It’s not ‘right wingers’ who turned Parkrun into a trans battleground

The Parkrun saga over times for transgender runners staggers on, but the organisation has only itself to blame. For want of a clear policy on sex and gender, Parkrun seems to have upset everyone. Last week, at least one event director quit as the company erased its run records wholesale in what looked like a knee-jerk reaction to a campaign against Parkrun’s view that competitors could self-declare their gender.

This is a fuss that never needed to happen but – like too many other organisations – Parkrun abandoned biological reality when it allowed everyone to choose their sex when it came to their times. Perhaps it imagined that there would be no real downsides and – besides – ‘it’s only a bit of fun, anyway’? But women were right to be furious when it turned out that biological males were taking records from women.