Parkrun, trans athletes and fairness to women

‘The hopes and dreams of female people matter. Many female runners want to know their run time compared with other females in their age group.’ Photograph: Tom Corban/Rex/Shutterstock

For years, women have been asking for fairness in all sporting events, including parkrun. There is nothing “rightwing” about that (Why have rightwingers made even parkrun a battleground for trans people?, 14 February). Any event that reports results separated into male and female categories, as parkrun does, is acknowledging that sex matters in sport.

Many parkrunners value their achievements, which include overall placing by sex and age category, and age-graded score. But parkrun’s policy is that male runners may register as female based on their “identity”. As a result, some female course and age-grade records are held by male runners. The hyperbolic talk of requiring genital checks to change this is disingenuous. Parkrun does not carry out age or sex checks on anyone. All we want is that when parkrun asks people to register by sex and age, it indicates that “sex” means sex at birth, as World Athletics and UK Athletics recommend. Runners who don’t want to state their sex have two other options: “another gender identity” or “prefer not to say”.

But rather than amending its registration policy, parkrun has hidden the problem by deleting the records of many men and women. Each week, there will still be males recorded as “first female”, bumping female runners down in their own category. It’s less than two months since parkrun celebrated a new women’s parkrun world record. It mattered then. Now parkrun is telling women who value their running achievements that the feelings of trans-identifying males matter more than theirs.

Parkrun is fully inclusive – anyone can turn up and walk or run, for free. There is no need for it to be a vehicle for identities as well – and using it for this purpose is unfair to women, who care as much as men about success, recognition and excellence.

Fiona McAnena

Director of sport, Fair Play For Women

• Jonathan Liew claims female parkrunners who want to compare run times with peers of the same age and sex are “the radical trans exclusionary police”, “useful idiots on social media” and part of “the rage machine”, and that the issue “isn’t really about sport at all”. This is all astonishing hyperbole. I am a leftwing feminist academic whose expertise is in women and sport, a Labour member, a director of the politically left Woman’s Place UK, and a founder signatory of the Labour Women’s Declaration. This denigration of female runners who campaign for their own grassroots sport categories as anti-trans and rightwing is offensive and reminiscent of historical battles for female-only sport over 100 years.

Parkrun offers four categories: female, male, “prefer not to say” and “another gender identity”. Trans people should, of course, be included – trans men in female categories, if they so wish. But trans women, most of whom retain a 10% male performance advantage, can surely register in one of the other three categories. Because the hopes and dreams of female people matter. Many female runners want to know their run time compared with other females in their age group. Just like male runners. Course records in the one female category should celebrate the fastest female runners. How is that a rightwing outrage? The left leaves a wide-open goal for the right if it denies female runners even one female-only category.

Cathy Devine

Manchester

• Thank you, Jonathan Liew, for your thoughtful piece. As a regular parkrunner, a cis woman and someone with a close family member who is a trans woman, I have a fair amount of skin in this game. I welcome running alongside trans women just as much as anyone else in my community. That is what community is – welcoming humanity in all its beautiful difference – and why parkrun is anathema to those who wish to police the boundaries of acceptability according to their narrow and reactionary definitions.

I disagree with Policy Exchange rightwingers (and those helping to spread their prejudice), but they are welcome to run alongside me at parkrun. They might just get out of their echo chamber long enough to meet the human beings they are so keen to write off as nothing more than an ideology to be disparaged. I can’t promise they won’t get a worse finish time though. Hate slows you down.

Name and address supplied

• To talk about a desire to “erase trans women from physical sport” is hyperbolic; no one, as far as I’ve been able to tell, wants anyone erased from sport. All that certain women – including me – would like is for everyone to participate in the right sports category for their sex.

Jacqui Lewis

London