SheRaces Launches Women Only Race Series – Excludes Trans Women

In partnership with Ourea Events Sophie Power’s SheRaces organization announced a trail running series coming to the UK titled ‘SheRaces Trail Series ‘offering three events for “women only”.

Brought to you by @she.races and @oureaevents, we’re putting on three weekends of incredible trail running in beautiful locations across England: the Surrey Hills, Shropshire Hills, and the Peak District – all easily accessible by public transport.

Quickly calls on social media were made asking for a clarification on what “women-only” meant and how the group aimed to define this.

The organizers responded at length apologizing for the confusing language used in their launch marketing:

We launched the new SheRACES Trail Series yesterday, inadvertently initiating a debate about transgender participation at our events. I recognise that the language on the SheRACES Trail Series website was not considered enough at first. I want to clarify our approach to transgender participation and, at the same time, apologise for any offence that we might have caused. 

But the apology was just for the language used, not for the policy they enacted:

We are acutely aware that transgender women are already a marginalised minority group and that restricting their participation conflicts with the goals of objective two above. However, to actively include other groups of underrepresented women, we need to exclude those who are not cisgender women. 

What a sentence. “We are aware that transgender women are marginalized, so we go ahead and don’t do anything about it, but let them be marginalized at our events as well by excluding them.”

But the part that sticks out to me the most is that in their announcement they refer to a study suggesting that:

When campaign group SheRaces asked 400 female runners if they’d be interested in a women-only race, the response was conclusive: 87% said they would.

Here, they use the number of 87% to propel them to action and create a series to cater to these folks.

In their apology explanation email they cite:

In the survey, 12% of respondents said that they ‘would not enter a race’ if they allowed transgender women to compete.

I am very curious how this question was phrased for them to capture these results. But also, in this instance the same number ‘88% of respondents’ are fine with transgender participation, and yet the organizations are choosing not to act on it.

It’s also worth pointing out that the race organizers haven’t shared or explained on how they are planning to police this rule. Good luck not turning this into a shit show… or maybe it is already one.

It’s only January 2nd and oh my, the year is already off to a great start.