A protest of trans-identified males in the female category

And I'm a coward when face-to-face with someone transgressing sex categories

Tom Ruen is a stats guy. He’s a software developer, and keeps Minnesota running age group records, as well as scoring Minnesota Runner of the Year. He could probably tell you the chances that running a 2:08 half-marathon, his slowest ever, 53% age graded, would earn him $100. But it doesn’t take a statistician to see that his chances were quite good, as Ruen was one of seven finishers in the nonbinary category, the top three of who got prize money. That was the same prize structure as the male and female categories that had 720 and 704 finishers respectively.

To be clear, Ruen does not directly identify as nonbinary. He is male and calls himself “gender nonconforming,” a sex-free super-category he added to the rules for Minnesota Runner of the Year in 2022 to include the new nonbinary entries. He expanded the MNROY men’s competition into an all-gender one, so males, females, and nonconforming runners can all score points if they make the standards.

As a race results and award scorer, and record keeper, he is passionate about maintaining the female category for those born female. He entered the nonbinary category of the City of Lakes Half-Marathon in Minneapolis to protest that “males can self-ID as female with no biological requirement, nothing at all,” he said. “I appreciate having a third category, nonbinary, and consider it a good option for anyone who wants to compete without providing their sex for whatever reason.”

In 2022, trans-identified male Andrea Taylor ran City of Lakes in 1:28:12, a Minnesota state record for 50-year-old women. This is an example of what Ruen was protesting.

The race organization still recognizes Taylor’s record, though Ruen and Taylor jointly agreed to remove Taylor’s sex from the result. RaceberryJam, a site that keeps Minnesota age group records, removed Taylor completely from the record. Though Taylor could have entered the male or nonbinary category without any chance of unfairness, he chose the female category where there was a chance of unfairness. In his many years of running as a male, Taylor never set an age group record.

Full disclosure: I live across the street from Taylor and we talk almost every day, but I have never said that I think what he’s doing is unfair. He knows how I feel about trans-identified males (I use the term trans woman when speaking to him, and that’s the term he uses to describe himself) in women’s sports, and four years ago, soon after he’d started taking hormone replacement therapy, he said he’d “follow the science” with regard to which category to compete in. Well, the science is definitive, that HRT does not mitigate male advantage, but he still chooses to race in the female category. I want to be kind and maintain a neighborly relationship but it’s becoming increasingly uncomfortable. What to do? (Andie, if you’re reading this, I’m sorry I was not been brave or skilled enough to talk to you first)

Ruen ran with a self-made chart showing three categories—male, female, and gender nonconforming—and a sign that read Restore the Female Category on his back. He chatted with people during the race and afterward, and found most people supportive of the idea that women’s sports should be for natal women. But then, people usually agree when talking face to face to avoid conflict, as I aptly demonstrated a few minutes later (I watched the race).

He admits that the nonbinary category is another place for males to win but feels it’s worth it if it keeps trans-identified males out of the female category, and that prize money for the nonbinary category will go away when sponsors see that it’s consistently going to males.

Like many other races with nonbinary categories, that pattern played out at City of Lakes, as at least two of the three money winners are male.

Second place Krys Belc uses he/him pronouns (below).

Winner Maxi Erickson clocked a 1:28 for $300. He was 22 minutes behind the male winner and 13 minutes behind the female winner, both of who also earned $300.

Ruen’s protest caught the attention of the very vocal nonbinary runner Jake Caswell. Caswell has profited handsomely off the NYRR’s nonbinary prize structure. He’s t.o’d that some pretender, who Caswell assumes is not “really” nonbinary, has entered the nonbinary category. The irony that virtually anyone for any reason can self ID into the nonbinary category eludes Caswell.

In a letter sent to all nonbinary entrants, City of Lakes race organizers promised not only equal prize money, but the same social media and press coverage, and finish tape moment as the male and female winners. The letter concluded, “We include this division because we want everyone to feel like they have a place in running.”

“That feels really good, the validation by the running community,” said the nonbinary winner who now goes by Maxi. Maxi was listed as Maxim Erickson during his recent undergraduate days at the University of Minnesota.

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Erickson doesn’t strictly enter races that offer a nonbinary category—"it’s not a deal breaker,” he said. In an act of cowardice, I did not ask the obvious follow-up question—which category do you choose when nonbinary is not an option? I’m going to make an ass of u and me and say male.

Erickson feels like the nonbinary category is not really “taking up space” and that “no one really cares” about places or sex categories. When I asked about the $300 prize, he laughingly said it kept him in shoes. He again said RunMinnesota, who organized the race, had been awesome, and that equal everything for the nonbinary category was validating. (It occurs to me that I have never sought validation as a woman from a race).

Erickson said he had qualified for Boston (maybe with the nonbinary qualifying time which was the same as for females, but slower than for males) but didn’t want to run a marathon major until he could break 3 hours. Also, he was annoyed that TV coverage of the 2023 Boston Marathon focused on Eliud Kipchoge, a legend in the marathon, instead of the nonbinary category, because “50% of the field was not men.”

At this point, I gathered whatever courage I had to mention that someone was running in the nonbinary category as a protest to males self ID-ing into the female category. I asked Erickson what he thought of this. “So, he wants to make them enter in the nonbinary category?” he asked. I said that no one was making anyone do anything, that this protest was about suggesting that males who identify as women run in the nonbinary category, not the female category. To keep the female category for natal women.

“I don’t like that,” Erickson said, his tone changing to defensive. “Transwomen are women. It’s you against yourself, everyone’s competing against themself. I don’t think anyone is concerned about it [unfairness]. People get caught up in biological advantage—I was passed by so many cis women. I don’t think it’s fair or kind the way we talk about transwomen.”

Having just been hit with every patently untrue talking point of gender ideology (no one is concerned about unfairness in a race!?) by an obviously male person who claimed to be neither sex, I walked away, stunned but not brave. And feeling bad about it. What should I have said in this situation? What would you have said?