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?

Hey everyone - can we all commit to emailing parkrun hq please???

I honestly think the average person, and therefore possibly the Parkrun official who created the form, innocently use sex and gender interchangeably as broadly equivalent synonyms without any awareness of the deeper issues. I used to until about two years ago...

I think gender tends to be used by some to avoid having to use the word 'sex' with all its 'rude' connotations.

I completely agree as I did the same thing until it was spelled out to me!

Also as a kind open person I naturally initially signed up to the whole ally pronoun thing and letting a trans woman BE a WOMAN if they so choose in a live and let live way. Of course that was until it was spelled out to me that it would be at the expense of another woman. (Like trans women competing in womens sports and taking top spots away from women)

There isn't enough coverage for this for the average person to get it. Unless they go looking and most wouldn't bother.

What's the email address and can o be lazy and also ask if anyone has mocked up a template?

Also as a kind open person I naturally initially signed up to the whole ally pronoun thing and letting a trans woman BE a WOMAN if they so choose in a live and let live way. Of course that was until it was spelled out to me that it would be at the expense of another woman. (Like trans women competing in womens sports and taking top spots away from women)

I was the only exactly the same. I think those involved in trans debate, from both sides, don't realise how much of a bubble they are in, and that most people are just 'live and let live' who haven't really ever thought much about the whole trans thing at all.

That may be true, but they encourage people to identify into any gender and don't record by biological sex. That is the problem.

No-one has a problem with them including gender for those who want it. They can even rank by gender if they so desire (are the 'feels' in my head faster than the 'feels' in your head?), but we need to retain biological sex as an accurate category.

@christmas2022
Sorry I just used the 'Contact Us' form online by googling (too scared to do on social media!) and wrote about how I want to measured against people of my own sex because its demoralising otherwise. I asked them to have gender as a separate category. I also told them I was pissed off as I volunteer for them and raise their profile a fair bit in the city and its put me off them and makes me wonder how consultation works amongst participants. Who does parkrun really belong to and who is it for?

It doesn't affect anyone who is male or female. It only affects those who would rather not tick either of those boxes, but some people seem determined to make life difficult for those who are different from normal.

Its not a race.

That may be true, but they encourage people to identify into any gender and don't record by biological sex. That is the problem.

I'm not denying it's a problem, just one that was quite possibly done innocently.

they are getting into dodgy territory not having updated this and not informing millions of people that these options are changed and now it has assigned millions of people with a gender identity

Another aspect to be careful of. It's in the email that's referred to at the start of the thread (goes to everyone who opts in) and is on the website.

I don't know an email for parkrun HQ. All parkrun events have an email, but for contact with HQ it's via contact form on the website. Paul Sinton-Hewitt is the best known name, and the other senior staffer are listed here:

www.parkrun.org.uk/aboutus/

The options under gender are now

• male
• female
• other gender identity
• would rather not say.

Therefore male and female are being recorded as a gender identity, and not sex or gender. So it has affected everyone by parkrun changing the other options. There's no denying that! The clue is in the "other". If they'd have just added "would rather not say" it would have been fine but that's not enough for TRAs who want to change everyone's use of language.

That's because its a run, not a race.

The age/sex grading is a tool (from an external source) for people to use, in the ways they wish, to track their progress. That tool is based on races, hence the difference.

Apparently they have done "international consultations" - don't patronise them by saying they did this innocently, they bowed to TRA pressure without considering other viewpoints or what is fair.

This isn't good enough and I think is enough to grant a reporting to ICO about their misuse of people's data ie this ico.org.uk/make-a-complaint/data-protection-complaints/personal-information-complaint/ where you can complain about how a company has mishandled personal information.

I know it's a run not a race but why would they even refer to any of that if the only thing they are recording is gender identity? They don't know people's sex so the whole stats on age grading are pointless and they should be removed.

The age grading stats are an external tool, not based on parkrun data.

It is taken from elite competitive events, where sex is verified, and is used (not just by parkrun) as tool for comparison.

It has made my results meaningless and demoralising. But then I’m female so my feelings don’t count

jg it is a race for thousands of us. I don't go out there for fun. I want to get as high up as I can and try and come first in my age category.

I'm a keen runner and occasionally come first woman, most of the female runners I know are interested in their placing at parkrun as well as their time. I agree it is demoralising if you can just identify into the female category. Parkrun has long had an internal tension between the competitive/race aspects (when I first started doing it, it was the Bushy Park Time Trial and it was absolutely a race with the results published) and inclusion. For example, if it really is not a race they should probably delete the ranking sections, age grading, course records, women under 20 mins and men under 18 hall of fame. They won't, because it still does have features of a race - just a "non serious" one so that it can appeal to a wide variety of participants. Of course, they never think about the potential impact on women of allowing the categories to mean anything, because embedded societal misogyny.

I think parkrun is a good example of how sports in some situations can be quite unquote inclusive.
It's non competitive (a fun run not a race, never mind how an individual participant wants to see it) and non contact.
I'm a strong advocate for female sport but IMHO we need to be able to offer the whole range of sporting opportunity from events segregated by age and sex to completely open and inclusive mass participation activities and parkrun is a good example of the latter.
I will be updating my profile to 'prefer not to say' though...

(apart from anything else I'll be interested to see how they process my result tomorrow, how many other prefer not to say s will there be, I could get a first in my category...)

Can anyone help me find the contact form to feedback on this? I've searched but it comes up with endless faq pages or an international contact form?

The more I think about this, the sadder I am. I promote parkrun, volunteer for them, attend and do it when visiting elsewhere, where the t-shirts, have the ID bands for all the family.....

But they are forced teaming me with this. Their social media was widely shared yesterday, 'celebrating' how brilliant it is that Ada gets to be who Ada wants to be. The fact that Ada gets to choose which category Ada wants to be in and claim their results in whatever light they choose, while I and my daughters have no similar options available to us (although, do they check age 🤔) and all get to come further down the female rankings due to this policy not only being made available but advertised, encouraged and cheered on, is dispiriting.

And all the Facebook comments yesterday were a deluge of "how stunning, how brave, how brilliant, how INCLUSIVE," with the rare brave terven being hounded out, shamed and sent packing - sending a clear message that women like me, who have spent probably weeks of their lives volunteering for this organisation (the hours I have spent being genuinely inclusive, cheering on people who run slower than I crawl when I freeze and am desperate to go home to a cup of tea...), and their feelings on this, and the impact on women and girls who participate both now and in the future is of NO interest or relevance.

This is not a neutral media campaign, released in the week of the AB verdict. This is a message to those like me, clear as a bell. And I am listening.

But why should parkrun require biological sex if we're not segregating the event by sex?
I know the results grading uses it, but it's not a competitive event, there's never any checking on what people enter as their details.
I guess I do see parkrun as more of a community and social thing rather than sport. So I'm happy for it to be a space where people can identify as they want.
Perhaps I'll change my tune when course records go, but in the parkrun context, records & grading are largely irrelevant for me anyway, it's much more about the getting everybody active thing.
As an RD I get a bit narked off at people taking their parkrun timings & placings too seriously - it's a fun informal event run every week for free. If you're so super bothered by competitive placing, enter a proper race.