Why is the parkrun decision wrong?

[Getonnow]

It feels all wrong to me, but I've had lots of men tell me they thinks it's the right decision and the only thing they could do in the circumstances.

I think it's a cop out and they haven't dealt with the actual issue and also that they've lied about the real reason for the change, but I'm having trouble articulating it beyond that. Help me?

Probably the women should also share the shitty toilet with any men who wanted to use it as well because it's free 🙄

The number of people who can't accept that women were women first and we aren't the interlopers!

I apply it to both sides. I don't care if you're the biggest TRA on the planet or the most GC person to ever exist.

It's a free event, run by volunteers. If it's not to your liking, go elsewhere or start your own.

Public toilets are a necessity.

Parkrun is an optional event.

Moreover

If a venue offers free single sex toilets and you aren't allowed into the toilet of the opposite sex and you are trans do you :

A. So no thank you
B. Start demanding things are changed to suit you

Maybe if TRAs can start modelling some of this "no thank you" behaviour us silly little women can fall in 🙄

But out of interest, how often do you tell TRAs that as opposed to GC people?

I've said it to several people at my parkrun. A couple of them would probably be on the TRA side.

You're making a utilitarian argument that allowing men to compete in women's sport is "for the greater good" i.e. greatest benefit for the greatest number of people. Firstly, I think that is hard to evidence and would be interested to hear your reasoning. But even if that could be said, there's an ethical problem because you're eschewing equity. Maybe equality between the sexes doesn't bother you. But as a woman would you rather live in the UK or in Iran? Because one country advocates equal rights and the other does not. A utilitarian ethical framework is antithetical to the human rights that we benefit from in this country.

The outcome of a utilitarian approach means that men have the right to fair sport and women do not (because women cannot take rankings from men unlike the other way round). This devalues the integrity of sport itself (fair play), but only for women. So women's right to participate in this aspect of public life on an equal standing with men is acceded to the demands of a group of men. When trans-identified men enter women's sports, what rights are they asserting, that they did not have before, that need to be "balanced" against women's right to have the same fair competition in sport that men enjoy?

If the integrity of sport is not important, why don't we allow doping in certain instances where we deem there to somehow be a net benefit to some people?

Women already exercise less than men due to a variety of factors, female athletes earn less, women's sport gets less coverage etc. What's the point of encouraging women into sport if they are going to be beaten by men?

Yeah but telling TRAs that if the event that is letting them compete by gender not sex is not to their liking when it's blatantly in their favour isn't quite the same thing as telling GC women who are losing out from this

Do you ever actually say that to TRAs when they are pushing for something they don't currently have? Otherwise the situation isn't comparable at all

Public toilets are a necessity.

Parkrun is an optional event.

People could just choose to stay at home and then they wouldn't need public toilets either. Going out of the house is technically optional.

Why not just tell women they should stay at home and make all the public toilets mixed sex too?

Activity is good for public health and women and girls need to be encouraged to take part. Which is no doubt why taxpayers contribute to Parkrun. Women should have equal rights to both men who wear trousers and those who wear dresses, especially where public health and tax payer expenditure is involved.

The 'parkrun question' isn't about how many males take the records or positions of females .. it is about whether women, women's sporting achievements and the participation of women in sport are less important than men's right to identify as women.

There is no need to police the categories, simply changing the language of the rules would be enough.

By removing the results, they are confirming that the feelings of a small number of men matter more than the feelings of women. Men will continue to be seen.

Wanting a category for women to be for women is a pretty low bar. Is it really asking that much? How is that both sides being unreasonable?

What's really annoying is that Parkrun have received millions of pounds from Sport England with one of the specific aims being to encourage more women into exercise because of the greater barriers they face

Yet apparently its fine to take that and then then tell those women their achievements are worth less than men's rights to identify as women

Which means all these men are more easily able to access a large number of Parkrun events because of funding given to get women into sport. And now some of those men are happy to push women back out and Parkrun are letting them.

Following this logic, women should STFU about men in women’s category in athletics, Wimbledon, the Boat Race, women’s football , the Olympics etc or go and start their own version (I imagine it would be about 2 minutes before the TRAs demanded to participate then as well).

No equality for girls at school unless you pay to go. No equality in facilities provided by the council. Does that make sense to you?

It's also about women's performance and achievements being valued less than men's, since women's results are disproportionately affected by changing single-sex categories to mixed-sex.

chng.it/7DH7mr82GP

Petition to reinstate statistics

I belive Parkrun works with everyone running together?

Seems like for once there would be a way to make everyone happy, and that is to publish overlapping categories of "female runners", "runners identifying as women", "male runners", "runners identifying as men".

So an agender female like me would just look at her ranking in Female Runners. Trans women and the female people who prefer a lower ranking to excluding trans women would care most about their ranking in "runners identifying as women" but might have a peek at how they ranked in "male runners" and "female runners" respectively. Trans men would care most about their ranking in "runners identifying as men" but maybe some would care about their female results as well. Male people other than trans women would likely be most interested in the male-only times, although to be fair most of the male times will probably be not much different to runners identifying as men.

Seems like a perfect opportunity for Parkrun to model real inclusion and acceptance - I wonder why they didn't.

@FlirtsWithRhinos I belive Parkrun works with everyone running together?

I guess this is part of the problem. Everyone runs together, and on the day no one knows how an individual is registered. They swipe their barcode and hand over a time token, and no one knows what it says on their registration details. Unless they are first, or a regular who is often in the first few, or a regular volunteer, no one will remember them and know that the man they saw coming in 25th is actually registered as a woman. If it were a women-only race, then a man, or a transwoman, would be obvious.

overlapping categories of "female runners", "runners identifying as women", "male runners", "runners identifying as men".

But why would you think that transwomen will self-exclude from the 'female runners' category?

"It's a free event run by volunteers"

Well kind of, but it also gets Sports England funding and HQ staff, where these idiotic and anti-woman decisions are being made, are paid staff.

As a regular volunteer I don't have any power so I don't see the criticism of parkrun as criticism of me and the other volunteers in any way.

Am I correct in saying that your "gender" and age grading is emailed to you rather than being on a results table online? Because that seems worse than the original setup. I thought they just got rid of all grading altogether?

Except I believe park run receives public funding doesn’t it?

@DuesToTheDirt

But why would you think that transwomen will self-exclude from the 'female runners' category?

I think the first step is to send the message about what is expected, in the good faith expectation that most people will do as they are being asked. To facilitate that ask, the categories do not impose sex over gender or vice versa - both belief systems are accomodated and one does not even have to choose one belief system.

Yes, some people may choose to break the rules and claim membership of a group to which they do not belong. But with the expectations clear, it also becomes clear that people so doing are cheating and if complaints are raised those timings can be removed.

More strategically, by explictly having a grouping for anyone who identifies as a woman and accepting trans women within in, it makes it very hard for trans women to claim they are being excluded and therefore removes the basis on which they might claim to need to be included in the female times.

Yes some trans women will still demand to be considered female (because of course they will, because for some trans women the whole "womanhood is not about your body it's about who you are inside" story was never what they actually believed, what they really believed was "women are the people with female bodies plus special males like me" ), but their case becomes much less persuasive to the casual Be Kind observer when they have a fully trans includive Woman category already, and therefore much easier to reject or protest.

The Make Space For Girls campaign group have some interesting information on their site relevant to this OP. Basically, where there's a public space for children it often gets taken over by boys - big games of football, dominating skate ramps, that sort of thing. Plus the fact that some aren't well lit enough, or don't feel safe in some way through thoughless design. So by teenage years many girls avoid them or just sit on the sidelines rather than hop on their bike too at the fancy new ramps and risk getting flattened by a larger boy on his bmx. They miss out on the exercise, fun, sense of achievement...

We need more opportunities for girls to be able to participate on a level field, not fewer. And we need them to see that where women and girls are treated unfairly it will be challenged.

Then there's the fact that women's opportunities to run are already limited by safety concerns. I'm old enough not to be self conscious like I was as as a teenager but I don't want to run after dark or in areas that aren't well frequented, because of fear of male violence. So it feels like one more thing that men with shitty behaviour are clipping my wings with.