this post was submitted on 23 Jul 2024
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I mean factor 2 is a bit much but if you want everyone to finish roughly in the same time frame distribution, you either have to do a shorter route or have the women start earlier. Otherwise you will have a decent time gap between male and female race finishers, which looks even worse if u ask me.
Gender equality is usually not about physical performance because everyone knows that there is a gap there that wont go away anytime soon. Its about socioeconomic factors like pay, medical issues, etc
But why have routes based on gender? They could just have had two routes to choose from and let it be up to the individual.
That’s the way it should have been done. I can fun a 5K in about 40min. I know plenty of woman who kick my ass up and down the street based on that time.
Because there's a cash prize involved. Many male runners could easily snag the prize that's supposed to encourage women to also participate in sport.
Yes, you can find plenty logical flaws in this system. But it's a matter of perfect being the enemy of good.
The hope is that it's better for gender equality to also offer prize money for the fastest of some rather arbitrary group ("women"), because then they have any chance of winning at all.
The downside is that it leads to all kinds of conflicts, because what in the absolute flying fuck is a woman?
Why would you want everyone to finish roughly at the same time though? I'm sure there would be plenty of woman who could finish 5km much faster than some men would finish 10km.
Sure, but the average distribution is going to have most men running faster than most women.
Math is apparently still hard. I even specifically wrote "distribution" but i guess that was not enough.
Usually for these races they will set a cut off time and also block off traffic for that time frame only. Personally i am with you and would find it cool if they did the same race and see a few very athletic women overtaking most of the average performing men.
I don’t see the issue in letting everyone run the same 10 km at the same time. A man will probably finish first, so what? Equality is not about being the same, it’s about being equal. You can easily have separate results for men and women. In fact, that’s pretty standard for these kinds of amateur races in my experience. You can also have multiple start times based on self reported running speeds. Also pretty common and avoids slow people being in the way of fast people.
Women are not inherently less physically adept 🤲🤦🏽♀️
Are u one of those "statistics and math are sexist and racist" people? Ask any athletic trans person that is on HRT, they will tell you how much of a difference it makes. Of course there are more and less athletic people and training can get you really far, but there are limits to how far that will take you.
Ok, I will. hey me are u a little weakling after starting hrt? No. Thx me! But seriously, there is more variation between individuals than the two data sets as a whole in almost every biological data point. As any biologist\medical researcher will tell you. No I don't think statistics and math are sexist and racist. But I am aware of the fact that people in power will use them along with bad science in general to popularize and legitimatize their ideology. Also gender doesn't equal sex and hormones are not the only determiner of sex.
I didnt say you become a weakling on MTF HRT, but in races specifically you need every little bit of power and endurance you can get. A few percent points make the difference between winning and completely average performance. Its not fair and i agree that we have to treat this knowledge with care so that it doesnt get abused for shitty ideology, but ignoring it in cases like this isnt always the smartest move.
This a for charity run. There is no need to force all women to run a shorter route on the idea of less athletic aptitude. The idea that every woman who is a top athlete would be bested by a man with same training and diet is beside the point, and also not proven by research and is almost impossible to set controls for.
“Cash prize” requires some amount of fairness, and when a fairly average male time can beat world record female times, having them classed separately makes a lot of competitive sense.
It’s somewhere between a fun run and a professional race.
Just say your a misogynist and move along