There's an interaction I had online a little while ago that I think about a lot. I shared (in a fairly "woke" space) that recent-ish meta study that showed that while we don't have a lot of actual usable data on the subject, everything we currently have on transfem athletes gives us no real reason to think they have an athletic advantage. and people were not happy with this. One person immediately went in talking about a time a professional men's soccer team beat a professional women's soccer team by a large margin. And this was generally accepted and supported; no one but me seemed able to notice how irrelevant that was. No one cared that in a conversation about transfems on estrogen they pulled out an isolated instance of cisgender men competing against cisgender women. No one cared that they ignored everything about the study I shared and instead just said "no amount of estrogen can account for that athletic difference" and backing that claim up with absolutely nothing. No one cared they said, and I quote, "[in high level athletics] trans women are a threat to cis women." They admitted to cherrypicking, saying that they could find as many examples of men beating women as they wanted. And this was considered (through the democracy of up/downvotes) to be better evidence and citation than the specific metanalysis I shared that covered 50+ studies.
After poking and prodding they acknowledged that hrt will remove the benefits of testosterone on muscle mass, but insisted that trans women have "larger more rugged skeletons" that give them an insurmountable athletic advantage in all sports. It's a pretty bog standard transmisogynistic claim, yes, but the amount of critical thought required to kill here was incredible. saying with your whole chest that all sports come down to how tall you are and how dense your bones are. choosing to ignore that cis women also can be tall and have dense bones, and will still be allowed to compete. When a cis women is big and strong, its Always because she is a good athlete. When a trans woman is big and strong, no matter how much medical transition she does it's Always because she was "born male."
just. yeah it's to be expected. no I was not really surprised by any of this. But it is an example of how much thinking people are willing to turn off in their minds to see trans women and our bodies as a) ultimately and immutably Male and b) inherently dangerous, even in allegedly progressive spaces. and you can't argue with it. you tell people "hrt meaningfully changes trans people's bodies and regardless there's way less difference between 'male' and 'female' bodies than you think" and they look at you like you've grown a second head and sister, they're on their second mission from king eurystheus
