I do believe that for a lot of people who buy the "trans people in sports is unfair" argument, it's not a malicious belief. it's something that does make emotional sense to people who have never unpacked gender at all and who were taught that fairness is good and important. we're all raised in a society so steeped in "men are from Mars, women are from Venus" shit that it's very easy to just take that for granted, even if you think you're an ally. some of these people though, when pushed, will understand that there are some women who have biological advantages over some men. they understand that the alleged biological advantages aren't universal. the fact that they believe it is still a problem to be pushed back on but I do think that in approaching the conversation there's a meaningful difference in the approach to having the argument with someone like that versus having it with someone who is purely coming from a place of transphobia

the other day my dad said something about trans women in sports and how some, not all but some, have biological advantages and that's unfair. and I was like well okay and I brought up the Michael Phelps example as someone we should strip of all his gold medals if we care about biological advantages and my dad was like "I agree" and I just looked at him for a minute until he said that if someone is using drugs that should disqualify them. which is when I realized that he thought that the Phelps' drug scandal was steroids and not weed. so I was like no, that's really not what I'm referring to. I'm referring to the fact that he's kind of a freak of nature in the sense that he's biologically built in a way that was always going to make him better at swimming than most people. and I pointed out that following the logic of biological advantages being unfair to its logical extreme, we would ban all tall people from playing basketball. and his response was "well if we follow your argument to its logical extreme, there wouldn't be separate gender sports" and I was like "exactly". and I felt very pleased with myself.