I was beaten to third place in a running race by a trans woman

[Athleticpotential]

It's a very low key local running race, neither of us are usually contenders, but a combination of circumstances meant the field was such that we finished 3rd and 4th.

The prize is a bottle of cheap wine, it's not about that.

I know her to chat to at races and I like her. It's not common knowledge that she's trans, she enters races as a woman. She is very masculine to look at, but TBH, until recently I thought she was an unfortunate woman, I had no idea.

So in the scheme of things it doesn't matter, but it does....?

Should I "do" anything? What?

Out of interest if you're willing to share, in response to the it's so difficult comments, how would you easily address this to make competitive sport both fair and inclusive in the future?

Could you tell us why it is not fair and inclusive for all males of whatever gender to compete together ?

Wouldn't it be fair and inclusive to also have an 'open' category where any one can enter and then a female category? It has been suggested a few times on this thread if I remember correctly.

We're way past "micro-aggressions" here.

Aren’t we just.

I would be fuming OP and would be complaining to whoever appropriate. This isn't on and we shouldn't be rolling over

@haw

Well, either "female" and "open" categories. This is the only way in sports where you need to play against someone - trans women would generally have to play against men, save in social leagues where women have consented to mixed sex competition. This is fairer, given differences in strength and bone density.

Or separate "transwoman"/"trans man" categories - if there is no one declared in the race starters, then you don't have to award a prize. This is easy for individual sports - golf/running/swimming etc.

I don't think it is difficult to balance fairness and inclusion, if you are happy to start with the premise that trans women are not biological women but should have options to play sport.

And btw I think there should be options of mixed sex and single sex social leagues, so females have options

This really is the patriarchy in action, isn’t it? That’s the word we should be using (particularly when we are told we should just roll over and ‘be kind’)

If someone's passport says female, doesn't that mean they're eligible to race with women?

Some sports have that as a rule, or part of a rule, yes.

But given that the sex written on a passport or birth certificate can now be changed to not represent someone's sex, it's no longer useful as a proof of actual sex for something, like sport, that would/should require such proof.

So for women, a document saying "female" used to be useful as a proof of sex, but no longer.

For transwomen, a document saying "female" has never been a proof of sex, just a legal fiction, hence irrelevant to fair sport.

At the moment we have ended up with a Male category and an open one, but where most of the competitors in the open are at a distadvantage.

Thank you; I see.
So you mean a passport held by someone who was born female is just as meaningful(less) as a passport held by someone who was born male but is now legally female?
So we should/can only continue to rely on social convention/norms, as pps have mentioned, and assume that anyone who wasn't born female wouldn't enter a women's race?
But thinking about it, that's exactly what the problem is, isn't it; if a trans woman thinks and says they're a woman, they will enter a women's race. I don't know how organisers are meant to manage this.

, how would you easily address this to make competitive sport both fair and inclusive in the future?

The simplest solution by far is to make it clear than these are male and female categories, and when we call them for men and women, we're using those terms in the strictest sense of "male" and "female", not some gender thing.

And as such, transwomen race with men, and transmen race with women (if undoped with testosterone).

The only lack of inclusion here is self-imposed by transwomen insisting they have to compete in the female category because they're "women".

If anyone else aside from the transwomen themselves are actually trying to exclude transwomen from men's races, then they should be told to be more inclusive.

This also deals with all other non-binary and imaginary genders - they're included by their actual sex.

Now, if there are a bunch of people who for religious reasons feel unable to compete in sports where their sex is acknowledged, they can set up their own mixed-sex leagues, but the need of 50% of the population for sex-segregated sport outweigh the desires of the 0.2% of the population who can't admit their sex.

Just as we don't let boxers who didn't want to admit their weight into the weight category of their choice - such boxers have to set up their own mixed-weight events.

Are you sure this was an EAA event and not UKA? My (albeit brief) look indicates EAA runs and regulates big competitions, not fun runs.

UKA states "It is only if a trans female wishes to compete in
female or mixed sex athletic competitions (as defined in the UKA Policy) that it will be necessary to
ensure that there is no unfair advantage over opposing athletes."

@LidlMissSunshine
Wouldn't you love next time to say your pronoun is rottweiler and spend the meeting prowling around growling at her.

She sounds like a pretentious attention seeking little bint.

It doesn't matter one bit. It's not the olympics

It obviously did matter to OP - hence the thread. It's that this is not quite fair. As if a 12 year old ran in an under 10 race and won.

Why does only the Olympics matter?
Why do you think people take part in fun runs and other non-elite sport if they don't matter?
Do you think it's at all possible that this happening at one level might be part of a bigger picture?
What do you think (in relation to the question above) about e.g Lia Thomas or Laurel Hubbard?

🙄

Only Olympians are allowed to be competitive now? I’m still not over an unfair race I lost in primary school!

(Are men in low level sport allowed to be competitive? Asking because the ones I know care a lot about winning, even if it doesn’t matter at all in the grand scheme of earthly life. It’s about their personal pride.)

Are we allowed to post biscuits?

if it doesn't matter then the TW should have entered under the correct sex or declined their prize.

OP, you are not allowed to care because it is not the Olympics and how dare you want a fair competition.

So says a random poster on the internet.

Sorry, all women and girls below Olympic level .... user says you are not to complain as you are NOT in the Olympics.

On this issue, I think it's a matter of waiting. One off incidents aren't worth your time or sanity to complain over, you'll get nowhere. But in a few years time when people see every race with transwomen getting placed.. sunlight will be shone. It is less about putting up and shutting up... more about choosing our moment.

Actually, I disagree with waiting.

The momentum is there already to make a complaint. How many more Olympic women need to come out in disagreement with male inclusion? How much more research does there need to be?

Why should any other female lose a spot on a team, or a place, or any sport's opportunity when we already know the science, we already have athletes speaking out?

Speak now and start the dialogue. It may be that it takes time to get the rules and guidance changed for your sport.

Out of interest if you're willing to share, in response to the it's so difficult comments, how would you easily address this to make competitive sport both fair and inclusive in the future?

Can I turn the question back on you, haw? Out of interest, why do you think the issue of inclusion of a minority of male people in sport is a problem for female people to solve?

It’s not like there’s a dearth of other male people in positions of power and influence in the world of sport, just like in every other aspect of the world. It’s not like female people hold the balance of power overall; or have traditionally restricted the rights of male people and should therefore make efforts to redress that historical wrong.

There is no history whatsoever of female led orgs preventing male people from playing/competing in any way at all. Just lots and lots of examples in the opposite direction, of course.

Women - female people - have had to fight tooth and nail to be able to participate. The FA banned women from playing football in the 1920’s, thus destroying what was then a thriving culture of women’s football, with the consequence that once women were allowed to play again, the men’s game had grown out of all proportion and the women’s game is forever the poor relation.

There are so many areas of sport where women have been shut out. Women couldn’t run marathons, or any distance longer than 800m, till Katherine Switzer decided to run the Boston Marathon. Think of all the men only golf clubs, all the men only all sorts of things. Women’s sport is still underfunded and undervalued in so many ways compared to men’s sport, and girls are way more likely than boys to drop out of sport when they reach adolescence.

For anyone who’s interested, this is a great speech from Victoria Hood about the multiple challenges facing women cyclists:

And here is Katherine Switzer’s own account of her groundbreaking run of the Boston Marathon in 1967, and the violent reaction that provoked:
kathrineswitzer.com/1967-boston-marathon-the-real-story/

Why, when women have had to fight so hard to be able to compete at all, are we supposed to be responsible for coming up with a solution to the problem of male people who want to be seen as female people - but aren’t?

In light of the history of women’s sports, how can anyone justify this gradual erasure of actual women - adult human females - from our own category, our own records, our own achievements?

Every biologically male person on a women’s team has taken that place from a woman. Every biologically male person who finishes on the podium, however virtual or modest that podium may be, has taken that moment from a woman. Every biologically male person who sets a new “women’s record” has taken that record from a woman.

Enough. Let male people come up with a solution for the fair inclusion of all male people in male/open sports, and leave female people and female sports out of it altogether. This is not of our making and it’s not our responsibility to sort out. After all the crap women have been faced with across the generations, we absolutely have the right to protect our own interests, exclusively. Male people need to deal with it.

Are people really allowed to say things like “proper women that is” and “men pretending to be women” on this site and claim it’s NOT transphobia?
there is of course room for discussion about trans people competing in sex based sports categories, but the way it’s done so on this site is always just a thinly veiled hatred of trans women. It’s gross