Glenique Frank’s Marathon Is Not News

A trans runner placed 6160th out of 20123 in the London Marathon. Headlines and critics emphasize the cis women who ran slower.

by Evan Urquhart

People who oppose allowing trans women to compete against cis women really seem like they ought to have the wind at their back. After all, cis men outperform cis women in most athletic arenas, and supplemental testosterone is considered a banned performance enhancment for both women and men. So you really wouldn’t think opponents would have to scrape the bottom of the barrel over and over again to manufacture examples of trans women’s supposed advantages, but here we are, with multiple right wing outlets discussing the marathon of a 52-year-old trans woman who came in 6160th place at the London Marathon on Sunday, April 23.

Glenique Frank said she was “trying to spread joy and happiness with the rainbow love” according to a New York Post story headlined “Trans runner beat 14K women in London Marathon after running NYC as a man.” Instead she became the latest lightning rod for a moral panic that has left common sense and proportionality completely behind in its desire to find and punish trans women for the crime of existing in a public place.

Frank’s time should not have garnered any attention at all. When was the last time you heard about an multiple-thousandth place finisher who wasn’t your close family member or friend? But because this 6160th place finish was by a trans woman, anti-trans extremists felt compelled to object. One in particular, an British former Olympic marathoner named Mara Yamauchi, tweeted “nearly 14000 actual females suffered a worse finish position.” This formed the kernel of multiple news stories, most of which buried at the bottom of their stories the fact that Frank’s finish ahead of 14000K women also came behind 6159 other women as well.

Yamauchi’s Twitter bio proudly displays her own personal best marathon time of 2:23:12 which is a full hour and 45 minutes faster than Frank’s finish in this race of 4:11:28.

In response to the outrage Frank has apologized and offered to give back her finisher’s medal. The London Marathon recently changed the rules to ban trans women from registering as women, but had allowed those who had already registered to go forward for this particular race.

screenshot from Metro UK

The fact that this was a news story tells you everything you need to know about the debate on trans women’s participation in women’s sports. It is not, as advertised, an effort to ensure fairness by preventing those with an unfair advantage from dominating athletic competition and keeping cis women out. It’s also not about feminism or protecting women. What possible benefit could cis women get from being told they can’t compete with a very respectable, but not in any way unusual, women’s marathon time of 4:11:28? Instead the only purpose of these stories is to terrorize trans women out of public life, to hound them for behaving in completely harmless, ordinary ways, and to send a message that they’re not welcome or safe in public, no matter what they do.