Abruptly removed
Parkrun has abruptly removed all gender, course and age records from its websites after rejecting a campaign to compel transgender runners to record their sex at birth.
With backing from former Olympic athletes such as swimmer Sharron Davies and marathon runner Mara Yamauchi, groups including Women in Sport and the Policy Exchange have been urging Parkrun to stop allowing entrants to self-identify their gender, accusing event organisers of “sex discrimination”.
What kind of sex discrimination? The kind where you allow, indeed encourage, men to infiltrate women’s sports and thus ruin the sports for women. That kind.
The Policy Exchange found that at least three Parkrun female records were held by transgender women and campaigners said that by having publicised records for age, gender, number of wins and courses, Parkrun must follow governing bodies like UK Athletics by protecting a natal category for women and girls.
If you’re going to publicize results then you can’t fake them. It’s only fair.
Parkrun had refused, arguing that it was a community event and public health charity that was primarily about inclusion rather than competitive performance, with records only designed to add interest and widen participation.
Then why have races at all? Why not just have aimless wandering around, instead?
The move, however, will be deeply controversial with the many runners who find the data and competitive element to be a major incentive for participation. Parkrun performance also currently counts towards a competitive athlete’s grading on the Run Britain website.
“Numerous men losing their s— over parkrun deleting/hiding data is quite a revelation,” said Yamauchi following the changes. “I knew men care deeply about their own sports but this is really something. Shame so many of them have had NOTHING to say all these years while their fellow men have decimated women’s sports.”
The campaign group Fair Play For Women added: “Parkrun have been letting men hold female course records. Women complained saying it was unfair. Rather than resolve the issue Parkrun has removed EVERYONE’S records from its website.”
It’s fine to trash women’s sports, but HOW DARE YOU mess with men’s?
It’s been very amusing. (Full disclosure: I run a bit.) For weeks, these dudes have been condescendingly saying that Parkrun is not a race, it’s about taking part and having fun in a friendly community atmosphere. So today, Parkrun seemingly takes them at their word, because the alternative is saying “no” to bossy transvestites, and we all know That Will Not Stand. And now the dudes are screaming and howling MUH DATAS, even though they’re doing most of the screaming and howling on a device which they could use to record their run data just fine.
Not ALL gender references have been removed; I noted that the results of my local still show the (self nominated) “gender” (they do not ask for sex, therefore the vast majority of the respondents will have answered in line with their biological sex rather than identity) of each participant. This shows, as usual, that more than thirty male runners crossed the finish line prior to the first female participant.
Surprise surprise eh.