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?

If pissed off women go away and start up their own organisation, 'women's run', and leave Park run to men of all gender identities so they can have all the records and all the titles in peace, then men of all gender identities, and a lot of very stupid women who really at this point need to give their bloody heads a wobble, will howl and stamp and demand to own women's run too.

I agree with one of the tweets on that thread and it cannot be said enough:

Inclusion for him is intrusion for her.
Inclusion for him is exclusion for her.
That is not inclusion.
Being imaginative with pronouns does not make it any better.

If the TQ+ lobby want this to work, they're now down to a very short time to get off women's toes and make this work for everyone before the world is right out of patience and starts having boundaries they really will not like. All it would take is additional categories for records in this instance.

And also, the stupid people who say "how would this be policed?!" - just consider what you'd do if you had people putting their ages a lot higher so they'd get a better age/sex grading. Its something called being in a community, with a clear set of rules that people all know and understand in the same way with no ambiguity: people not abiding by the rules would be challenged on it. As much as you challenge a 9 year old who runs by themselves (i.e. they should be running close to an adult they came with) - the parkrun run director would have a word as they would be confident what the rules are and how to apply them fairly. The problem with the muddying of the waters with gender is that now no-one can question anyone's recorded 'sex'!

[email protected]

Hi XXXX,

Thanks for getting in touch.

In 2019, after careful consideration and extensive consultation, we decided to continue categorising people based on gender rather than assigned sex. We feel this in-line with our ethos of non-competitive socially-focussed physical activity, and allows people to identify in the way they feel most appropriate and comfortable. In addition, we expanded the range of options that a person could choose from.

In all countries we operate in, parkrunners can now record their gender as male or female, or alternatively they are free to keep that information private by selecting “prefer not to say”.

At parkrun we aim to be as inclusive and welcoming as possible, and whilst there are and possibly always will be issues around how we record and present people’s identities, we believe that our current solution is the most appropriate available at this time.
Regards
Megan Byatt
Operations Assistant | Parkrun

• - - -

This is the response I received when I emailed Parkrun to complain about their position on self ID. I did reply and point out that Sex is a biological fact and permanently recorded in your DNA and not 'assigned at birth'. 🤦🏻‍♀️

Inclusion for him is exclusion for her.

If it’s just for fun and fitness then ditch the timing, records, placing and results and just hold a group run in the park. If you’re keeping times and it’s a race, then it’s a competition, one that some will take seriously. A great thing about running is we all run on the same courses - you can run the London marathon at the same time as an elite is setting a record. And yes, for many participants they are running to be active, or lose weight, or just to finish. But that doesn’t mean the runners who train seriously and do compete don’t also count.

It’s annoying because in team sports the skill levels are divided and people who play just under a professional level would never play with beginners. Running is lovely in that we all run together, but a drawback is that it becomes a way to deny the concerns of women and say “well, it’s all for fun anyway.” But some of us run to compete and are pushing for PBs, and age group/sex category wins and the best local runners are well known in their running community and there’s a lot of pride. Just because “it’s not the Olympics” doesn’t mean that competition shouldn’t be fair or that women don’t count.

Men are allowed to take watching sports more seriously than women are allowed to take actually doing sports. It’s pure sexism to act like women should only do activities for our weight or for fun and that we can’t take competition seriously. Tell that to the parents of boys in age group football!

Why does this only work with gender and sex though? I mean it's not OK to identify as a young child, or at the other end of the spectrum, an 80 year old (because you don't identify with the date of birth assigned to you) and break the age graded records...

Men are allowed to take watching sports more seriously than women are allowed to take actually doing sports. It’s pure sexism to act like women should only do activities for our weight or for fun and that we can’t take competition seriously. Tell that to the parents of boys in age group football!

This!

This response is also inconsistent with their explanation of age grading, which is about sex as well as age, but nothing to do with gender - see below from parkrun website.

What is age grading?
All parkrun events use age grading to allow athletes to compare results.

Age grading takes your time and uses the world record time for your sex and age to produce a score (a percentage). This score allows you to compare your personal performance against other people's performances even though they might be a different age and a different sex to you - the higher the score the better the performance

If they don't know your sex, how can they calculate an age-graded score?

Exactly, if they record people's gender / gender identity then they must do away with age and sex grading. But at the moment, parkrun want to have their cake and eat it!

Yes! The DM have waded in because no one else will. More sunlight on this! Thousands of female parkrunners need to know their fairness in parkrun is being compromised to accommodate men's feelings
www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-12113243/Parkruns-gender-self-ID-lets-men-smash-womens-records-smithereens.html

And the Telegraph! www.telegraph.co.uk/news/2023/05/22/parkrun-self-id-male-runners-smash-womens-records/
Thank you Mara for publicising this!

Aim to be as inclusive as possible ...... yes, to men, but not women.

The tweet has been shared in the parkrun discussion group on Facebook and it’s interesting how balanced the discussion is there compared to another discussion on this topic in the same group in 2016 when there were several deleted posts due to ‘bigotry’. Of course I can’t see them as they were deleted but someone comes back to say they were only discussing biological reality and is shot down for it. I do think the gender critical voice is making progress.

This is from the Telegraph article (as it is behind a paywall) - parkrun’s comments:

A spokesman for Parkrun said: "Parkruns are not races or athletic competitions of the sort governed by national and international federations. They are community-led, socially-focused physical activity events delivered with the aim of improving public health, and including as many people as possible.
"We publish results based on a person’s self-declared information, including gender, and we believe it would not be appropriate or practical for us to request proof or adjudicate the validity of a person’s gender identity.
"At Parkrun we aim to be as inclusive and welcoming as possible, and whilst there is and possibly always will be discussion around how we record and present people’s identities, we believe that our current solution is the most appropriate available at this time."

It's such a bollocks statement. They say "who are we to judge" but race directors judge ALL the time on the basis of safety and fairness - funnel dodgers, those who cut out big sections, those who don't insist their children stay with them, canicross runners, those who would jeopardise the safety of others - race directors make decisions to make sure everyone is taking part safely and fairly. Why can't gender accuracy come into this? Women will suffer!

I'd be impressed if race directors made any of those decisions at parkrun, since parkrun doesn't have race directors.

run directors - you know exactly what I mean!

I get that they don’t want to adjudicate

it’s run by volunteers and they don’t need that shit

but they ask people to accurately declare their age and rely on the good sportsmanship of the participants

just treat sex the same way

Age grading takes your time and uses the world record time for your sex and age to produce a score (a percentage). This score allows you to compare your personal performance against other people's performances even though they might be a different age and a different sex to you - the higher the score the better the performance

Is the ability to compare your personal performance with others part of the service Parkrun is offering to runners? I wonder if there's a legal case for sex discrimination there, because they are no longer providing that service to women.

Isn't that exactly what parkrun are doing?

Isn't that exactly what parkrun are doing?

Obviously not, they're telling people it's acceptable to lie about their sex.

It needs to be made clear, though, that the comparisons are not based on reality in some/many cases, and are therefore worthless, not worthy of attention.

And that runners can take part for the company, time themselves if they wish, but need to regard the "results" as meaningless.

This stuff about requiring proof is crazy! Like when people talk about "genital checks in "bathrooms"".

Why can't trans people be expected to behave just like anyone else? Most laws and social norms which allow millions of us to live together in a functioning society aren't actually continually policed.

When people say stuff like this, they are essentially saying that trans people are a law unto themselves, or out of control, or so special that they should be treated completely differently to everyone else.

Nope

they talk about self declared gender

they should just use the word ‘sex’

then if some bloke wants to identify as a woman at least everyone is clear that he’s cheating, even if they don’t stop him

at the moment they’re effectively saying that what the cheating bloke is doing is ok

I have also written in (lurker and reader of many many threads here). I forgot to screenshot my message but pointed out how demoralising this was to young girls who knew they could never ever be competitive. And how they were at odds with World Athletics. Hopefully they are drowning under the weight of similar emails.