Parkrun comments giving me the rage

[ChapmanFarm]

If I have to read one more time 'but parkrun is just meant to be fun' or 'you are only racing against yourself and your best time' I'm going to scream.

Why does that only apply to women?

If it's just a bit of fun there is absolutely no need for trans identified men to get a time or position either. They have the option to register as another gender or to just run and not register at all.

If it's all just fun and we moaning women should shut up, why do these arguments only apply one way?

No one is saying they can't run in whatever clothing/identity they like. Just that they shouldn't be recorded as women.

But somehow this is still wrong.

I thought I'd peaked long ago but this one is giving me the absolute rage.

I don't think that's fair. @cobaltchlorides is expressing her opinion in a reasonable way, it's just different from the majority one.

This is another thing that 'nice' women and girls are supposed to do though, isn't it?

Smile mistily and insist that they are so glad to surrender themselves and their opportunities in order to serve and promote and further the far more important interests of this vulnerable man in the cause of social justice.

Ffs.

a) Pass the sick bucket
b) sign the women/girl up instantly for the bloody freedom programme and some therapy to help her gain a sense of self and boundaries, not to be a codependent disaster looking for somewhere to happen
c) find out whose extreme sexism - with some sadism too, I have to say - taught her to get on her knees with a smile for a man, while pretending it's a lovely healthy thing to do. And do a bit of safeguarding.

Yes.

Explaining on a women's rights forum that women should meet men's interests above their own is certainly a view different to the majority one.

What’s the point in having categories if half the people are lying?

Is the difference between the age and sex categories Parkrun’s approach? With age the assumption is you will be honest about your age. With sex there is no such assumption. It’s essentially ‘pick whichever you like’. They could, like the NHS online service, use ‘sex assigned at birth’.

And calling it a hornet's nest.

cobaltchlorides
I suppose it's quite hard to explain why it's a big deal, particularly if you don't know any trans people.

Patronising much?

It is entirely possible that I know more trans people than you do, unless you are part of that particular cult and are being disingenuous, but that is really not relevant to the point, which is that it does nobody harm not to tell lies in order to feel included in something which he is not.

I would not benefit in the long term if I lyingly claimed to be a Falklands veteran, for instance (and would be caught out pretty quickly, chances are, just like trans women who "pass": a fair few women might not think "oh, it's a man in drag" but a large number would think "there is something not quite right about that woman" and be suspicious of "her" without being able to qualify their unease) but it does me no harm not to make that claim.

Your friend ("and others") can exist in their chosen gender all they want, but they cannot exist in a sex they are not, and should not be encouraged to believe that they can. Sooner or later they are liable to run up against something (such as prostate cancer, or hypoglycaemia, or a stroke, or simply sudden early death) which doesn't care what gender they are, but has been caused by the drugs they have taken to try to look like the sex they are not. I regard this as a great deal more of a tragedy for them than not being allowed to pretend to be the sex they are not in order to gain advantage in a sport.

I am so passionate about women's participation in sport! I know you disagree with my opinions, but I don't want to be told that I'm not welcome in this discussion. Running needs strong women to assert their place - sports like trail running are still so. male. dominated. and we have a long way to go. I know my views about gender don't align with the typical Mumsnet consensus, but I think I've earned my stripes with regards to women's rights in running.

I didn't say half the people are lying?!

I think the vast majority are not.

The same applies to any amateur event.

Your definition of Women includes Men. And we can all see how passionate you are about including them.

Your friends is running with their body that body is a male body. As you are keen on women in sport you will be aware that in almost all sports female performance is not the same as male performance. Either this performance gaps is because male and female bodies are different or there is some magical gender essence that makes women slower/ less strong, however if this was the case transmen would perform the same as men, which even when doping they don't. So we are back to bodily differences.

Why is it fair for someone with male sporting advantage to beat women? Your friend may be slower than you but he would not be slower than a woman of the exact same age and fitness level as him because his male body gives him lots of small advantages over women. His lung size, his blood volume his muscle type the design of his pelvis all mean that he has a built in advantage over women of the same fitness level.

He can register under his chosen name and wear 'female' coded clothing to run without disadvantaging women by claiming to be one. He doesn't have a give a gender at all.

Yes, it was never there. It's always been gender. Women parkrunners often use gender as an approximation for sex, just as they might use names. But it's just a big run for all comers with one set of results regardless of sex. It's already unisex and always has been.

As luck would have it trans women are vanishingly rare on park runs and people generally match their gender to their sex but that's never been offered as a certainty, what's on offer is a unisex run. And it works.

Right, but the pregnancy deferrals and menstruation products issues which I've done actual work on with local races aren't. It's not all about trans people, actually. Most of my feminism is concerned with things that affect the other 99% of women.

@AngelaP71 was talking about it in practical terms. I think there are a lot of people on this thread who don't do parkrun, and don't get how casual it is! Despite this, there's absolutely no chance that half of parkrun participants are lying about their gender?!

Why would your friend feel less welcome if they had to record their sex as male? Or even prefer not to say? How would anyone know while your friend was running, what it said on their parkrun profile?

So 1% of your feminism is concerned with things that affect men. Thats not feminism.

It's just mildly amusing to peruse it after the event. Most people don't lie. It's just a nice to have.

As it happens nobody has ever lied about gender beciase it means the square root of nothing. If something can be anything it means nothing.

How many transwomen do you think will need the pregnancy referrals if they are introduced?

Pregnancy is a thing that only affects females, like periods and menopause. However female a man feels he isn't.

So why do they list men’s and women’s results separately? I mean, if it’s unisex, there’d only be one set of results right?

I wasn't doing it for trans women

But you say a male is a woman, so…..

Why does society have to comply with the pressure from some people who cannot acknowledge their sex category when it is important to acknowledge it.

Not one person on this planet changes sex from that which they were born. Yet a group of people feel they should have the right to demand society treat them as if they have changed sex. Instead of them understanding that they should acknowledge the sex they are, other people are emotionally pressured or coerced into acting as if that person’s sex category is irrelevant or has changed.

I don’t believe people who declare that they are supporting the protection of female sports categories when they will make exceptions such as this. If parkrun never collected and published first finishers, or rankings of any sort, it would be a different discussion. Yet they do.

As has been said many times before, just because you personally, a general ‘you’ don’t care, doesn’t give you the right to consent for others who do care.

There is only one set of results. Just a single big long list.

I disagree that it's the biologically decided duty of women to enable men at their own expense, yes.

I'm also never very impressed by 'my feminism is better than your feminism' things either, or being told that a good feminist would look away from the impact of men with gender identities and focus on - well. Things that men who identify as women would much prefer women to focus on, in order to stop presenting inconvenient boundaries to those men using them.

Much more important things than wanting equality of opportunity girls. Aprons on, misty smiles please, go and woman naicely.

so then what’s the problem? Why are TIM so dead set on entering as female? All parkrun need to do is not record any gender or sex info right? And if it’s not competitive, why record times? Why not just be a group of people off fr a run together? Solves all the problems right?