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When registration for the 2023 Boston Marathon opened earlier this week, runners had three gender options they could use to register for the race: man, woman, and nonbinary.
The nonbinary category is new for the race, which has been held since the late 1800s. It’s also unnecessary. The marathon was already all-inclusive before the Boston Athletic Association made this change: It had divisions open for male runners and female runners alike. Biology says two genders exist, so there is no need to include other ones.
Although some people identify as nonbinary, that doesn’t change biological reality. Logically, road races should have two categories: one for adult females and another for adult males. Nonbinary people are one or the other. And although a tiny percentage of the population is born intersex, that doesn’t change the core argument here. Most intersex people don’t identify as some made-up gender. Generally, they’re closer to one of the two genders than the other.
Sadly, the Boston Marathon is not alone in feeding into this wokeness. More than 200 road races across the country have a nonbinary category for runners, according to nonbinaryrunning.com. These include local 5Ks and bigger races such as the Brooklyn Marathon and half marathon. Last April, more than 20,000 runners competed in the two events in Brooklyn. Eighty-two of them ran in the nonbinary division, according to the New York Times. This is happening across the pond, too; the London Marathon just added a nonbinary category, meaning five of the six major marathons of the world will soon allow runners to register as nonbinary.
The problem with this move, besides denying biological reality, is that it could take spots away from hardworking women who want to run a marathon. The Boston Marathon usually has about 30,000 runners; some spots that could have gone to women will likely now go to male runners who identify as nonbinary.
Typically, people qualify to run in the Boston Marathon by showing they can run a marathon in under a certain time, and the time varies by age group (unless they raise at least $5,000 for charity). The nonbinary category uses the women’s standards of qualifying for the race, which permit registrants to run it up to 30 minutes slower. Therefore, biological men who identify as nonbinary can qualify for the race using those times. (Biological males can already compete in the women’s category if they identify as female.)
Unfortunately, more road races will likely have nonbinary categories in the coming years. For those who want sanity to prevail on the gender identity issue, it’s a sign that the woke absurdity isn’t stopping any time soon.
Tom Joyce (@TomJoyceSports) is a political reporter for the New Boston Post in Massachusetts.
