This is about prize money, not about the category existing. The original story and many of the posters seem to be saying that non-binary is a bad category that shouldn't exist.
When a person signs up for a race, they can check the box for male or female. If a person doesn't want to be labeled into those categories, there should be a "no classification" or "non-binary" category. They have a right to exist, a right to run a race, and a right to not be labeled into a category. Those are basic human rights.
But do they have a right to prize money? When women point out they should get equal pay for sports, the main arguments are that they are 50 percent of the population, do the same work, and are a clearly defined category. As the story points out, non-binary is not clearly defined and is a small percent of the population. So what reason is there for prize money? I say none, other than the race organizers want to promote that category.
Race forms don't have religion categories, but they do have age categories. We don't give prize money to age categories, although there is nothing wrong with doing that if the race organizers choose to.
So this is really about who we choose to recognize and celebrate in a race event. Organizers could include an Asian category, LGBTQ category or Baptist category if they think there is a reason for it. It is a sign of the times that they are choosing non-binary to celebrate, mostly because it is a real category that has not been recognized in the past. So yes, there is wokeness and virtue-signalling involved, but at least they are siding with freedom of expression. Many of the posters here are procrustean, on the side of forcing people into categories.
procrustean: marked by arbitrary often ruthless disregard of individual differences or special circumstances Procrustes: a villainous son of Poseidon in Greek mythology who forces travelers to fit into his bed by stretching their bodies or cutting off their legs
Do you think it's "a basic human right" for people not to be labelled according to our biological sex category in all contexts including medical care? Or just in some contexts like sports events?
If it really were "a basic human right" for people not to be labelled according to our biological sex category, then how come FINA - the governing body for competitive swimming and diving - has been allowed to put in place new rules requiring mandatory DNA sex testing for all minor-age and adult athletes worldwide subject to FINA regulations? I watched the presentation that FINA officials gave introducing the new rules, and none of the many human rights lawyers who were involved in crafting and approving the new rules seemed to think the FINA policy abridges "a basic human right."
Also, I find it a bit rich that right after criticizing others for "forcing people into categories" you did the same thing to poor old Procrustes.
If it's okay for you to use sex-based words like "son" and "his" in reference to a fictional figure in Greek mythology, how come you think it's unfair, old-fashioned, unreasonable and "ruthless" for others like me to note that RL people like the non-binary runners Jake Caswell and Zack Harris are male and that as such they have the same sex-based advantages in sports that all healthy, fit, able-bodied males their age have?
Since you were so kind to provide the definition for procrustean - "marked by arbitrary often ruthless disregard of individual differences or special circumstances" - I will do you a kindness in turn and share that the definition of arbitrary is "based on random choice or personal whim, rather than any reason or system."
You really think that classification by sex in sport is "based on random choice or personal whim rather than any reason or system" but classification by gender identity is based on reason, logic and science? To me, the total reverse is the case.
Also, please spell out exactly what you think are the "individual differences or special circumstances" that make Jake Caswell and Zack Harris not male? Or somehow less male than other blokes? What's so different and special about these guys that I am and others are "ruthless" for not noticing and paying regard to? I hope you are not suggesting that males who are same-sex attracted and sometimes wear colored nail lacquer and crop tops aren't real men. Because that's the kind of homophobia I thought most grown men got over ages ago.
What a sociopathic response. Straw-man questions and false suggestions that don’t relate to anything in my post. Only a sociopath would be that obtuse. If you have to resort to such blatant garbage, you have lost the argument.
I am curious as to where the suddenly feminist Rojo stands on the issue of abortion. Rojo appears to be trying to heroically protect the rights of women in athletic competition but at the same time he is cheerleading for Republicans in the elections who would take away the right for a woman to do what she deems best for her own health and welfare. Interesting as hell and if you fall for it you are the dunce.
He probably stands with the innocent female babies (not fetuses) that are in danger everyday of having their brain sucked out while their skulls collapse in the name of “reproductive rights“. Despite being so mainstream in the last 50 years, abortion is one of the most inhumane and disgusting ways of murder. It is currently unlawful to ignore the health of the mother in order to protect the baby, so don’t even try. Furthermore, while a baby is dependent on its mother it is a completely separate life form, with a separate heartbeat, so the whole “my body my choice“ is a complete fallacy.
Why would you be concerned about protecting the life of the mother if abortion is murder? At that point, if it came down to the mother or the fetus, wouldn’t it just be a matter of who you were going to murder? Please learn to think for a minute.
Do you think it's "a basic human right" for people not to be labelled according to our biological sex category in all contexts including medical care? Or just in some contexts like sports events?
If it really were "a basic human right" for people not to be labelled according to our biological sex category, then how come FINA - the governing body for competitive swimming and diving - has been allowed to put in place new rules requiring mandatory DNA sex testing for all minor-age and adult athletes worldwide subject to FINA regulations? I watched the presentation that FINA officials gave introducing the new rules, and none of the many human rights lawyers who were involved in crafting and approving the new rules seemed to think the FINA policy abridges "a basic human right."
Also, I find it a bit rich that right after criticizing others for "forcing people into categories" you did the same thing to poor old Procrustes.
If it's okay for you to use sex-based words like "son" and "his" in reference to a fictional figure in Greek mythology, how come you think it's unfair, old-fashioned, unreasonable and "ruthless" for others like me to note that RL people like the non-binary runners Jake Caswell and Zack Harris are male and that as such they have the same sex-based advantages in sports that all healthy, fit, able-bodied males their age have?
Since you were so kind to provide the definition for procrustean - "marked by arbitrary often ruthless disregard of individual differences or special circumstances" - I will do you a kindness in turn and share that the definition of arbitrary is "based on random choice or personal whim, rather than any reason or system."
You really think that classification by sex in sport is "based on random choice or personal whim rather than any reason or system" but classification by gender identity is based on reason, logic and science? To me, the total reverse is the case.
Also, please spell out exactly what you think are the "individual differences or special circumstances" that make Jake Caswell and Zack Harris not male? Or somehow less male than other blokes? What's so different and special about these guys that I am and others are "ruthless" for not noticing and paying regard to? I hope you are not suggesting that males who are same-sex attracted and sometimes wear colored nail lacquer and crop tops aren't real men. Because that's the kind of homophobia I thought most grown men got over ages ago.
What a sociopathic response. Straw-man questions and false suggestions that don’t relate to anything in my post. Only a sociopath would be that obtuse. If you have to resort to such blatant garbage, you have lost the argument.
Great response, mate! Instead of responding to and mounting arguments rebutting any of the many points I raised about what you said in your earlier post, all you have are slurs and aspersions:
Sociopathic
Straw-man
False
Sociopath
Blatant garbage
Rather than engage in desperate juvenile name-calling, how about you engage with the points I made and explain why they are off base and/or totally wrong?
Mara Yamauchi conveniently doesn't mention only 2 even ran under 3:10 and got any prize money which was a pittance compared to the total. A biological female who is non binary could have run 3:09 and got the prize money. I'm sensing some homophobic/bigotry. I think the non-nonbinary's get harassed and discriminated against by the same group who is homophobic. The womens winner who got $100k was not pre race drug tested... and Mara doesn't care? Seems like she picks and chooses based on her own biases and bigotry.
How do we even know Mara is biological female (she looks like she could be male to me lol)_ or about her chromosomes/testosterone levels, performance enhanced drugs etc. as she never was/is transparent herself.
This was really an odd thing to pick on, Mara advocates for a class for them to run in but is against letting them have prizes...
I guess a female (sex) runner just needs to non-binary up and win the third gender race. Put up or shut up time. The other option is a biological male that identifies as female and races non-binary can win. Then you'd have a female (gender) win 2 out of 3.
Female is female and it doesn't matter if we are talking sex or gender
I'm not convinced the authors, or most LRCers, have really thought about the actual purpose of prize money in races like this. I don't mean the meaning of the prizes to competitors in the race, but the actual reason they are offered by race organizers in the first place.
What a sociopathic response. Straw-man questions and false suggestions that don’t relate to anything in my post. Only a sociopath would be that obtuse. If you have to resort to such blatant garbage, you have lost the argument.
Great response, mate! Instead of responding to and mounting arguments rebutting any of the many points I raised about what you said in your earlier post, all you have are slurs and aspersions:
Sociopathic
Straw-man
False
Sociopath
Blatant garbage
Rather than engage in desperate juvenile name-calling, how about you engage with the points I made and explain why they are off base and/or totally wrong?
Your points are not salient and don’t deserve a reply. You are a sociopath because you are trying to hijack the conversation into a different realm with distractive talking points that don’t get to the heart of the question.
There is a simple metric to use: are you on the side of acceptance and human rights for all? Or are you promoting exclusion and against equal human rights?
Here’s an example, in your response, you put several phrases in quotation marks, as if you were quoting my post, but I never said any of those things or anything close to it. Pure sociopathic move, to attribute false quotes to someone.
Another sociopathic move: saying I am exclusionary because I called Procrustes “he”. You appear to be triggered by people who want different pronouns, so you weaponize it to try and blow up anyone who stands up for non-binary rights. There is nothing wrong with celebrating maleness and femaleness, I drink whiskey and watch cowboy movies, it is awesome. But I am also man enough to accept that there are others who are not like me and they need an equal space in our society.
I am against conformity in society, and non-binary activists are leaders who show is how gender conformity can be damaging to individuals and to society as a whole. It doesn’t mean everyone has to become non-binary, we just have to recognize that differences exist and they have a right to be equal.
And you seem to forget that I am not in favor of non-binary athletes earning equal prize money, and I am neutral on awarding any prize money at all to non-binary, that is simply the choice of race organizers. The male and female categories should always be equal and be the main focus. Allowing another category to exist does not hurt an event, it actually enhances our understanding of sport and humanity.
Using your mouthpiece to spread this backward-thinking transphobia is appalling.
Since you are so obsessed with identity, I'm a 50 year old white American male who loves running and follows professional running as a hobby. I have family members, colleagues and friends who are trans. For you to say there is no place for them to compete in our sport is a disgraceful. I applaud NYRR.
I hope others will join me in leaving this site for good.
Goodbye Johnsons. I hope someday in your old age your mind starts to open up a bit, but I won't hold my breath.
When Donald Trump just makes things up, people on the left recognize the danger in that. When they do it in these type of debates (a man can give birth), for some reason, they are totally oblivious to it. There needs to be a respect for objective scientific facts for society to function.
Even when he's right, he's wrong - the vast majority on the left will disagree with both.
This is a straw-man argument, and a really ineffective one at that.
Furthermore, while a baby is dependent on its mother it is a completely separate life form, with a separate heartbeat, so the whole “my body my choice“ is a complete fallacy.
That sounds like ‘separate but equal’ or other similar nonsense. Perhaps a bit more knowledge of the fetal heart and what it does (and doesn’t do) would help:
During pregnancy, the fetal lungs are not used for breathing—the placenta does the work of exchanging oxygen and carbon dioxide through the mother's circulation. With the first breaths of air the baby takes at birth, the feta...
Great response, mate! Instead of responding to and mounting arguments rebutting any of the many points I raised about what you said in your earlier post, all you have are slurs and aspersions:
Sociopathic
Straw-man
False
Sociopath
Blatant garbage
Rather than engage in desperate juvenile name-calling, how about you engage with the points I made and explain why they are off base and/or totally wrong?
Your points are not salient and don’t deserve a reply. You are a sociopath because you are trying to hijack the conversation into a different realm with distractive talking points that don’t get to the heart of the question.
There is a simple metric to use: are you on the side of acceptance and human rights for all? Or are you promoting exclusion and against equal human rights?
In general, people who disagree with your version of “basic human rights” are just arguing for or protecting their version of “basic human rights.” You can’t just assume that whatever your version of “basic human rights” are is the only valid and true definition.
Mara Yamauchi conveniently doesn't mention only 2 even ran under 3:10 and got any prize money which was a pittance compared to the total. A biological female who is non binary could have run 3:09 and got the prize money. I'm sensing some homophobic/bigotry. I think the non-nonbinary's get harassed and discriminated against by the same group who is homophobic. The womens winner who got $100k was not pre race drug tested... and Mara doesn't care? Seems like she picks and chooses based on her own biases and bigotry.
How do we even know Mara is biological female (she looks like she could be male to me lol)_ or about her chromosomes/testosterone levels, performance enhanced drugs etc. as she never was/is transparent herself.
This was really an odd thing to pick on, Mara advocates for a class for them to run in but is against letting them have prizes...
1 - you should maybe have checked MY's position in the WADA/UKADA testing pool when she was at her peak. She would have been tested numerous times both out of comp and post race. As nothing is known to the contrary, the evidence is that she was always clean and - unscientifically - she is the sort of person people would bet their house on being clean
2 - Implicit, surely, is that Prize money is for some hierarchy of high performance. For able bodied athletes, they can only be one of two sexes, so if they are in the senior open age group it makes no sense to pay them any money for performances that are worse than anyone racing in either of the two sexes' categories who receives no pay for their performance.
Here’s an example, in your response, you put several phrases in quotation marks, as if you were quoting my post, but I never said any of those things or anything close to it. Pure sociopathic move, to attribute false quotes to someone.
Another sociopathic move: saying I am exclusionary because I called Procrustes “he”. You appear to be triggered by people who want different pronouns, so you weaponize it to try and blow up anyone who stands up for non-binary rights. There is nothing wrong with celebrating maleness and femaleness, I drink whiskey and watch cowboy movies, it is awesome. But I am also man enough to accept that there are others who are not like me and they need an equal space in our society.
I am against conformity in society, and non-binary activists are leaders who show is how gender conformity can be damaging to individuals and to society as a whole. It doesn’t mean everyone has to become non-binary, we just have to recognize that differences exist and they have a right to be equal.
And you seem to forget that I am not in favor of non-binary athletes earning equal prize money, and I am neutral on awarding any prize money at all to non-binary, that is simply the choice of race organizers. The male and female categories should always be equal and be the main focus. Allowing another category to exist does not hurt an event, it actually enhances our understanding of sport and humanity.
It is generally the response of a narcissist to label those that don't agree with them as sociopaths.
Using your mouthpiece to spread this backward-thinking transphobia is appalling.
Since you are so obsessed with identity, I'm a 50 year old white American male who loves running and follows professional running as a hobby. I have family members, colleagues and friends who are trans. For you to say there is no place for them to compete in our sport is a disgraceful. I applaud NYRR.
I hope others will join me in leaving this site for good.
Goodbye Johnsons. I hope someday in your old age your mind starts to open up a bit, but I won't hold my breath.
For the most part, I've decided to try to stay off this thread and let the editorial speak for itself but feel I need to chime in here to correct what I view as a false statement.
I'm sorry you feel that way and feel that you are letting emotion get in the way of rationale thinking here.
. Let me be clear, what you wrote is incorrect. I 100% think trans athletes and non-binary athletes should be allowed to compete. I never said they shouldn't be allowed to compete. My issue is if they are competing in an elite division for prize money, it 100% needs to be in the sex of their birth.
If the NYRR only asked about sex, not gender, would that work? Perhaps the best option would be to have two categories - open and then a protected XX category - we take the names men, women, etc out of it.
But let me be clear, I don't have a problem with the NYRR having non-binary or trans categories as long as it's recreational. If they want to do that in the name of inclusiveness, go right ahead. I have a problem with them offering prize money..
I think the first draft title for article title was, "Gender identity has no place in elite sport" but we shortened it. The article was entirely focused on the fact they paid out prize money. Last year, I didn't write any columns about the issue as the division was only for recreational runners. I'd be happy to talk to you about this on the phone. If we chat, I think you'll learn I don't come from a place of hate. 844-538-7786. ext3
There is no human right to be a professional athlete.
The male and female categories should always be equal and be the main focus.
This is absurd. By separating the sexes, you are saying they are NOT equal. There should be 1 open race that is all-inclusive. Do we divide people by sex in the workplace, or in the public schools? Neither should we for athletic contests.
Using your mouthpiece to spread this backward-thinking transphobia is appalling.
Since you are so obsessed with identity, I'm a 50 year old white American male who loves running and follows professional running as a hobby. I have family members, colleagues and friends who are trans. For you to say there is no place for them to compete in our sport is a disgraceful. I applaud NYRR.
I hope others will join me in leaving this site for good.
Goodbye Johnsons. I hope someday in your old age your mind starts to open up a bit, but I won't hold my breath.
I'm sorry you feel that way and feel that you are letting emotion get in the way of rationale thinking here.
. Let me be clear, what you wrote is incorrect. I 100% think trans athletes and non-binary athletes should be allowed to compete. I never said they shouldn't be allowed to compete. My issue is if they are competing in an elite division for prize money, it 100% needs to be in the sex of their birth.
If the NYRR only asked about sex, not gender, would that work? Perhaps the best option would be to have two categories - open and then a protected XX category - we take the names men, women, etc out of it.
But let me be clear, I don't have a problem with the NYRR having non-binary or trans categories as long as it's recreational. If they want to do that in the name of inclusiveness, go right ahead. I have a problem with them offering prize money..
I think the first draft title for article title was, "Gender identity has no place in elite sport" but we shortened it. The article was entirely focused on the fact they paid out prize money. Last year, I didn't write any columns about the issue as the division was only for recreational runners.
There is no human right to be a professional athlete.
