I've published a column with Olympian Mara Yamauchi as my guest co-author: Gender identity has no place in sport

You’ve completely missed the point. A completely mediocre male runner got to enter into his own separate category and take home the same prize money as the winners of both the mens and womens races. As a man, I have the opportunity to enter into a race, put up an entirely mediocre result, and take home the same amount of prize money as the real winners? A woman doesn’t get to decide her race is too competitive and enter the non binary race and expect a better payout- a man can. A man just ran 15 minutes slower than an elite woman and took home first place and full prize purse while the same woman received absolutely nothing. NYRR doesn’t have to siphon money away from another category into the non binary category for men to have a clear advantage now over women. It’s the exact opposite of equality and it’s being paraded as progress. It’s completely backwards and you somehow can’t see it.

Rojo and the rest are all welcome to start your own races and not have anything other than male or female as gender divisions. But I don’t see why it’s any skin off your nose that a big money marathon decides to have a non-binary division. It’s their race, and they can divide their prize money however they want.

All of this whining is essentially about some people who don’t want a world with anything but men and women, as though non-binary people haven’t also been part of the population since there have been humans. And you don’t want recognition or equality for anyone not meeting the man or woman definition you imagine.

Get over it. Nobody is guaranteed any prize money in a race, so you can’t possibly be losing out.

I’m literally the opposite of a misogynist, while you openly endorse segregation and discrimination. You’ve been so indoctrinated that you can no longer use good reason when it comes to this.

Does it warm your heart when you “win” a women’s division and the award essentially implies that you ran well - for a woman….

This is false because, just like a man has that opportunity (to lie is what you mean), so does a woman, including winning prize money because we all agree that several women would’ve run faster than the fastest nonbinary.

But lying about one’s gender isn’t the point here, and non-binary is not an “opportunity” for men and women to make money.

Umm... ever heard of Donald Thomas? He started high jumping in January 2006, finished 4th in Commonwealth Games two months later, and won the World Championships the next year.

worldathletics.org

Donald THOMAS | Profile | World Athletics

Link:www.worldathletics.org/athletes/_/1417...

And I bet Lauryn Williams had less than five years of experience in bobsledding when she won a silver medal in Sochi.

It would be weird if women put themselves down for not being faster than men.

I am not against the nonbinary division itself. If that makes some people feel better about themselves, so be it. I am even open to the idea of prize money in the division, if that does not take away from prize money for other runners.

However, unless the money was given by a sponsor specifically for this purpose, NYRR is taking money away from something else. Looking at the results of nonbinary division, I don't think it has the depth or the quality to warrant prize money in thousands.

A guy in his 20s won prize money for running 3:09. More than a hundred women, including 19 of them over 40, ran faster than him. How many of them got any money? Does this guy feel better about himself for winning prize money for such a mediocre performance? Does he feel bad for any of the women who ran faster than him and got no money?

I know NYRR can spend their own money however they want to. But we also have the right to express our displeasure for this totally unequitable outcome.

Taking a brief break from the culture wars….

Yes, there is no reason to give prize money to hobby joggers. There is far too little money in this sport and directing any $ to people who are not trying to earn a living running is misguided. Whether or not to limit any prize money to the elite fields, or to use a more rigorous time standard, I’m not sure what’s best

No, I haven't heard of those people. Obviously.

I wasn't claiming or suggesting I'm omniscient or have knowledge of all sports. That's why I used the phrase "I've never heard of" rather than saying "there's never been another athlete."

But my point still stands. It's extremely rare and unusual for someone who takes up a sport for the first time at age 37 like Barrett did to become a provincial, national and continental champion in that sport within 2-3 years, and to be selected to represent their home country in the Olympics within 5 years.

Barrett was able to rise so fast and dominate in women's archery because Barrett is a big strapping, normally developed adult male and the competitors in Canada and the Americas that Barrett bested are all female.

IIRC, the top female archer Barrett beat out for the chance to represent Canada at the Tokyo Olympics was put at unfair disadvantage when competing against Barrett not just by not being male like Barrett is, but because in her recent archery career she was going through some female-specific experiences that tend to be handicapping in sports - pregnancy, childbirth, maternity and breastfeeding. These are matters that Barrett and other males will never have to deal with or worry about. Males can have truckloads of kids without it affecting their performance and careers in sports at all. But that's not the case for females.

Now that I've looked them up, I see that Donald Thomas was 22 when he took up the high jump after being a basketball player. Lauryn Williams was 30 when she took up bobsledding after an extremely successful career as an elite track athlete.

Stephanie Barrett was 38 when Barrett took up archery and began entering women's competitions and trouncing female competitors in the sport. Unlike Thomas and Williams, Barrett does not appear to have been an ace athlete in another sport in Barrett's teens, 20s or earlier 30s.

You're literally promoting transphobic rhetoric. You are literally scum. Just leave people be and go cry about this by yourself. I don't give a flying f*uck if you've been to the Olympics or not, you're still a piece of sh*t for posting this. The people competing in the non binary category are doing awesome things for the sport and so is the NYM. Finally, you LITERALLY HAVE NO IDEA IF THE RUNNERS COMPETING IN THE NON BINARY CATEGORY ARE BIOLOGICALLY MALE OR FEMALE. YOU HAVE NOT SEEN THEIR GENITALS. It is literally an expression the same way that you express your gender. Get that through your thick, dumb skull.

Yes that is a bit like saying having a women's category but not giving them any prize money.

It’s called “separate but unequal”, which is one step above “separate but equal” on the segregation scale.

Capitals aside, those competing in the non-binary category are whatever they say they are. That means that some will be biologically male but perceive themselves as female or "other" - or they would not be "non-binary". As a biological category it is meaningless - unlike male and female sports. It is a social category only. Like belonging to a certain club.

You literal as*hat. Since when have you been required to prove your biological sex when signing up for a race? It's literally divided by gender. Again, back to my point for all you pea brained motherfu*kers . . . YOU DONT KNOW THEIR SEX BECAUSE YOU HAVEN'T SEEN THEIR GENITALS. It's whatever the runner writes down (aka their expression). You sitting in your armchair have no authority of who anyone's gender. You literally can't even prove to me that the men's and women's pro catagory winners are their biologically male or female.

If you have an honest argument, please make it. To claim you can't tell the biological sex of 99% of the people you see (in skimpy running clothes) at the start of a running race is simply dishonest. Also, their sex is not "whatever the runner writes down", that's gender expression, not sex.

Yes, that's what I'm saying. Races are divided by gender not sex at every single level (aside from the very very very top). There are not race officials inspecting people's genitals at the start line to make sure everyone entered the thier sex assigned at birth catagory. You clearly have a closed mind. You can make all the assumptions you want about peoples gender AND sex, but at the end of the day you have no idea what sex they are. What you see on the outside is their gender, dumbas*.

"No idea"? Really? You are lying.

Sports' categories have historically been based on sex, not on gender or gender identity.

Most of the people who run and win in the pro men's and women's categories will have been subjected to drug testing for PEDs - and those tests automatically sort out athletes who aren't doping by their sex. Because the normal range for natural testosterone in the two sexes is totally different, with no overlap between the two groups (the ranges WA uses are 0.2-1.68 nmol/L for females; and 8.8-29.3 for males).

Anyone running in the women's category who has a T level beyond a certain point - I think the WADA and USADA cutoff is 1.7 nmol/L - has to take a pregnancy test (because pregnancy is the single most common reason for elevated natural T in women). If the athlete turns out not to be pregnant, further testing will be required to determine if the athlete is doping, has a health problem needing urgent investigation (such as PCOS or a life-threatening, testosterone-secreting tumor), is male with a DSD, or is a normally-developed male who is cheating.

The idea that the only way anyone can tell the sex of another person who is an adult or adolescent is by seeing their genitals is ridiculous. There are many physical tells - visual, aural, olfactory - that instantaneously give away the sex of adolescent and adult humans to other people who encounter them/us. It usually takes humans only a few seconds to very accurately sex the other people we encounter in the flesh or in non-filtered film and video footage based on their body and skull shape, size, overall proportions, voice, and the way they move. Many people can tell the sex of pre-pubescent kids just by the way they move too.

"Humans are acute observers of each other. We know a lot about each other at first glance. How we do that is an interesting question, especially as some people seem so good at it," said researcher Rick van der Zwan, a behavioral neuroscientist at Southern Cross University in Australia.

To see what other kinds of details people might glean from movements, scientists had volunteers watch clusters of dots shaped roughly like people. These were created by attaching lights on the real people and filming them as they either walked on a treadmill toward or away from a camera. "If you look at someone with just their joints illuminated when they aren't moving, it's difficult to tell what it is you are looking at. But as soon as they move, instantaneously, you can tell that it's a person and perceive their nature," van der Zwan said. "You can tell if it's a boy or a girl, young or old, angry or happy. You can discern all these qualities about their state, affect, and actions with no cues at all about what they look like — with no form at all, just motion."