Park run email today - "Living as myself"

[wantmorenow]

blog.parkrun.com/uk/2022/07/27/living-as-myself/

Today of all days after Allison's victory!

Another form asking us to choose a gender or prefer not to say when I just want the word sex. Or non-believer in gender identity woo.

Who do we email to put our protected beliefs to?

How does this affect you?

Means I have to tick a box describing my "gender" when my belief in sex not gender is a protected belief and WORIADS. It's discriminatory perhaps?

www.judiciary.uk/wp-content/uploads/2022/07/Forstater-JR-AG.pdf

If they really understood inclusivity, they would include on their form boxes for sex instead of (or at least as well as) gender. Everyone has a sex. Not everyone believes in gender identity.

Oh dear that's laughable.

I don’t do park runs, are they competitive and placed by sex or is it more of a community spirit free for all type thing?

Sorry should have said this was an email I received today into my hotmail account from Parkrun

It's like being asked to choose 'Catholic or CofE' as the only choices under a compulsory 'religion' question isn't it? My employer does this, on every survey. It makes me really uncomfortable having to choose an answer when none are right.

Results are published for the public and categorised by "gender" and age. I'm not competitive but it is highly competitive for some.

@GrannyAchingsShepherdsHut put perfectly. Like the SPAM sketch when you don't like or want SPAM

Don't be daft, please. Or rude.

Seriously, gender should not make a difference to these events. It would be better if there was just a name and time. Parkruns are not meant to be competitive (I believe) so why have all this male\female and age categories? People should be allowed to opt out of the 'ranking'.

I’m GC myself but I don’t see the issue with this. How does it affect anyone?

Well the results are posted by sex - so if the results don’t matter then why have them at all?? People like to know how they’re going against people with the same biology. Not how they’re doing against other people who may or may not want to wear lipstick.

Adas comparator remains the male body - a male body on hormones is nothing like a female body

I've emailed them via contact to ask them why they don't have sex and gender on the form, with gender optional.

Parkrun results and rankings - for those runners that are competitive - are shown by a couple of metrics.

rankings overall
rankings by sex and age

at the bottom of the main page it says male record and female record with name, time achieved and when recorded
Not surprisingly the male record is approx 2 minutes faster than the female record.

So in future, will it be ranked by sex or gender? and do runners (female) deserve to know how rankings are being done?

The concern is that the ideology is being trotted (no pun haha) out as unquestioned yet again. No alternatives to the rest of society that is GC, no critical thinking, no inclusivity. Just the acceptance of the ideology in a context where sex matters. Times are important to many. Competition is important. Not conforming to this ideology is important for me.

Heaven help them if I'm placed 2nd in my age group and beaten by a transwoman. I'd like to race my own sex. Not someone who has been through male puberty.

People should be allowed to opt out of the 'ranking'

You can, just drop your finish token back without scanning it to your personal barcode. You'll be listed as an 'unknown' on the results page, so only you will know (and not even you, if you forget what number place you came in at)

Presumably they don’t get a sex or age graded result then? So it’s meaningless. For all the waffle in that blog it lacked any detail of the practical impact of registering as neither male or female.

I've just had an email from them, the subject was being trans at park run. No mention of which results the featured competitor would be listed in....

Well I'm a woman, but I would be one of the 16,000 people ticking either "another gender identity" or "prefer not to say" because I don't consider myself to have a gender identity at all.
So the analysis of the box ticking may mean something completely different from what they think it means.

The article also contains the following passage. "But once I started taking hormones and the testosterone levels in my body lowered, my athletic performance wasn’t where it used to be. I really struggled because I had found this pride in my body, an understanding that my body could do amazing things, and the way I measured that was by my times."

Assuming they now register as 'female', which is what other parts of the article imply, it's rather ironic that women don't now get to enjoy the same sense of achievement.

I'm going to email them and ask them how they expect women to take parkrun seriously now when the categories of male and female records are clearly based on feelings and clothing and not on sex. How many women did they consult on this? It just sounds like they've been stonewalled. It's not as easy as just running without a barcode, that's a lot of the fun of parkrun is the gamification of your result, a record of your times etc. This is maddening that such a large community sports organisation would absolutely disregard women like this. I "live as myself" too, the female sex, without ever having the sports advantage of a male puberty that would have allowed me to run faster.

trans women should be allowed to take part in parkrun - absolutely

but they shouldn't be able to self-select into a category in which they don't belong