Trans Park Run Deletion

[TheUterati]

Poorly played, MN, very poorly played.

The perspective that when male athletes identify as female athletes and on the basis of that are eligible to compete against women, they are cheating is an absolutely valid one that is deserving of discussion.

Points in its favour are:

1. The context of cheating in sports as a whole - those self-harming activities that athletes willingly participate in to give themselves a competitive edge.
2. The evidence that mediocre male athletes who identify as female manage to then carve out glittering careers where those would not be available to them had they continued to compete as males.

It is an absolutely valid perspective.

Accusations of cheating against specific individuals may well be against talk guidelines, in the absence of supporting evidence, but those individual posts can be deleted and a friendly warning from MNHQ posted on the thread.

Males identifying as females and competing in female sports is a key issue in GRA, whether it occurs at the 'social, fun' end of things or at at Olympic level. To silence this debate is an appallingly heavy-handed.

Baroque

I just wanted to reiterate that no-one said anything about badges, except the transperson who imagined/made up the fact that some transphobe had said people should wear sex badges

It's always worth pointing out what people haven't said. Just to be clear to anyone watching

Yes, yes I understand. I meant the original comment came out of nowhere.

@Dozer - Having slept on it and thought about everything that has been said and discussed over the thread, I think I agree with this.

If I started to feel that I was improving very quickly in my times week-on-week and that my endurance was increasing in line with how I USED to be able to run (I mentioned in my first post that I was running 12km, six times a week in around an hour) then I would use some sort of 'assisted' designator whilst still giving female on registration forms.

I know someone is going to ask 'but where do you draw the line? When would you start doing it?'

She here is my answer based on what I have read about differences in performance between a natal male and natal female (non medicated and otherwise healthy).

If the supposed male performance advantage is 10% then I would start to use the assisted category once hitting the top 25% of runners. I think that this more than compensates for any residual benefit that I might have retained even beyond my diminished muscle mass and a cardio-vascular system being limited by reduced oxygen saturation.

I know that still won't satisfy many of you.. But that is my line in the sand if I had to put one down.

Happy to discuss it though?

Baroque

I see . Not really nowhere though. Very much inserted for effect, I think

NatLuc. Did you watch the Linda Bellos vid?

"Ok, I'll say things to try to placate these bloody awkward women. If I can placate them and they begin to warm to me then I can get my violin out again and make them feel sorry for me. Once I've done that I can appeal to them to see that allowing me into their spaces is fine. I will have won 'cos women are inherently stupid".

Not sure how many dobber marks on the Bingo card that post achieved, quiet a few I think.

No one is saying that Lucy can’t join park run.

What is being said is where do we draw the line. Is it ok if lucy played football at a senior level and joined a woman’s team? Is it ok That the youth hosteling association has decided to categorise accommodation /dormitories on a gender basis rather than sex? Where do we draw the line about what is a woman?

There have been posts saying she should not be doing it in the way she is doing it. Please do not pretend otherwise. Saying is unethical for some partipants is a statement of exclusion.

Because the speed of a participant relative to others is wholly irrelevant. It's not a competition, and it doesn't matter if a runner is fast/slow/average in relation to the others, nor whether they are at their home run or are touristing. People have a single entry in the system, so it would update all their results each time updated.

The only way to get what pp asks for, is for certain runners to be barred from taking a time based on who else shows up that day. That is unfair, exclusionary, and directly against Parkrun's purpose of providing a timed event to all who want to participate and who show up with their barcode. Telling people that they can't fully participate sometimes is a form of ban.

But I am interested in the lostics of this. You have about seven hundred people turning up at ten to nine for a nine o'clock start. About one hundred is those are unknown first timers or tourists. You are Run Director. You have to decide whether this is a field of participants in which certain people should not take times, and (because there's no chance an individual runner could work it out). you have to announce it in the briefing It can't be sorted out at the end, because if things go wrong at the funnel it messes up the time of every single participant behind, and adding inaccurate times for possibly hundreds of people doesn't seem to be the aim here.

Genuine question - how would you do it?

Or would you change the IT? If so what functionality or published data would you add/remove?

Youth hostelling have done that? Off course they have.

Just to add to the risk free confidence that women can indulge in when travelling alone all over the world :D

There have been posts saying she should not be doing it in the way she is doing it. Please do not pretend otherwise. Saying is unethical for some partipants is a statement of exclusion.

No one is pretending otherwise for heavens sake, it's all written in this thread for all to see. People are saying TW should not participate in the woman's timings/placings as it skews the results. I can't see why it's so difficult to run in a trans section or none binary section. Appropriating the women is not on!

"There have been posts saying she should not be doing it in the way she is doing it. Please do not pretend otherwise. "

This is totally different to saying that they should not run at all.

Who is gaslighting who? You are asking posters to defend positions they have never taken. It's really really annoying.

Transgender guests are welcome to use the accommodation and facilities which match their gender identity.

www.yha.org.uk/staying-yha/accessibility

Ok. Just had a look you can stay in youth hostel on own from 16 by the looks of it.

yes, I suppose it could be done like that (trans section)

Is there a model for that which could be followed?

Otherwise, it would mean that everyone lost their %ages (as you would want each section's results to be processed in the same way), and all those who like to see if they are 'good for age' miss out, as do all those who currently get a shout out for good effort. I would not like to see that change. Have there been any consultations within Parkrun about that?

Have there been any consultations within Parkrun about that?

Well it won't have been done by TW that's for sure. TW want, nay demand to enter everything women have to validate their feelz.

"Who is gaslighting who? You are asking posters to defend positions they have never taken. It's really really annoying."

Pot, kettle, colour check!

I do not think you have understood my post about how putting unworkable conditions is a ban. (like saying 'yes, you can join the golf club, no-one's banning these members, but they can't count their strokes, even though stroke play is the whole reason the club was set up' or 'I never said I wanted to ban private schools, don't put words in my mouth. I just want to strip them of charitable status' and it doesn't matter how many times it is pointed out that means forced closure and amounts to the identical thing, they just refuse to see it is the same thing.)

I’m not sure where all the stuff about RDs deciding on the day or making announcements comes from? I’m not suggesting parkrun decides, I’m suggesting the honourable thing to do is for the individual parkrunner to mark the run as ‘with assistance’.

Lots of aspects of parkrun run on an honour system - my home run is a 2 lap course, when I first started, I was running more than twice as slow as the speed merchants. I could have run through the funnel after one lap and zoomed up the rankings; no one would have stopped me or made announcements. I could put down the wrong age on my profile and zoom up the age grades; I doubt anyone would notice.

Trans women have physiological advantages over natal women (heart/lungs) and disadvantages (bones vs muscle mass). It is possible, though mathematically unlikely, that these effects EXACTLY cancel out. So the more likely scenarios are either (1) there is an advantage to being a transwoman; in which case, sorting the result as ‘F’ pushes a natal woman behind a place down the rankings compared with her biological peers whereas putting F (assisted) leaves the natal woman’s place unaffected; or (2) there is a net disadvantage to being a transwoman, in which case putting F pushes the natal woman behind a place higher than she should be.

Personally, unless 100% sure, I think the honourable thing to do would be to err on the side of advantaging others rather than disadvantaging them. Then again, that may be my female socialisation talking I suppose.

Jeezo, who takes the 'rankings' so seriously in a non competitive event. Who cares about slight advantages. I am taller than most, should I mark that as assisted. Are my longer legs an advantage? Should runners of African decent mark themselves as assisted? We are all unique and have our own advantages / diasadvantages, but we are not all competing at parkrun so the rankings mean very little. You might as well race people walking in the street.

Lichtie Why should POC mark themselves as assisted. Using people of colour to make your point is vile and disgusting.

Lichtie - bonkers, isn't it Not sure what people aren't grasping it isn't competitive. Go to one that is if you care that much instead of huffing about parkrun. I'm a fatty non competitive parkrunner, maybe I "mess up' the stats too for the fast serious it's competitive because I say so types for having the cheek to walk round sometimes.

Are there really people who think if you tell someone they are doing something incorrectly that you are actually telling them they should not do it at all? Or is that just a rhetorical technique to accuse people of being exclusionary and selfish?
Does this sort of thing have flashing lights and sirens attached for other people the way it does for me? Maybe it is just me.

@thebewilderness I think we need your misogyny rules on this thread.

It’s not a non competitive event.

This isn’t the same as the single sex spaces issue. The space is for everyone, the issue is fairness in the competitive element. So it’s more like sports issues.

I think your reasoning seems quite fair NatLuc.

A small number of transwomen in the womens public stats won’t make much difference statistically. The fairness issue IMO would be if transwomen placed in the higher rankings.

"My voice matters in exactly the same way as anyone else's, so some don't think Ada should be there, and some do."

No-one has said that TW should not be there. Now this has been pointed out, you are saying that you meant something else.

Maybe try to be clearer in your posts if you don't want them misread - a stack of posters read your post exactly the same as I did i.e. understanding it to mean what it said.