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The thing with the TERFs creating a moral panic about trans women playing women's sports is that even aside from HRT removing and strength and speed advantage, there aren't even really gender differences until you reach the most elite levels of sport, and even then it's iffy.
The pearl clutching reminds me of nothing so much as the time that the opposing team agreed to let my brother play a game on my sister's 16+ women's hockey team that was missing a player, because a preteen boy wouldn't be an advantage, then claimed it was unfair when they lost.
It's all just making excuses for not being good enough, especially given that trans women aren't even remotely dominating women's sports. It's easier to move the goal posts and scream about unfairness than to get better at your sport.
That's especially true considering that the best women's athletes in an awful lot of team sports played on boys' teams for most if not all of their youth sports careers.
I brought up that story about my brother not to suggest that trans women playing in women's sports is the same thing. It's that those adult women were great playing against a preteen boy when they thought it would give them an advantage ...
...but when they lost because my sister's team was better, suddenly they invented a gender equity issue to explain away that their whole team wasn't as good.
She can pop in here and correct me if I'm wrong, but I think that tournament was one of the only times my sister ever even played on women's teams, because until you're at the highest levels of sports, there really isn't any kind of advantage to having more testosterone.
And even then, it's questionable whether there's really much of an advantage to having male levels of testosterone in a lot of sports anyway. NHL players are starting to enforce the, "no touching the Stanley Cup unless you win it," rule for their daughters too.
So even if it was true, which it's not, that trans women have an advantage over cis women of the same skill level, you'd not even see an advantage in the levels of sports that Tulsi Gabbard's bill applies to.
The whole point is moot anyway because after a few years on estrogen, trans women have no performance advantage over cis women. And when we're talking youth sports, trans girls on puberty blockers and then estrogen go through the same development as cis girls.
If these people were actually concerned about gender equity in sports, they'd be pushing for greater Title IX protection for girls and women who want to play traditionally men's sports. As Vandy's emergency kicker shows, it's a question of access, not ability.
