No, this isn't obvious at all. What is obvious, for the overwhelming majority of humanity, is that male bodies have sporting advantages over female bodies and so females should have their own sporting spaces. I think some people have become so trained to view any disagreement as hatred that they refuse to consider any other explanation. No matter how obvious.
Lia Thomas was ranked 462nd as a male swimmer (https://www.washingtonpost.com/sports/2022/02/03/lia-thomas-penn-swimming-teammates/) and 1st as a female. Yes, her performance is evidence of "certain biological realities." Not that I'd need it to be. Literally everything we know and can easily observe about human physiology makes this argument. Trying to argue this frankly silly point is the distraction.
Lia's situation is the inevitable result of the overreach that wants to argue, not that trans women deserve respect and opportunity and equality, which they absolutely do, but that trans women are identical to women and should be treated as such in every single instance. Sport is probably the clearest example of the fact that trans women are not identical to women. There is a difference between equal and identical.
And of course, this has been used by people who are genuinely anti-trans as a cudgel to beat and demonise the trans community with. But do you really not see how they're getting that opportunity because any objective person that this is unfair? Literally the entire reason female sport exists is to avoid situations like this.
I actually do have a suggestion regarding Lia Thomas' right to compete (though we should be clear that we're not talking about her right to compete, nobody is denying her that, we're talking about her right to compete against females). Anyway, I think trans women should compete alongside females and trans men should compete alongside males, but their records and medals should be treated separately. So Lia is the fastest trans woman rather than the fastest woman. And the fastest female swimmer in that race also gets a gold medal.
This also works in favour of trans men who are invisible in this debate because they're not going to be beating males. But this means they also don't get the recognition they deserve. The only stumbling block I see to this solution is the resistance to saying that trans women are trans women. Which is why I asked the question.
Finally, yes, you're right. There is no way to level the paying field in sport. There will often be athletes who are particularly gifted in one area or another who dominate the competition during their generation. The difference is, males are gifted in numerous areas at the same time compared to females, such that the top 1% of females can't compete against the top 10% of males. Surely Lia's meteoric rise from 462nd to 1st, in one year, while taking hormones that decreased her muscle mass, is all the evidence you could need of this.
If I were to compete against female sprinters, with no hormones whatsoever, I wouldn't win. But I'd do better than a comparably untrained female. And would beat many trained females. Winning isn't the only factor that makes males competing against females unfair. And so, sex-segregation Is a simple, though imperfect method (because there is no perfect method) of giving females sporting opportunity.
