Have y'all been reading what they are actually reporting in the Boston Globe or other news outlets? This article provided a lot of clarifications for me:
A few key points and takeaways:
-There is NOT prize money for the non-binary category, because as always you have to be in the elite field to earn money, and the elite field complies to World Athletics standards. Nobody will be winning big for running 2:20.
-time standards for non-binary match the women's standards. This at face value is the most annoying and unfair detail, because theoretically you could have a person with male genitalia who, for example, runs 3:02, and would not qualify for the male division, but gets in via non-binary category. However, the BAA blocks against participants doing this on a large scale this year by saying that non-binary participants have to have run their time already registered as non-binary in the past year. The article reported that the BAA has had 14 non-binary entrants so far. This is in an attempt to make sure that the entrants actually identify as non-binary and are not slow male runners trying to take advantage and skirt the system. Maybe that number will drastically change between now and Friday (non-binary applications must be submitted between 9/12-9/16) but it seems like it's working so far.
-what about next year? Everyone will catch on and enter their qualifier races as non-binary. This is a real fear, but the BAA stated that the only reason they went with the women's standards this first year is because there is no data on how fast the non-binary category runs. My hope is that this means they will adjust accordingly with faster standards next year, meaning that if the 2023 non-binary performances in Boston trend more towards male times, then the next year they will have qualifying standards closer to the male standards than the female standards. I think if BAA responds appropriately, these standards could regulate themselves fairly over the long term. I'll try to provide an example to explain what I mean:
Let's say in 2023 the non-binary standard is 3:30, then with data on how fast that field runs, the standard in 2024 becomes 3:10. Better, but we'll still have slower males who probably don't truly ID as non-binary using it in qualifying races as a loophole. It's hard to police that kind of thing. Thankfully, if it gets more competitive, the higher proportion of people with male genitalia in this category will give the BAA more data to make the qualifying time faster. So if what most letsrunners fear will happen does in fact happen, the data will eventually bring the standards back to the male times. What I predict would happen as a a result is that non-binary people with uteruses might just go for the female standards because it would be easier to get in (this scenario kinda sucks for non-binary people with uteruses).
The non-binary category would then become effectively meaningless, if the standards become basically pretty close to male standards. Let's say this happens over 5-10 years and then BAA re-evaluates whether to keep the category or not. Maybe then they would switch to what others suggest- "female" and "open" categories. However, I do believe having some sort of "universal" third category, though annoying, could be the way that sports needs to go in the future to accommodate for social progress while still preserving fairness for women. When DSD athletes or trans women eventually become a conflict in every sport including the marathon, we can be more prepared for those athletes by directing them to a universal category that realistically will have standards somewhere between those for male and female.
That is one scenario and it all hinges on the assumption that males will take advantage of the non-binary rule. Another scenario would be if everyone registered for races under the gender that they truly identified with, in which case the non-binary category would not get very fast or very large in terms of spots allocated in the field, the BAA would probably only have to adjust the time standards a little bit, and the category would actually mean something for members of that marginalized group :)
TLDR- the non-binary standards are unfair, but BAA does a decent job protecting against people taking advantage of it for the first year. After the first year, it is up to the BAA to use data to continually adjust non-binary standards in order to accurately reflect how competitive it is made by people with male genitalia.
