What I Learned About Gender Issues When Reviewing Discussions on Parkrun Events

How do you feel about transgender athletes?

Not a member? Read for free here!

One of the characteristics of modern Western culture — as opposed to (say) fifty years ago — is the widespread acceptance of LGBT+ people. I am an ardent supporter of this.

I think, during my lifetime, every one of the great liberal democracies has recognised marriage equality. Usually, with some coyness, reluctance, and public discussion, but eventually, the idea of fairness and inclusion has won over the dinosaurs.

Funny thing, but it was the right side of politics here in Australia that pushed marriage equality through after the left-wing declined to make a decision.

When gay marriage was accepted in Australia, our Prime Minister Malcolm Turnbull said on national TV and cheered us:

What a day! What a day for love, for equality, for respect. Australia has done it.

I’ve written previously about changing attitudes, and I am firmly on the side of people being able to express themselves in ways that may not fit the traditional gender roles. What the hell business of mine is it what other people get up to in bed?

So long as it’s two — or more — consenting adults and I’m not involved, my approval or not has no relevance. I explained it in a previous story titled. End of a Curvy Girl.

However …

I do have some philosophical problems when there are non-consenting people involved. Saying that you are female — when born male — is one thing, but what if you aim to attack women, whether physically or take advantage in some other manner?

J K Rowling has written extensively — and been attacked for it — on the subject of gender identification and sexual violence.

Yes, I know. Not all men are violent misogynists, and not all transgender women have malice on their minds.

But here’s the thing. Look at a mixed-gender couple walking down the street. Nine times out of ten, the man is bigger than the woman and usually built heavier as well.

There are good reasons for women to be afraid of strange men. And if the criteria for being a woman and having access to women-only spaces is merely to say that you are a woman, then some strange men will take advantage.

Yes, I know it’s a small probability, but for a survivor of sexual violence, there’s always going to be that fear.

Men, cruising through a world of gender privilege, don’t even see this. But women do. Dismissing women’s voices is yet another example of unthinking male privilege.

Gender in sports

Again, think of that couple out walking. The man tends to be bigger, right? Longer legs, longer reach, more strength in the frame.

For some sports, those things are important. The very reason that there are women’s events and categories is to eliminate this gender bias. Sure, some women are more strongly proportioned than some men. But on average, it’s the other way around.

Once you get into competitive sports, there are advantages to having a man’s body in a woman’s world. They can run faster, throw further, jump higher, lift stronger and so on.

As Sebastian Coe says, “Decisions are always difficult when they involve conflicting needs and rights between different groups, but we continue to take the view that we must maintain fairness for female athletes above all other considerations.”

I’ve heard all the arguments about inclusiveness and fairness but from my point of view, this is not a binary black-and-white, us and them subject. It’s nuanced.

Just like gender, gender preference, and gender expression, there is a spectrum. Some people don’t fit neatly into the simple male/female divide. They might have extra chromosomes, or something hasn’t quite worked out in the womb, or other reasons that we have yet to discover.

The Pulitzer Prize-winning novel Middlesex deals with these in-betweeners in a sympathetic, understanding way. Their problems are our problems.

Some people prefer to present as the other gender — or no gender — for whatever reasons of their own. And of course, some people prefer the company — if I may put it that way — of their own or a mix of genders.

That’s just the way it is, and it’s a spectrum, not a divide. So it’s never a clear-cut simple sort of subject to discuss and everyone seems to have their own opinions, again on a spectrum.

Science weighs in

It is worth considering the interest of researchers in this emerging realm where transgender and sport intersect.

The benefits of an impartial, peer-reviewed examination of what is certainly a hot-button topic cannot be too highly stressed.

I have found two accessible studies, one from the Springer and the other from the Frontiers, worth looking at. Both are peer-reviewed journals.

Currently, there is no direct or consistent research suggesting transgender female individuals (or male individuals) have an athletic advantage at any stage of their transition (e.g. cross-sex hormones, gender-confirming surgery) and, therefore, competitive sport policies that place restrictions on transgender people need to be considered and potentially revised.

Individuals should not have to make a choice between being their authentic selves or being athletes. While trans athletes competing in various sports and athletic events raises interesting considerations of how certain morphologic and physiologic factors affect performance, these questions are not exclusive to trans individuals. There are wide variations within cisgender populations, even when excluding individuals with differences in sexual development. … Finally, if it is found that trans individuals have advantages in certain athletic events or sports; in those cases, there will still be a question of whether this should be considered unfair, or accepted as another instance of naturally occurring variability seen in athletes already participating in these events.

It appears that public opinion is out of step with science — as it is in so many areas — and it’s not a huge problem.

However, if we examine sports as a cultural entity rather than as something from the realm of impartial scientific observations, it is clear that there is a very real problem.

The unwritten rule is that women’s sports can exist, so long as not a single male is harmed by women’s inclusion. And yet, notice that women are expected to graciously move over and let trans athlete-inclusion change the meaning of the ‘women’s sports’ category.

It is sexist; we’d never allow the meaning of NCAA ‘men’s sports’ category to change so that current NFL and NBA teams could be included. We’d never allow 25-year-old men to compete in boy’s high school events. And we would never tell those boys to just ‘work harder’ if they wanted to win.

I am ready to hear men’s outrage. I am ready for men to step up and make sports equality happen for women’s sports. Lia Thomas showed all of us that the current rules are not fair and forcing her into the women’s category only engenders resentment.

That doesn’t mean, however, that transgender athletes should be excluded from the many benefits of sport. Instead, sport must adapt in creative ways that are not harmful to the women’s category.

Caballero added that majority opposition to trans people competing in sports and people transitioning genders could be because the majority of Americans do not personally know a trans person.

Only 39% of Americans say they know someone who is trans, compared with 31% in 2021, according to the new poll. Those who know a trans person are more likely to say trans athletes should be able to play on a team of their gender identity versus those who don’t know a trans person — 30% compared with 23%.

“It’s natural for people to have questions when they’re learning something new,” Caballero said.

Women who play sport must be able to compete in a fair and safe sporting environment. Transgender people must be able to compete in sport too. We must recognise that categories, including the female category, exist to ensure everyone can compete, to ensure inclusion. So the focus of effort should in our view be on providing for transgender competition in a way that does not deprive natal women of the chance to take part in fair and safe sport. Sport is much-prized by individuals and by society for good reason, and our vision is that no-one should be excluded from the joy, fulfilment and lifelong benefits it provides.

It is natural for cis women to regard trans women as yet another invasion of a female space. Fair competition for wages, rights, recognition, and political power is a constant. Men identifying as women are viewed as cheating in bringing male advantage into a female arena.

For example, in most democracies, women outnumber men. And yet, in their parliaments and leadership positions, these same nations are overwhelmingly male-dominated.

In this article the intriguing notion that men are attracted to power not by anything in their bodies but rather by their upbringing.

The underlying driver of male violence is not biological sex differences (male hormones or ‘brain wiring’), but the need to find and keep power. In the Western world, many men are taught from birth they have an inherent right to power — that boys are tough and strong and aggressive and have a right to anger, that girls are gentle and pretty and compliant; that emotional and domestic labour are women’s roles, and men are violent, protective, providers and dominant. Even in the most balanced families, little boys see these lessons play out in the books they read and the movies they watch and the media constantly feeding into their subconscious.

Whether or not this need for power carries over with hormones and surgery, it is viewed that way by cis women, who have also gone through the same cultural conditioning. Men are all about power; women are about nurturing. If there is a rule of thumb for viewing gender differentiation, it is this.

Parkrun: not a race but a community run

You know parkrun? These events are held every Saturday morning in thousands of locations around the globe. Participants at every level of fitness, age, and gender participate in a non-competitive five-kilometre run through parkland.

They are free, run by volunteers, and open to anybody. Elite runners, people in wheelchairs, children, senior citizens; everybody is welcome.

Mara Yamauchi — a top-level female runner in the UK — has got parkrun in her sights. She is on a crusade to have the volunteer organisation register transgender runners under their birth gender rather than how they currently identify.

Here are two perspectives from the social media:

“Males were running in the Female category at parkrun again today, causing massive unfairness for females. I know of at least five but could be many more.” -Mara Yamauchi on Twitter

“Mara Yamauchi, a two-time British Olympian runner, said the weekly 5km race was sending ‘an appalling message’ to women and girls by allowing transgender contestants to compete as females.” — Daily Mail

Under pressure from Yamauchi and others, parkrun removed certain results for its courses, such as course records by gender. Here is a perspective recorded in the Guardian.

Never mind the fact that parkrun has always maintained that it is a running event and not a race, has no prizes and hardly any competitive apparatus at all. You can do parkrun on a mobility scooter if you want. You can do it with a pram. You can dope yourself to the eyeballs. — The Guardian

While I have a certain amount of sympathy with Mara’s views, it is hard to support the vehemence with which she has expressed them, nor her chosen target.

Parkrun is a community group run by volunteers, donations, and a modest contribution from athletic gear sponsors. They simply do not have the resources to check gender declarations — how, I wonder? — nor do they enforce any sort of strict competition standards.

It’s not about records and times; it is about inclusion, and while the course records and so on were useful for the high end, they may also have put off those less athletic who were happy to find an event that not just tolerated walkers but encouraged them.

I’ve been a parkrunner for some time and although I am always working on my next PB, it’s not a race against anybody but yourself.

For one thing, it would be ridiculously easy to cheat. For out-and-back courses, nobody is at the turning point checking credentials. Just jog out of sight of the start line, have a smoke, and jog back. New course record!

Another point is that parkrun isn’t a huge commercial enterprise with PR experts and lawyers on tap to deal with unfair attacks. Just a bunch of volunteers, really.

Why don’t people with an axe to grind go after bigger targets, events that actually hand out prizes and award medals? Events with more rigorous standards; parkrun is notorious for its supposedly five thousand metre course lengths being over or under by fifty metres or so, depending on who paced out the course, not to mention where you stand in the pack at the start.

Parkrun and inclusion

Gender issues are, as I say, on a spectrum. Both for whatever facts underly assertions and opinions of those commenting. It’s not as simple as boys and girls.

parkrun is committed to promoting diversity, equity, and inclusion (DEI) not only within our events but also throughout our global network. We believe that fostering a diverse and inclusive culture is not just a goal but a fundamental aspect of who we are. — parkrun

Parkrun is about inclusion. Even if you are a man who has chosen, without any physical or mental reason, to register as a woman, so what?

They are a human being going out for a jog around the park on a Saturday morning to improve their fitness and in my book, that’s a big plus for community health, and whatever incentive works to get them off the couch and out exercising, that’s all to the good.

Attacking the community of parkrunners for some political reason is a low act. It is cowardly to hit out at a group that cannot easily respond.

Mara Yamauchi and others like her make all sorts of arguments to justify their views but in the end they are attacking the very people they claim to be defending. If parkrun reacts to their demands by buttoning up and checking birth genders of participants, that will cost money and they will either have to begin charging members a fee, or simply shut up shop.

What do you think?

It’s a complex subject. Prominent people have opinions on gender issues, sports, inclusion, and fairness, and they are often savagely attacked in mainstream media and on social media for expressing their views.

I don’t pretend to have any definitive answer — to be frank. I’m very glad that decisions are being made by those who are more informed and less opinionated than I am, but on the one hand, I see the need for inclusiveness, where every human being participates in the community as a valued member.

On the other hand, I don’t want to see the athletic achievements of women like myself pushed down by transgender athletes who have all the advantages of male bodies. This is a personal preference, and I respect what others prefer.

I wish people become more tolerant of each other when expressing their views on these issues non-judgementally. Reading social media comments on this topic can be a disheartening experience.

So — politely, please! — how do you feel about this difficult subject? My aim is to open a healthy debate and learn from different perspectives. I don’t think there are right or wrong but different perspectives for collective intelligence and diversity of opinions and experiences.

Thank you for reading my story.

Britni

I’d like to share a recent story on ILLUMINATION-Curated that I enjoyed reading. It was written by Martin D. Hirsch and is related to my topic.