have the capacity either to realise there's a time limit on how long they can treat everyone like this before everyone loses patience.

They are still publishing results. With names and "gender" and age categories. Just not "records", fastest times. And they have removed the ability to search for parkrunners by name in the results.

Tell me again how this is about being "inclusive" and not about preventing women's rights activists gathering data on transwomen taking women's places and records.

..or they couldn't find anyone who was prepared to speak on camera about women's rights as everyone knows the punishment for this by now.

I haven't spoken to a single runner who thinks this decision is anything but grade A horseshit
That's not representative of all though, it's representative of who you have spoken to.
Others feel differently.
I think it's good in a way if they're not actually publishing results anymore and just sending them to you personally like someone said upthread (I've not been to parkrun for ages but do go)
That way they're sticking to the fact it's an all inclusive, fun event for everyone.
Seems whatever they do they're screwed as there's always going to be someone moaning.

Yes I know. But as long as this is set up as a zero sum game with one prize (womanhood), TRAs are able to gain support by claiming trans women are victims of prejudice about who can be a "woman".

We are stuck playing a game that they set up and it puts us on the back foot. All the arguments focus on who is a woman, why do women have/need women-only support, how much is reasonable for female people give up to accomodate / respect trans women, and so on, when they should point out that regardless of what trans women do or do not feel, and whether or not that thing should be considered "womanhood" or not, female people still exist and to be female in the body is something different to whatever it is that trans (and self-identfied cis-) women experience in the mind.

So we need to change the game. Stop accepting the zero sum framing that works so well for them. Instead offer a model that acknowledges both sex and gender, and it becomes far harder for TRAs to demand trans women be accomodated into single sex provissons and still look reasonable.

Understand, I'm not suggesting any of this because I think the TRAs will stop trying to erase all boundaries between female people and trans identifying males. I'm suggesting it because I think it will make it much harder for them to get political and social support for that zero sum position if there's an obvious and reasonable alternative.

And which ones made the editor's cut. Manufactured consent.

I haven't spoken to a single runner who thinks this decision is anything but grade A horseshit.

They went and interviewed park runners and couldn’t find any who thought there was an issue.

How do we know they couldn't find any runners who thought there was an issue? We only know the opinions of those they selected and who agreed to be filmed.

Inclusive of men. Wherever they want to be.

I watched sky news reporting on this earlier. They went and interviewed park runners and couldn’t find any who thought there was an issue. Everyone they interviewed said it’s just a fun get together and should be inclusive. The reporter said “a right wing think tank has been raising concerns”. Seemed odd that they were reporting it as a really divisive issue, but couldn’t find anyone actually involved with park run who thought there was a problem.

yes why do you think this ? I’m not particularly athletic but why should my daughters who are, accept the negative outcome- you are implying they are LESS important than a transwoman
@BiggerBoat1

@FlirtsWithRhinos

I'm not sure I understand your catagory thing but as far as I do... there's no way on earth that the transwomen would stay out of the female catagory. They aren't going to stop if we politely hand over "woman", they would be straight onto to trying to occupy "female" as well. This is evident in the discourse around these issues already. The point is to push boundaries.

The Make Space For Girls campaign group have some interesting information on their site relevant to this OP. Basically, where there's a public space for children it often gets taken over by boys - big games of football, dominating skate ramps, that sort of thing. Plus the fact that some aren't well lit enough, or don't feel safe in some way through thoughless design. So by teenage years many girls avoid them or just sit on the sidelines rather than hop on their bike too at the fancy new ramps and risk getting flattened by a larger boy on his bmx. They miss out on the exercise, fun, sense of achievement...

We need more opportunities for girls to be able to participate on a level field, not fewer. And we need them to see that where women and girls are treated unfairly it will be challenged.

Then there's the fact that women's opportunities to run are already limited by safety concerns. I'm old enough not to be self conscious like I was as as a teenager but I don't want to run after dark or in areas that aren't well frequented, because of fear of male violence. So it feels like one more thing that men with shitty behaviour are clipping my wings with.

@DuesToTheDirt

But why would you think that transwomen will self-exclude from the 'female runners' category?

I think the first step is to send the message about what is expected, in the good faith expectation that most people will do as they are being asked. To facilitate that ask, the categories do not impose sex over gender or vice versa - both belief systems are accomodated and one does not even have to choose one belief system.

Yes, some people may choose to break the rules and claim membership of a group to which they do not belong. But with the expectations clear, it also becomes clear that people so doing are cheating and if complaints are raised those timings can be removed.

More strategically, by explictly having a grouping for anyone who identifies as a woman and accepting trans women within in, it makes it very hard for trans women to claim they are being excluded and therefore removes the basis on which they might claim to need to be included in the female times.

Yes some trans women will still demand to be considered female (because of course they will, because for some trans women the whole "womanhood is not about your body it's about who you are inside" story was never what they actually believed, what they really believed was "women are the people with female bodies plus special males like me" ), but their case becomes much less persuasive to the casual Be Kind observer when they have a fully trans includive Woman category already, and therefore much easier to reject or protest.

Except I believe park run receives public funding doesn’t it?

Am I correct in saying that your "gender" and age grading is emailed to you rather than being on a results table online? Because that seems worse than the original setup. I thought they just got rid of all grading altogether?

"It's a free event run by volunteers"

Well kind of, but it also gets Sports England funding and HQ staff, where these idiotic and anti-woman decisions are being made, are paid staff.

As a regular volunteer I don't have any power so I don't see the criticism of parkrun as criticism of me and the other volunteers in any way.

@FlirtsWithRhinos I belive Parkrun works with everyone running together?

I guess this is part of the problem. Everyone runs together, and on the day no one knows how an individual is registered. They swipe their barcode and hand over a time token, and no one knows what it says on their registration details. Unless they are first, or a regular who is often in the first few, or a regular volunteer, no one will remember them and know that the man they saw coming in 25th is actually registered as a woman. If it were a women-only race, then a man, or a transwoman, would be obvious.

overlapping categories of "female runners", "runners identifying as women", "male runners", "runners identifying as men".

But why would you think that transwomen will self-exclude from the 'female runners' category?

I belive Parkrun works with everyone running together?

Seems like for once there would be a way to make everyone happy, and that is to publish overlapping categories of "female runners", "runners identifying as women", "male runners", "runners identifying as men".

So an agender female like me would just look at her ranking in Female Runners. Trans women and the female people who prefer a lower ranking to excluding trans women would care most about their ranking in "runners identifying as women" but might have a peek at how they ranked in "male runners" and "female runners" respectively. Trans men would care most about their ranking in "runners identifying as men" but maybe some would care about their female results as well. Male people other than trans women would likely be most interested in the male-only times, although to be fair most of the male times will probably be not much different to runners identifying as men.

Seems like a perfect opportunity for Parkrun to model real inclusion and acceptance - I wonder why they didn't.

chng.it/7DH7mr82GP

Petition to reinstate statistics

It's also about women's performance and achievements being valued less than men's, since women's results are disproportionately affected by changing single-sex categories to mixed-sex.

Following this logic, women should STFU about men in women’s category in athletics, Wimbledon, the Boat Race, women’s football , the Olympics etc or go and start their own version (I imagine it would be about 2 minutes before the TRAs demanded to participate then as well).

No equality for girls at school unless you pay to go. No equality in facilities provided by the council. Does that make sense to you?

What's really annoying is that Parkrun have received millions of pounds from Sport England with one of the specific aims being to encourage more women into exercise because of the greater barriers they face

Yet apparently its fine to take that and then then tell those women their achievements are worth less than men's rights to identify as women

Which means all these men are more easily able to access a large number of Parkrun events because of funding given to get women into sport. And now some of those men are happy to push women back out and Parkrun are letting them.