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.

What faff? All they have to do is change the word gender to biological sex in their policy.

Which other categories do you consider a faff? Should we not bother with age categories?

in fact let’s do away with all of the categories right? Too much of a faff. After all it’s just a fun run.

Give women equal rights or close down! Yeah, I can see how many on here are against womens rights. First rule of misogyny. Blaming women for men cheating and it closing down. Misogyny 101.

👏👏👏👏👏👏

It’s as though asking people to tick a box is too much to allow women the same fairness that men have at parkrun.

It’s so offensive.

No policing needed for age categories just clear box question
No policing needed to sex categories just clear box question

Sounds good to me - do away with sex, gender and age on the website that shows your result and just have your name and time.

The Mens Rights Activists are really working overtime on this thread. Did a Reddit call go out?

why bother showing everyone’s times on the website? Just get them send privately to each person or check them on your app

Everybody who disagrees with me is a MAN! Who's on the run from Reddit!
FFS ,😂

Nope, no listing of times on the website. That's what we're after. There is zero need for it. Time yourselves with your own watches. I saw something on twitter (X or whatever you want to call it) where a poster was saying 'why can't you take your own timings, you want parkrun to wipe your arse too?' I think that was a fair and pithy comment.

I didn't say that they are men...

You would lose half the runners overnight and then i expect that it would be hard to justify it.

What about those of us who don't have watches? Or can't afford a fancy ? We have to go get one just to time ourselves at Parkrun now?
See, nobody's happy whatever happens. Which you'd think those wanting to compete would go bog off to a competitive run and cc leave everyone else to it instead of demanding they change.

he "course records" have been removed

No they have not. As people have amply proven with screenshots. Even the guy who tried to kill someone over it, his records still stand.

What would you suggest the solution is then? As the current situation is not legal.

A watch costs what, one, two pounds? Do you not have a smartphone? Even a basic non-smartphone with a stopwatch? This is all bs.

We have sex categories . Easy.

if parkrun get alerted to the fact someone is in the correct category then they can change it as they would do if age is wrong. I would expect most people would truthfully declare and it is a tiny minority who would choose to lie.

But it's a fun run so it doesn't matter. We all have watches we can time ourselves on.

Well, then maybe that should happen then. Considering there is no money involved, it's not a charity or anything, who cares. If they were running for fitness or the fun of it, they wouldn't care. If half left, that proves it's competitive. They wouldn't be any loss anyway.

They were removed from the parkrun event websites years ago. They are still on the app, which until fairly recently was an unofficial product, basically a fan-made thing for tracking challenges and the like. The app was brought "in-house" in December I think. I presume in time they'll come off the app as well.

If women having fairness puts anyone off volunteering? Then that says more about them. And they're not the type of people who should be volunteering anyway.

Park Run isn't the sodding Olympics. It's not even a competition. And as a 'mid table' woman, I don't even bother looking at any of the other scores. I don't care. I run with a bunch of other middle aged women and the whole trans thing has never come up. I never even thought about it until I saw this thread.

If it's about fairness or women's safety, then yes it's important but changing a tickbox on a Park Run form won't change/achieve either of those things. And if it goes from changing a tickbox to actually policing it, that's the fun sucked out of one of the few things in life that's free, fun and inclusive.

People really don't. Every week I encounter first timers to parkrun who have never run before, never been to this kind of event. Parkrun isn't meant to be just for runners with sports watches!

Nope, as people have shown, they're still on the website.

Even if it were still on the app, it's unfair. Unfair is unfair, no matter what.

I just took them form the website and screen shot this morning

As keeps getting repeatedly ignored though - how is that going to be policed? Are you relying on other runners deciding whether or not someone else "looks womanly" enough?
Volunteers probably aren't going to want to, or be able to do all that.