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.

OK fine, but the point is that people can still say whatever they want on their forms and there's no policing it. So what are you suggesting? That people now have to show ID when signing up and then get struck off if they're found to have lied/are trans identified? If that's the route Park Run goes down, then it's going to lose some of its inclusive appeal.

Extraordinary, isn't it?

You could equally say "why publish times and those who place lowest" because that's what a list of times is. Feel free to filter it in the opposite direction.

No policing needed.

You don’t police age either but I don’t see parkrun stating that people can identify into age categories.

We're suggesting

A) categories based on sex

B) people not lying about their sex.

Blows my actual mind that people argue against this

Your point is what exactly?

I really don't understand what you want. Changing a tick box from gender to biological sex isn't going to change anything unless you start actually policing it.

Exactly. It stops being for everyone, and will put people off.

yes fastest to slowest

Or you can look slowest to fastest

Why is it ranked?
Why do they have record winners for the fastest

Why have they allowed 280 winners in the female category to be won by men?

People who don’t want to give any details and put a fake name can continue to do that. They just don’t get to go into an age or sex category.

anyone who cares, should declare truthfully.

nice and easy, everyone happy

They don't. We're actively encouraged not to focus too much on the first finishers. In our social media guidelines it says "Refer to the “First Finisher” not the “Winner”, but overall less emphasis should be placed on faster runners and more so on general participation."

Course records were taken off of event pages when all this started becoming a thing. I still know what ours is though and it's ridiculously quick! Well done that man/woman/unknown gender individual.

Seems like some would love to police it. Which would just end up hurting non trans people as well.
Everyone would suffer.

You'd be amazed at how - outside Mumsnet - most people never think about this issue at all. In fact - although I broadly agree with gender critical thinking - I normally avoid all 'gender critical' discussion because it ends up a self-righteous echo chamber, but got suckered into this one because I volunteer at Park Run and enjoy it.

No one should need to police it as it should be a given everyone is honest. What reason would people have to lie?

Why is it timed at all? Why is it 5km? Why is it in a park? Why isn't it completed from home and while sitting down?

I can ask pointless questions as well. We won't agree on anything here that's obvious but I'll just keep contributing lots of my time and energy to putting on events that 500-600 people seem to enjoy doing every week.

Well that's clearly nonsense. They can tick 'prefer not to say'

So if you’d read the thread, I get it’s long, but you’d understand what nearly 1000 people have voted in support of on this thread.

In life we don’t have to police things, if we have no speed restrictions at all then most people would drive over a safe speed. If we put rules in place most people will adhere to them.

I am sure most trans identifying men would adhere to the correct box if it says biological sex.

Run as a woman, wear what you want, be welcomed and supported but data is data. If you have mixed sex data call it what it is.

Your response has nothing to do with what I wrote.

But to be clear you don’t have to register to take part in Park Run. You can just show up. Registration is an option for people who want to track their time week on week. But it’s not mandatory. I was talking about it being impossible to police what category people run under. Your post is completely irrelevant in that regard.

Plenty of people care.

Many women object to just giving in to male demands without question

You wouldn't know they'd told the truth or not though. As I've said - nobody polices any of this. The volunteers don't check IDs!

If it's really just a bit of fun, they can stop publishing the times and announcing 'best' in categories.

But they don't want to do that, do they?

well why don’t they try and put sex categories and see what happens?

@Mangelwurzelfortea

You seem really reasonable, even if we don’t agree so I was wondering out of interest if you agree with the Olympics being sex based and cheek swab test for fairness to women.

I’m asking because most reasonable people have a cut off point for men in women’s single sex sport.

No need to be rude.

I still don't see how what you're suggesting would actually, materially change anything.

Not as accurate. Not everybody has a smart watch nor the money to buy one. Why are you whining though? You don’t even go to Park Run.