Women get to have records too
Stop cheating or lose your funding.
Parkrun must protect women runners from transgender rivals – or risk losing their funding, says a report backed by Olympians.
The research paper by Policy Exchange, a think tank, found that at least three Parkrun female records were held by biological men as a result of its policy of allowing entrants to self-identify their gender.
The report – backed by Olympic medallists Sharron Davies and Daley Thompson and tennis player Martina Navratilova – warned that female athletes risk being alienated unless grassroots sports from cricket and rowing to football and tennis could provide fair and safe play.
That is, the report warned that there’s a risk that female athletes will be alienated. The female athletes themselves aren’t doing anything risky; it’s the allowing male athletes to cheat that’s the risk.
Parkrun is among sports highlighted by Policy Exchange where grassroots policies allow for participants to self-identify their gender. This contrasted with elite or competitive levels in the same sports where there were protected female categories or there were restrictions placed on their participation.
You mean there were restrictions placed on the participation of male athletes, right? Not the participation of protected female categories.
Its analysis suggested it placed women at a competitive disadvantage, citing how the winning woman from the London Marathon in 2023 would be beaten by the 231st ranking male, or that every British long-course swimming record set by an elite female swimmer has been beaten by a teenage boy.
The report highlighted Porthcawl’s Parkrun record time of 18 minutes 53 seconds in the female 45-49 category which was set by transgender runner Siân Longthorpe. It beat the previous record by one minute 13 seconds, prompting an Olympic long distance runner to say the record was “probably now out of female hands forever”.
The unfairness seems so blindingly obvious, doesn’t it?
I think the ‘restrictions placed on their participation’ point is getting at the sports that allow transgender participation subject to hormonal levels, etc., which doesn’t solve the male puberty element, but is at least some level of screening. Sports using simple self-identification are a couple of weekend events away from all records falling.
I wish we could abandon the phrase ‘biological males’ which sort of seems to concede too much. If we just used the term ‘males’, it might have more impact on the public. There is no difference that counts (at least in sports) between ‘males’ and ‘biological males’, though I realize that taking estrogen can make it more difficult for the trans identified males to succeed in elite male sport.
As far as how to establish the rules, the old rules were worthy of keeping. Only females can participate in the female category. I realize this made some women’s lives challenging if they were a little taller than expected or sort of mannish in their appearance, but surely that is better than saying that we’re gonna let males play as long as they say they are female, or take estrogen, or transitioned before puberty…they are not women, they cannot play.
Well, we can. I just call men men. It’s the Telegraph that prattled about “biological men” here. (To be fair, that’s probably because newspapers have to assume knowledge gaps in their readership.)
Why is it that something that is blindingly obvious to you and me, and probably to most of the others here, is not blindingly obvious to everyone?
I don’t know. I’ll never understand it.
Re #3, #4 and #5, it might be worth noting that Helen Joyce says that the number one most common question she was asked after someone knew she was writing on trans issues was “now, a trans woman, is that a man who thinks he’s a woman, or a woman who thinks she’s a man?” The language is still confusing to the general public, so some overly specific language is probably in order.
On the topic at hand, I am a Parkrunner. Only done 12 so far, but I mean to go on. I’m also only two steps removed from the female record holder, as a family member knows her, although I don’t know the details. ParkRun is indeed welcoming, especially to reforming couch potatoes like me. I’m not sure how the problem of getting the categories correct will be managed though, as participants sign up and self declare, no proof needed, so any cheat could claim to be female. And it’s casual, meant to be easy to join, so asking for documentation would be against the concept.
That said, an obvious man is a man, and I think that it should be possible to lodge a protest of someone’s classification.