parkrun defending their position

[Funtime2]

I used to be a parkrunner and do not understand how parkrun can defend their position of allowing trans identfying males into the female category.

I read that 280 published race winners in the female category are actually men identifying as women. How is this fair to women? Some women don’t care about this but some women do, just as some men take it as a race and care about the rankings and some men don’t

The other option of course is they could stop the timing, stop recording winners and records?

AIBU to genuinely not understand why parkrun claim not to be a race when they time the runners, publish times by category, rank times and runners, and have record holders by category.

false equivalence.

Wanting a women’s category in sports is not ‘extreme’

You could just have independent verification against your passport . I have had to do it a few times now and take a few minutes. You only need to do if entering M/f. You can just go into the general group if you don’t want to do it. Nice and simple and nobody needs to police anyone on the day

I have been reading lots of comments about this on social media, and I feel quite fed up.
It seems that there is little support for the women’s category being fair.
Why is this not obvious? How do people not see the sexism?

Lots of people don’t have passports and you can change the sex on it anyway.

Nothing stopping women who feel strongly enough about it to set up their own verified leaderboard and submitting their official parkrun times on that though.

But that would involve actually doing something instead complaining.

While Park Run / men do nothing, presumably

Exactly. Why do women have to do stuff to get fairness when men are handed it on a plate. Is that what we are calling equality these days?

Even if the results aren’t published, it’s pretty easy for a man to tell if he’s come first by the fact no one is ahead of him. As a woman you have to wait for the results email to know your position.

Unfortunately I think there is a chance parkrun will respond by eliminating all the results, which for me and many others would just make it quite pointless.

Luckily for me I’m at the life stage where I have the time and money to enter races but many women don’t. God I really hope parkrun do the right thing. It’s a HUGE part of my life and the competition has been incredibly motivating for me.

I went from being the last female finisher at my first parkrun to becoming a bloody good runner. The first time I was first woman at parkrun was one of the best days of my life. Up there with my wedding day and giving birth to my kids. It’s lovely for all of you non-competitive runners who don’t care if you’re overtaken by a trans woman but some of us do care.

Regular parkrunner here. If there was a bloke in a wig in front of me claiming to be female I’d go to a different race. I cannot abide cheats.

@EyesOpening WI/GG are associations and they are also charities so they are subject to the rules for both, with the charities rules being more restrictive.

Looking just at associations:

You can have an association for women. Schedule 16(1) allows you to restrict membership to those who share the protected characteristic of female sex. You can also restrict membership further if you wish as long as you don’t discriminate against women with other protected characteristics. So for example you could have an association for women who live in a particular area, but you couldn’t have an association that excluded women with disabilities.

You can have an association for trans women. Schedule 16(1) allows you to restrict membership to those who share the protected characteristic of male sex. You can further restrict membership to those who are trans, excluding men who are not trans This is not discrimination under the Equality Act because not being trans is not a protected characteristic.

No justification is needed to set up these associations (unlike the setting up of charities). And there is nothing to say that associations can’t work together.

Does this have anything to do with the argument? Parkrun are taking public money while designating men as ‘female’, a word that purely relates to biological sex. It’s against the law to do so. Is that ok with you?

My brother was beaten by a man being pulled by a large dog tied to his waist last weekend when he came to visit. When I said surely that’s cheating (and the man / dogs PB is very questionable) he said nothing you can do as its not a race. Still annoying, but not as bad as losing to a man pretending to be a woman. Guess parkrun cannot police this though, as they don’t ask for proof of your sex.

No, I was responding to an earlier general point about groups.

I think Parkrun should publish results based on sex or publish results based on both sex and gender identity

pretty much everyone has some form of photo identification . Passports can be used but so can driving licenses. As part of that vetting process you could be asked if your id matches your birth sex . This is completely independent of park run so they will never know what you say. If you fail the check (for whatever reason- I failed it once and I have no idea why! Maybe I just looked far more haggard than my passport photo) then you simply go into the general pot. Lots of people won’t bother doing the ID check so won’t care if they go into general. If parkrun find you have lied to pass the check then thy can ban you from partaking.

But if males with a trans identity use women’s spaces, they become unisex anyway don’t they? And surely it would upset males with a trans identity also if more spaces were made unisex? Isn’t the whole reason they need to use women’s facilities the fact they are scared of being attacked in male spaces? So surely if a space was unisex, they would also suffer as the very males they are frightened of would also be using that space?

I'm not concerned here with what transwomen do or do not want. I'm just observing that there are unintended consequences to the legal challenges which will impact women and girls. I think far more women will be affected by the closure of WI groups than have ever been affected by trans women attending them. And the girl guides groups joining the scouts represents a really sad loss for girls.

And the people to blame for both those things is…. Men. Take it up with the males with a trans identity who decided to access those groups. Once again entitled men ruin it for women.

This is specifically against parkrun rules. They specify dogs on a hand held lead only to reduce the advantage of waist belts.

This guy definitely has a waist lead. His time should be disqualified yet there he is with a really fast time in 1st place. The dog is huge too.

It’s a huge advantage. They banned these a few years back.

This is a mental suggestion for a free park run.

Lots of people register on the fly just before a race so no we wouldn't be validating ID in this way.

I used to go every week.

There were people walking with their dogs and people trying to get their best time and people try to get through the line first.

See it’s a different run for everyone

How can anybody be cheating when it isn’t a competition which is the whole reason many do it.

The outcome of this is likely to be parkrun not publishing separate times for men and women.
So women will lose the chance to rank themselves against each other anyway.

Indeed, it's obvious this will happen. I agree that, even though it's just Parkrun, biological males should be running as males. But people are losing sight of the fact that it depends on volunteers to make it all work. If those volunteers are going to have to become the sex police and attend courses on the implemmentation of the Equalities Act, and if it's going to become a 'proper' race in all but name, then many of them aren't going to bother. So the alternative will be that Parkrun sack off sex categories altogether. I can't believe that's better than what we have now, imperfect though it may be.

Many of my female friends are regular Parkrunners and they talk about it very regularly at great length. Never once has this issue been mentioned. So it seems a bit baby/bathwater.

what would be wrong with someone registering on the fly just going in the general category if they haven’t had their sex validated? The sex categories are for people who care about their rankings - no one else seems to be bothered. It doesn’t stop people from partaking if they don’t want to go through the hassle of registering

You might want to open your mind, the vote on this thread shows not many people agree with you that it isn’t a competition for SOME runners.