London marathon accepts trans women as women

[MrsJamin]

Runner Glenique Frank has just appeared on the BBC footage, clearly male, and has registered as a woman. Sure, he isn't getting a medal any time soon but how is this OK? And don't even get me started about the stupidity of a non binary category - sure fire way for a mediocre male to get a medal! Utterly pathetic.

many of us here are runners, and marathon runners, and it matters MASSIVELY to us. Every transwoman running as a woman bumps be back one place every time I run, and not only that, but completely screws up the averages and grades I am measuring myself against, to the point that I cannot measure myself against anything, and have nothing to compete against.

No not in terms of performance tracking.

Personally I think a non binary category is a very good thing.

It will always be won by men, meaning that the women competing in it will start calling for separate categories for AMAB and AFAB non binary people, and the whole thing will just illustrate perfectly why we have separate categories for men and women based on biological (as opposed to imaginary) sex in the first place.

You are not a female runner are you? I am. Runners care about this stuff. We look at our times compared to other women, and other women in our age category. It’s a fucking colossal insult to us to put us lower in our rankings because a male has been placed in our category. It’s a massive, loud speaker announcement screaming. ‘ fuck you women runners, you don’t count’ ! And we all hear it.

It affects me directly as a runner and indirectly as a woman existing in society. When I qualified for the London marathon I had to achieve a certain time, the qualifying times for men are faster, there's also good for age qualification. Men running in the women's category is not only cheating but it distorts the rankings and ways to measure the female cohort. The NB category isn't the solution for trans runners as it just allows mediocre men to win. On average NBs with prostates will be beat NBs with cervix. It's almost as if sex matters...

You haven’t grasped that feminism is a collective movement fighting for all women, have you?

Glenique?

@Whoknewwhat yes exactly! It pisses me off when people are happy to sacrifice our places, prizes and rankings because we aren't elite.

Exactly, there should be a category just for people with a cervix. They could call it the cervix Havers category.

It's short for dick.

Two of my sons run marathons, have done for years. Most recently, Manchester; which had 28 ,000 runners.

Numbers like that have little interest in running faster than any one else; or who else is running. All they care about is their own time compared to their own time in previous marathons.

Soon to become a "granny", I gather.

Some people do. Some people don't. Many runners rank themselves.

Because the NB category will be won by male athletes. This is a feminist board. We are fighting for the rights of all females, regardless of gender.

You obviously don’t quite understand the terms you are here using.

For a start, please do use ‘GCs’. You have just dehumanised us. We are (rightly) not allowed to use ‘transes’ or ‘the transes’ because to do so is dehumanising. They are trans people. We are on a feminist board, the term ‘gender critical’ may be used by some but was initially gender critical feminists. Now trans rights activists separate the ‘gender critical’ from the feminist aspect to create a false alignment with any one who believes sex cannot change. Which is a universally held belief, held by many people with many motivations. And many who are not critical of gender.

But that hasn’t stopped people inappropriately using it in its detached form.

Either way, ‘GCs’ like ‘transes’ is dehumanising.

That may be true in huge marathons where there’s elite runners so everyone else is running for time but it’s definitely not true in local races which is where runners do most of our competing. Telling women not to worry about placing and just run for personal fulfillment is sexist, especially since 90% of the women runners I know are mothers and have run through pregnancy and breastfeeding, get up at 4am to run before kids wake up, train while getting up with sick kids…do you have any idea how hard it is for women to put in 100km weeks while mothering? those women should have places taken from them and it’s ok because it’s not the Olympics?

Young girls drop out of sports as teens in huge amounts and talent is lost. Women are pushed out with eating disorders, abuse, burnout. Lots of women don’t even start sports until they’re older because of body shame, being discouraged, made fun of for being competitive, unmanaged periods. When an adult woman starts running she’s overcome so many negative social narratives about herself and her body, especially in running. Men don’t face these obstacles.

2bazookas that's not my experience at all. All the club runners I know pore over their Power of 10 rankings. If you race on a regular basis you'll know a lot of the people who are a similar pace so even at big events there's an element of 'I want to beat Paula from Serpentine'.

I think it's quite normal to use political identifiers in that way. Nobody says Tory people. Communist people. Feminist people. I've never seen anyone on this board use "TRA" people. Surely TRAs is also dehumanising then?

I know a lot of people who run marathons who absolutely care about their rankings.

Here's Glenique, urging people to donate to a charity fundraiser. So feminine!

and in 10 years, and 20 years, and 30 years, they will want to compare their times, not against their own times in their youth, but against their age related gradings, which will work out fine for them, being men, but is being completely messed up for women, becasue of the weighting that transwomen give it.

I've been running for a long time, and it effects me

Yes. The whole point of sex and age headings and rankings in running is to compare yourself against people it is reasonable to compare your performance to on the basis of biological similarity.

Allowing men to identify into the women’s category is done for an entirely different reason, personal identity validation. And that reason subverts and undermines the purpose and utility of the category for every other female runner.

And that is counter to equality and equity for women. As well as being a big ‘Fuck You Women, you don’t count’ insult to all women runners.

And, to turn it around, you can argue that even if you're going to let "transwomen" put female on their entry form for validation, actually including them in the ranking or not doesn't affect them, so why mess up the female rankings?

They can see their time is equivalent to the 5000th woman or whatever without having to actually take the place of the 5000th woman.

Because the ‘A’ stands for ‘activist’ which is the noun.

There is a huge difference between calling people ‘the transes’ or ‘transes’ and trans people. It is also used as a derogation. The same applies with the term ‘gender criticals ’, ‘GCs’ or ‘the gender crits’ as someone has used in the past.

Was this the man in the cropped top who said, "Up the girls!" I wondered what on Earth he was on about.

Is all this because women are supposed to be ‘nice’ and non competitive, even in sports?

This fucks up the statistics of female performance and it fucks up the optics of female performance.

Women running against men will always be and feel ‘slow’ by comparison because they are slower.

Women who are running against men but who don’t know this because that man has a female name and is running in her category will be wondering why they can’t get the same speeds which is not going to do anything for women’s motivation or training plans.

women who are running against men in their category will know and feel gaslit because as we all know, male physical advantage doesn’t pass.