Parkrunners! Parkrun survey

[Parkrunners]

If anyone is a parkrunner and has a survey from them, I'd urge you to fill it in. There are two free text sections which provide an opportunity to tell them exactly what the impact of their sexist policy decision not to protect the female sex category has been. They have clearly commissioned this survey to gather data on the mental health and motivation and self esteem and self achievement benefits of Parkrun, as well as its competitive benefits and self-competition benefits, but none of that has been protected for women and girl runners who have effectively been told that Parkrun cannot be bothered to collect accurate sex category data for them, because we somehow don't count. What is it meant to do to the motivation and mental health of female runners to be told we are so second class that our sex category doesn't matter and can be dispensed with?

As a middle aged woman, I am particularly pissed off as the only way I can tell if my running performance is declining, maintaining or improving is to compare myself to others in the same age or sex category. And I can only do this if the sex category is protected.

I am really sick of Parkrun both knowing full well the importance of age and sex data for running and for their Parkrun model, and knowing full well they cannot remove this as the men would not stand for it, whilst also pretending none of this matters and they are just a fun little social run when they need to pretend its ok to record runners under gender identity. Parkrun are trying to maintain a position of both recording this data and pretending it doesn't matter. This is nonsensical.

Because it started off as a time trial and you don't have male bodied people competing against female bodied people or mixed sex categories.

I agree.

plus, it's the thin end of the edge.
If a man can run in the women's category at these events, it normalises it. Nothing to see here.

"I can run as a woman at Parkrun so I'll do that elsewhere"...

But Park run do have male bodied people competing against female bodied people so I wonder why the people at park run bother to categorise by sex? it's odd to categorise by something that doesn't exist in their view.

Because the parkrun organisers seem to exist in an alternate reality remember. They declare the event is not in anyway competitive, ‘just a bit of fun’ while still publishing event specific rankings. The ones that people don’t want to get rid of, but declare are meaningless really.

And because to those organisers, male people can be female people. Because the only people it negatively affects are female people, so it is like ‘why bother’?

I cannot imagine being a girl at the moment trying to navigate this. My child’s schools here in the UK did not have any focus on athletics training which I found unusual being completely new to the UK school system. So, therefore if your child was interested they have to do athletics more as an out of school activity. Parkrun is part of this offering. Yet its inconsistency in declaring it is ‘fully inclusive’ while actively allowing male people to displace female people in the rankings will discourage girls from the start. It devalues their efforts.

And despite some people’s opinion that we have seen in media and on threads, we know from at least 7 years old that male children have physical advantage over female children. Each year another study shows this. So far we have the Australian and the Greek comprehensive school children studies and at least one US study. The Australian school system have a significant focus on athletics in primary and secondary school hence that data was available to analyse.

And we know also, directly from listening to girls, that they don’t like to lose the recognition for their efforts by not being recognised as a separate sex category. Yet parkrun have prioritised male athletes over female athletes while hypocritically declaring they are ‘fully inclusive’ while publishing sex based rankings.

The messaging is at odds with the reality. I get a similar feeling reading threads where parents are telling their daughters that it is ok that only the boys in that race get recognition for that race because it was mixed sex with only the first three being awarded and that it is only ‘a run, only a bit of fun, stop being so competitive’. When it is because some parents believe there is no difference between male and female bodies generally before puberty. Because some outstandingly talented girls will beat some mediocre boys from those parents experience. So based on that and ignoring the studies, parents tell their girls to just accept not being recognised equally. To accept inequity. This messaging does directly feed into whether girls will continue in sport or not, and I believe parkrun are contributing to this if they allow boys to register as girls.

But as we’ve already established, there are 2 other categories trans people can run in - “prefer not to say” and “another gender identity”.

I’m genuinely confused- is your issue that they say “gender” and not “sex”? Or that they don’t police it effectively, allowing people to self-select their category?

@Zestylemo Apologies for making you wait, I was spending time with my family and there was a medical emergency, so I prioritised that.

I believe someone has answered you already about the reason for this but, if you would still also appreciate my viewpoint, it's because it started as time trials and people do, in general, like to compare their rankings to others of the same biological sex. For example, knowing that I came 40th overall but was the 9th female might give me a better sense of achievement. Of course, it's difficult to deduce very much from this in reality, because Parkrun no longer tells me the total number of female runners so, 9th out of 100 would be impressive, 9th out of 10, less so. Then there are all the anomalies that affect ranking: how many people run on that particular day; how this compares week by week and location by location; and how many people cheated by either cutting corners, entering the incorrect age, or entering as the incorrect sex (which, I assume is the one you feel most concerned about). In order to try and combat this, parkrun offers two additional categories to entrants: 'prefer not to say' and 'another gender indentity'. As it's a community event run entirely by volunteers, we all hope people will be honest when entering as this helps fairness for all. As with all things in life, sadly, sometimes people are not. There are certain acts of dishonesty that make me really angry but, personally, I am happy to factor in that there may be the odd issue with this fun run but, on balance, the positives outweigh the negatives and both time and age grading are more useful statistics for determining individual progress anyway.

This is also what I am confused about! I have asked about how women feel their 'needs' are compromised by the current situation because I am genuinely interested, but haven't really seen a solid reasoning for this, which I am completely open to, despite being accused of being dismissive.

People can choose the category they run in. If parkrun said "you must run in the category of your sex at birth or choose "prefer not to say" or "another gender identity"" that would be ok.

But they don't. The choice is there but there's no "nudge". They don't care if a trans woman runs in the female category.

The only thing they did change was that if a male runner changed their category having done lots of parkruns, it would only count for future parkruns. Before that, it was a retrospective change which was even more ridiculous.

So for example, the longest standing parkrunner has run over 900 parkruns and has run 17/18 minutes when he was younger. That's a brilliant time for a man, but an elite level time for a woman. If he decided this week that he was going to be known as Daisy in future, all of his times would have been changed to the female category going back years. They have at least changed that so only Daisy's future runs would count as female. But of course, they shouldn't go in the female category at all.

Agree. If it was stipulated that people can only register correct sex and age group and if questions are raised there would be some sort of process followed to confirm correct sex. In saying that, you would hope it would then be only very rarely reported because people did the right thing.

However, it is wholly voluntary as to what people register as. This is where the whole detached from reality kicks in. Reporting any ranking, but especially event ranking, keeps the competitive element alive despite parkruns claims of ‘fun run and being non-competitive’. And this will impact fast runners more than others, of course. If you are not in the upper ranking you probably do dismiss the rankings as not important to you.

Parkrun don't ask people to register as their biological sex, they don't even try to be fair to women.
Neither will parkrun remove the existing women's records held by men.

I thought they had removed all of their records now? https://amp.theguardian.com/lifeandstyle/2024/feb/08/parkrun-records-dropped-from-website

never they've removed them as records but not from the results. So men are still sitting in women's winning places.

Unless the man decides to tell parkrun to change it (I know this has happened for one runner).

thanks @Mangoandbroccoli

The things you mention are either completely unavoidable, like numbers turning up, or people cheating which obviously is against the spirit and rules of the run. However, biological men competing with women is totally in line with the Parkrun’s rules and spirit whilst in reality it is just cheating but allowed. Your argument doesn’t stack up.

If Parkrun are fine with biological men running as biological women why have the two categories? You say it’s because it started as a time trial but presumably then they only had two sex categories which were reality. They changed the time trial but but have kept the two categories that bear no reality to actual biological sex. They are pointless, they only affect women and it’s ridiculous

The fluctuations on a particular day of the number of people running will impact those lower ranked than those higher ranked. It doesn't 'stack up' in a situation where the top runners are bumped down due to a male runner.

The question remains, why should any female runner accept inaccurate rankings because a male runner chose to register as female instead of as male or to use the other options? And female runners have raised this as an issue. Those female runners who might declare that they are fine with the situation does tend towards the 'I'm alright Jack' type argument.

@Zestylemo Thank you for your perspective. Perhaps we won't quite agree on this because, fundamentally, you feel that it affects 'women', whereas I, as a woman, don't feel that my own personal weekly run is in any way affected, so instead acknowledge that it affects 'some' women. If I was an elite athlete going for the top spot and I was beaten to it by a biological male, then I might well be annoyed about that - I can see that. I'd probably be tempted to compete in something smaller and more competitive, with more strictly enforced rules as a result, but acknowledge that those women are just as welcome as the women at the very back, whether walking around, pushing a buggy or walking a dog (shockingly, someone earlier on suggested that these people weren't welcome and that Parkrun has become 'messy', but I really don't agree with that at all). As an organisation, I will always still feel that 4 categories have been offered; the positive aspects for all are overwhelming; and that policing cheating of any kind is an incredibly difficult thing for volunteers to do and I personally don't want to risk changes such as people only receiving individual results - I think that negatively impacts far more people. I am really proud of both taking part in parkrun and volunteering so that others can too. Some people agree with my viewpoint and some people agree with yours.

I can see how you would see that, re the 'I'm alright Jack' mentality. I personally think that I would rather continue as it is because there is still a risk of things changing for the worse, which would be detrimental to more people. So I feel I'm choosing an outlook that supports the many rather than the few. The 'I'm alright Jack' outlook that I do see every week at Parkrun is that so few people are happy to run but never to volunteer in any way shape or form. I wish everyone the best with whatever they hope to gain from their runs.

Great. We have reached the point where you can acknowledge that other's can have an opinion that differs from yours and can prioritise what they want to prioritise from their experience in parkrun. If some runners wish to campaign to tighten the rules around registration, then they should be allowed to do this without being disparaged.

When I say it affects women I mean it affects only women not men.
To be clear it affects women, not all women but only women.
Sorry you took that to mean that it affects all women. Must be clearer.

Also, if it does affect some women and it doesn’t affect others then why are you arguing against us. It doesn’t affect you either way but it does affect some of us m, so therefore change is needed. Some women being affected is some too many.

I was not personally affected by the many elite women being cheated to winning cycling podiums by less talented biological men but I can see the unfairness and would never think to dismiss some women’s rights to fairness.
Why do you? just because you don’t think it matters. Don’t print the stats if it doesn’t matter……..wait….they tried that.

As an aside, I have looked back over this thread and it has struck me that the same arguments have been used on this thread as we see on the threads discussing single sex spaces. Examples from this thread and from other previous parkrun threads too fit into : 'it doesn't bother me', 'how does this get policed and if it cannot be policed it is not worth trying to do anything about it', 'it is not that many', 'people just want to pee / run', 'other options are offered, what more do you expect to be done?', 'there hasn't been any real examples of harm that "I" agree with/feel are good enough' and so on.

I agree

The key question is whether parkrun is a competitive event, or whether it’s a non-competitive mass participation event.

Parkrun itself is very clear that it sees itself as non-competitive and has indicated a willingness to remove elements eg publication of times (even timing itself though I think that was empty words) if that is what it takes.

Of course parkrun knows that some of its participants have a competitive mindset, and how they can, if they wish, use the results tables from that pov. But as they repeatedly state, that’s not how they see themselves. And they will make any changes they think necessary to uphold their view of their event

Thank you for clarifying.

To clarify my point of view: it does potentially affect me either way as, because I've already explained, the backlash risks leading to results not being made publicly available, but instead just emailed individually. Whilst I understand that rankings are variable and therefore not hugely indicative of progress, I do enjoy looking at the results page and going 'ah, there's runner x who I admire and challenges me to go faster and I did, in fact, close the gap between their time and mine today'. I enjoy the fun aspect of that.

Why would you make this assumption that results would be emailed. They tried that and realised how important they were.
It doesn’t affect anyone if times were done by biological sex. Trans women could still run dressed as a stereotypical woman and visa versa for trans men or indeed in fancy dress if one wanted to.
Why would it affect you if Parkrun requested that everyone register as their biological sex.

I'd assume that results would continue to be emailed because they are at present.

They'd probably take out where you came in your category (which isn't included in the existing text system anyway) but the rest could just carry on.

@AuntieStella
why would they take out where you came in your category?

Because their stated aim - if it comes to that - is to remove any element that could be seen as competitive. So no comparison to anyone other than yourself, so only info about yourself.

What I don't know is whether they would be prepared to continue to give you an age/sex grading. I'd like that to continue. But there is an argument that if positions were no longer to be published, they would not need to collect personal data, other than confirmation whether the person is adult (anything else would be optional monitoring of what demographics they are reaching, rather than a registration requirement)