When the First Minister won’t even hold the line at Parkrun

SPORT IS SUPPOSED TO BE the last honest place left. You lace up, you toil, you take your mark, and the clock does not care about your feelings. A women’s category exists for one reason: because male bodies, on average, are faster, stronger and more powerful. That is not bigotry. It is biology. Move the starting blocks forward for one competitor and you have not been kind. You have cheated every woman on the field.

That is why I asked the First Minister a simple question: what action will he take to ensure that community running events held on publicly owned land in Scotland, including Parkrun, operate female categories on the basis of biological sex, as required by the Equality Act 2010 following the Supreme Court ruling?

John Swinney was dismissive. He was not responsible for running Parkruns, he said, before waving vaguely at guidance and judgments that “those who have a relevant governance responsibility” ought to follow. It was the verbal equivalent of a shrug at the finish line. Women had asked him to defend a fair race. He treated the request as an inconvenience.

That has been the theme of this government since Nicola Sturgeon. Women’s rights to safety, dignity and privacy – and, in sport, to fairness – have been sacrificed for the feelings of men who think they are women. In each and everycase, women’s priorities were deemed less important than the men’s.

The results have been devastating. A convicted double rapist, Adam Graham, who adopted the name Isla Bryson, was housed in a female prison. A man, Mridul Wadhwa, ran Edinburgh Rape Crisis Centre and told victims they should “reframe their trauma” if they wanted a female-only service. Schoolgirls have been filmed and sexually assaulted in toilets and changing spaces opened up in the name of inclusion – a boy charged after hiding a phone in a Dundee school lavatory; and a male sex offender, Katie Dolatowski, convicted of sexually assaulting a ten-year-old girl in a supermarket toilet. Parents have watched mixed-sex school toilets become official policy, then been forced into court to claw back the most basic privacy for their daughters.

Sport did not escape either. Riley Gaines trained for years only to watch a strapping male who could not dominate the men’s competition take a women’s title. Many will remember the last Olympics, when a trans-identified male boxer beat seven bells out of female competitors in a ring where one wrong punch can end a career, or worse.

Fortunately, the Supreme Court has since ruled that sex in the Equality Act means biological sex. The EHRC has updated its guidance. The law is no longer a fog on the track. Yet the Scottish Government has been slow to respond, and women are still having to rely on the courts to protect rights ministers will not enforce. In West Lothian, which I represent, parents of a primary school girl had to sue East Calder Primary and the council to secure access to a girls’ toilet. Lady Poole found the mixed facilities unlawful and indirectly discriminatory. A five-year-old should not need a judicial review to pee in peace.

Parkrun seems to be disregarding the landmark Supreme Court ruling

So my Parkrun question was not a stunt. It was the grassroots version of the same fight. Women across the UK have demanded that trans-identified males be barred from the female category after one such runner won more than a hundred events. Parkrun operates more than 1,400 events nationwide and still lets males register as female, post top times and shove women and girls down the rankings. It appears to be disregarding the landmark Supreme Court ruling.

A mass protest has now launched. The newly formed Reality Rules Runners UK club is calling on Parkrun to comply with the law. Olympic swimmer Baroness Sharron Davies, yachtswoman Tracy Edwards and the Women’s Sport Union have set a deadline: bar males from the female category, or stop pretending the category means anything. Baroness Davies has said the organisation should either abolish sex-based categories entirely or follow the Court’s guidance. There is no third option that is honest.

Failing to protect the female category sends a message to every girl at a grassroots club that her efforts are unimportant. Why grind through winter training, why chase a personal best, why bother turning up at all, if a man can take your spot on the podium? Fairness is not a luxury extra for elite sport. It is the point of having a women’s race in the first place. If the community 5k will not hold the line, do not be surprised when the next generation of girls never leaves the starting blocks.

This week the First Minister unveiled his Programme for Government with a great deal of focus on violence against women and girls. Colour me cynical, but I cannot trust a government whose track record on upholding women’s most basic rights is so poor, and which has had to be dragged through the courts by its own citizens to comply with the law it is sworn to uphold. You cannot preach about misogyny on Tuesday and treat biological women as an optional extra on Wednesday.

Fair play is not complicated. Women are not a handicap category for unsuccessful men. A level playing field means female categories for females — in prisons, in school toilets, in rape crisis centres, and on a Saturday morning at Parkrun. If John Swinney will not defend that, he should stop telling women he is on their side.