In a groundbreaking decision on Monday, the Boston Athletic Commission ruled that transgender women can compete in the upcoming Boston Marathon as registered, biological females.
While the Boston Marathon has reportedly allowed transgender runners to compete in the race for “several years” now, some on social media have recently disputed the validity of transgender marathoners.
Glad to see this but cannot overstate the awfulness felt by seeing the public debate your validity as a woman. All the best to these women competing.
Boston, other marathons say trans women can compete as women https://t.co/ryRHqoNBv0
— Charlotte Clymer (@cmclymer) April 8, 2018
The debate was re-upped after Canadian Running magazine published an interest piece on the subject.
The article, titled “First Three Transgender Women Preparing To Race Boston Marathon,” sparked public interest after it featured a spotlight on several transgender women planning to compete in the Marathon later this month.
The feature piece sparked renewed public concern on the issue, with many people calling the decision to let athletes — who were born male — qualify and compete as females. The Boston Marathon has one of the most stringent qualifying times for both genders, but female qualifying times are slightly slower.
But this week the Boston Athletic Commission dug in. They note that they’ll still ask to see marathoners’ ID cards but that doesn’t necessarily have to define their identity, either.
“Should such a situation arise, we would make every effort to address it in a manner intended to be fair to all concerned, with a strong emphasis on inclusion,” marathon organizers said in an interview with NPR.
This is a pretty wild take, even for Boston. Leave it to a leftist city like Boston to put inclusion over competition.
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