Parkrun comments giving me the rage

I do need to add another flawed and weak argument that we have seen many times across the threads now. And that is :

If the changes are made, then those male people and their allies will protest. This needs to be considered by any person advocating that a person or organisation follows the law and sets policy to protect female single sex provisions.

So how come it wasn’t complicated to replace sex with gender, but it’s horribly complicated to reverse it?

I suspect you're being sarcastic, but I think that's literally true.

Totaly exposes the whole trans "thing" and how much satisfaction is there for a man beating women in a fun run? I can understand why they want to do it in a paid sport but in a fun run? No satisfaction in that. I doubt they feel happy when the results come through.

@Pingponghavoc So men have a competitive event where their identity is prioritised, women get to have a go

That's it in a nutshell.

Of course it is. People want the correct position, they don't want a wrong position either way. Of course you don't always get that in parkrun, but 🤷‍♂️.

We're very close to deciding that lying about their sex actually disadvantages trans identifying men more than anyone.

They are probably doing is all a favour by insisting that they are female.

BabyGrooverBug
I'll try to make this my last post on this topic. I've said everything I've got to say several times.

I think I might just leave that sitting here. Without comment.

parkrun to register by sex

Glibly saying i want parkrun to register by sex is the very defintion of leaving out any detail of parkrun results boards and how they want it run. Which is what I said.

Eg: So they do that. Undoubtedly morally the right thing to do.

So will that get everyone off park runs back? No it won't. The other side will complain and the drama will continue.

You can't lie about your gender, it means nothing. So now you've just given people a thing they can lie about or get wrong. What do you do if someone runs under the wrong sex? Police it or not police it? Either would be a nightmare.

They need to think it through and explain why it will solve all the problems for parkrun. I don't think they can. I think the only way park run can make this go away is to get rid of gender positions to everyone's loss.

I'll try to make this my last post on this topic. I've said everything I've got to say several times.

Apparently it is just as bad that male people will not have accurate ranking because they might think they are doing better than they are.

While I agree it is important that all runners should have some degree of trust in the results, it is not symmetrical. But apparently, it is just another thing that women have to consider.

Starting to think you are just a bit stupid now. Or desperate not to comprehend the asymmetry in the situation.

There is nothing for men to suck up.

Being “bumped up” a place isn’t the same as being bumped down, that’s not how races work.

"I disagree with Policy Exchange rightwingers (and those helping to spread their prejudice), but they are welcome to run alongside me at parkrun. They might just get out of their echo chamber long enough to meet the human beings they are so keen to write off as nothing more than an ideology to be disparaged. I can’t promise they won’t get a worse finish time though. Hate slows you down."

I think that this letter, which I doubt is the letter that Backtolurk was talking about, is rather indicative of the emotional reasoning, emotionally manipulative and demonising tactics that some people rely on to defend their support of allowing female sports categories to be accessed by male people.

What about the men?

I'm proposing men suck it up, just like the women. The problem is identical for both and the solution will be worse than the problem as it has been with the other six features that were unfair, and therefore removed.

But I’ve seen quite a few posters saying they want parkrun to register by sex. That is it. This will make it fairer to women. It’s easy. They say that quite clearly and in small words so everyone can understand unless they have reading comprehension problems.

i men if someone is going to lie about what category they should be in, that’s on them isn’t it. You’ll always get cheaters. But it should be made clear this is cheating and discouraged.

Add to that:

Hysterical
identity politics
And what about the men.

Ooh… hysterical now is it? Why?

Because they all left out any detail of parkrun results boards and how they want it run.

You consider this a relevant and useful contribution to how to run a fun, I don't:

"I disagree with Policy Exchange rightwingers (and those helping to spread their prejudice), but they are welcome to run alongside me at parkrun. They might just get out of their echo chamber long enough to meet the human beings they are so keen to write off as nothing more than an ideology to be disparaged. I can’t promise they won’t get a worse finish time though. Hate slows you down."

It's funny how one learns to recognise a posting style in one-thread newbies, even though the names change regularly.

Ooh… hysterical now is it? Why? Because women want fairness? Those pesky women wanting fairness eh? They should just suck it up right abd let the men do what they want.

It is the same, and that's a terrible analogy.

It really doesn't, it's just a bunch of people having a hysterical identity politics argument. All of them studiously avoid talking about the mechanics of running park run results boards which is what actually matters here.

We've already lost six cool features. The 7th and 8th that will go are now obvious. If two groups can't agree what "fair" is the only option is to stop that thing.

Spoiling other people's passtimes by making a massive fuss about how unfair they are is frustrating in the extreme. I can imagine a bunch of smug people were standing by a parkrun in 2024 shouting "We got course records removed so it's much fairer now, you should all be grateful to us!" If you want to make parkrun better, volunteer, don't csmpaign to get features removed.

Its not really the same. I'm male and a closer equivalent would be if a small % of male runners had the option to have a 500m head start which didn't show up on the results pages.
(And I dont think other male runners would accept the "its not a race" platitudes if that were allowed to impact them)

Gosh… if only male people understood that sex matters and that they cannot change sex and that gender is irrelevant to sporting performance so did the respectful thing and registered in either their correct sex category or prefer not to say.

Now we have to be concerned by the false positive impact on male runners. While simultaneously understanding that ranking is not important, yet it is and local ranking is most important of all.

...being knocked up the placing is just as bad. If you get your highest ever placing and it's false it can be impossible to ever get a "real" placement "PB". Happens a lot with PBs, a mistake gives you a false but unattainable PB so you're stuck with it. In general I'd far rather my place was falsely lowered than raised. (Unless there was prize money!)

....and does it really matter. In an ideal world we want placings to be correct but in parkrun that's not possible, I'm sure if you thought men suffer more you wouldn't say "oh that's OK then" so your fundamental issue is lack of rigor means placings can be wrong, it doesn't matter who for.

That was a good letter. Thanks for the heads up.

You understand the lack of symmetry?

A man is far less likely to be knocked down the placing by a woman, than a woman by a man?

Also, given that far more men participate in the event than women, there will be more trans identifying men than trans identifying women in the incorrect category.

This letter in the Guardian sums it up quite nicely.

https://www.theguardian.com/lifeandstyle/2024/feb/15/parkrun-trans-athletes-and-fairness-to-women