Everyone belongs in parkrun – Why trans-inclusive community sport matters for everyone

Running has a unique ability to make you feel like you belong to something bigger (even briefly). For parkrunners, that feeling happens every Saturday at 9am. It’s a global ritual that asks nothing of you except to show up.

As its slogan promises, parkrun is free, for everyone, forever…

At its grassroots best, sport has always been a meeting place, not a battleground. But once again we’re bewildered and saddened by the news that 10 sports bodies – including parkrun – have received legal letters threatening action unless they exclude trans women from women’s categories.

Why target parkrun – when it’s non-competitive?

parkrun has been one of the great public mental and physical health success stories of the last two decades. It’s free. It’s inclusive. It’s non-judgemental. It’s entirely run by local volunteers.

Participants are reminded – even on the start line – that it’s “a run, not a race”. People can walk, run with their children, push a buggy. Nobody ever finishes last in parkrun, because the official Tail Walker will always be behind them.

parkrun is not a fierce competition that pits people against each other. It’s a welcoming space that has brought people out of isolation and into community. People of all ages, people with disabilities, people recovering from illness, people who needed a reason to leave the house.

Custodial parkrun is even part of the prison system, giving inmates the opportunity to run or volunteer, and become part of a recognised community that might help them reintegrate into society on their release.

parkrun has, in the most literal and unglamorous sense, saved lives. And it has done all of that precisely because it chose people over politics.

The need to belong is human, not gendered

When these debates heat up, the framing becomes: trans women on one side and everyone else on the other. But that’s not how most of us experience sport, or community, or life. We are all just people who want to feel that we have somewhere to go and something to look forward to.

Trans women and trans men who parkrun go for the same reasons as everyone else: to run (or walk, or volunteer) and be yourself, without the need to explain.

The real cost of exclusion

We’ve written before about the exclusion of trans women from the Women’s Institute and Girlguiding. These organisations had, for years, successfully included trans members as part of their commitment to creating spaces where women could belong.

We said then that excluding trans people doesn’t make us safer. It just causes real harm to people who are simply trying to live their lives.

The same is true with parkrun, and the stakes feel just as high. Because sport, just like the WI and Girlguiding, isn’t just about the activity. It’s about the community.

Having a routine, seeing familiar faces, feeling like you matter – these things are the difference between isolation and connection for so many of us.

Trans people already face some of the highest rates of loneliness, anxiety, and depression of any group. They are far more likely to be victims of harm than to cause it. Removing them from the spaces that offer community and belonging causes real damage to some of the most vulnerable people among us.

Exclusionary policies don’t only harm trans people

The moment you start policing who belongs and who doesn’t, anyone without the “right documentation” or whose appearance doesn’t “match” what a volunteer at a check-in desk expects becomes vulnerable.

In the case of parkrun, who will be expected to police gender? The volunteers who give up their Saturday mornings to help out at their local event?

The people tasked with enforcement face an impossible job. When communities have to enforce these policies, they become sites of suspicion rather than welcome – and often fall apart. We’ve seen multiple WI groups around the UK close since the trans exclusion policy was introduced.

It is also important to note that the organisations implementing these tactics – aimed at limiting the rights of trans people to play sport – are the same ones responsible for restricting women’s access to reproductive freedom, plus other campaigns that seek to roll back essential gains (such as marriage and parental rights for same sex couples).

Protect inclusive sport 

With local elections approaching, we’re hearing a lot about what communities need. About loneliness and belonging. As NION Women, we don’t think excluding people from free Saturday morning runs is the answer.

We are mothers, daughters, friends, colleagues, runners, swimmers, gymnasts. We are women who believe that the freedom to move, to play, to belong, should be protected for everyone.

In a moment when division is being actively cultivated, we believe the simplest most radical act is to keep running. Together.

If you feel the same way, join over 100,000 women in the UK who have signed our open letter in support of the trans+ community.