I'm going to attempt to respond to the "Does a transgender player retain an advantage post-transition? question.
First off - a preface: I'm borrowing liberally from things Laura Natagaal has said in defense of trans players. I wish I could find the posts in the thread regarding her win at AM Worlds where she explained all of this, I'm going to be paraphrasing things she has already said and much of what I'm saying here are her words, and not mine. And I want to stress that - it is important to listen to the experiences of those who this affects. So, if any of this sound familiar, that's because it is - Laura and her peers have said this before.
That being said -
The problem seems to be that this question isn't being asked in good faith. It's being used as a weapon. A gotcha. As in, this is a zero sum game. If any advantage can be detected, a disqualification must occur. So if a transgender players says an advantage may exist, the immediate response is how dare you play against women without that advantage? You are the villain here, not me.
The question isn't being asked "if an advantage exists, is it significant enough to completely unbalance the playing field, or is that advantage comparable to the field?"
And therein lies the problem. Competition isn't fair. Bodies are not identical, regardless of background or upbringing. Nature doesn't make cookie-cutter people. Everyone is different. If you haven't seen the studies that examine why Michael Phelps is a superior swimmer to pretty much every other Olympic man in the pool, you ought to. He has unique body form that provides him significant advantages to other swimmers, advantages that had nothing to do with time training or the way he trained.
Whenever this question is asked, it is asked with the supposition that the playing field is balanced and level, and a transgender player will unbalance it. But the playing field isn't level and balanced, and it never has been. Some competitors simply have physical advantages that no amount of training is going to overcome, and if those competitors with the advantages master technique and form, they are very difficult to beat.
This is an issue because no one bats an eye at this in men's sports. Ever. Everyone just operates from the assumption that men are men and men can play against men. But some men naturally produce more testosterone than others. They have advantages. Some are like Michael Phelps - also with advantages. No one cares.
It's when it's a woman that suddenly everyone gets testy about it. A cis woman could be a woman in every way detractors are going to measure it, but if her body somehow produces testosterone at a level people find offensive, suddenly she can longer compete unless she takes medication to eliminate the advantage her own normal body chemistry gives her. Again, this is something that isn't looked at all in men's sports, only in women's.
We have a peculiar definition of what constitutes fairness in women's sports and it is largely based on how feminine in appearance a woman is or is not. If you look like Gal Gadot, you can do whatever you want and no one is going to question it. If you are too androgynous in body type, fashion, or both, you'll be the subject of scrutiny until you conform.
You only have to look at someone like Amelie Mauresmo (French tennis player) to see this. There were Facebook groups whose entire purpose was to drive home their assumption that Mauresmo was actually male. She wasn't a transgender player - just a woman whose facial structure and sexual orientation caused everyone to question whom she was.
Or, in a more local example, the number of people who continue to believe Ella Hansen is a trans player.
If Natalie Ryan looked like say, Kat Mertsch or Macie Velediez, and wasn't public about her past, it's quite possible there would be no controversy at all.
So, to bring this full circle back to the beginning - do trans players have an advantage. A player might. Do all trans players? No. And if the player has an advantage, is that sufficient to upend the playing field? But that isn't the question being asked, because that isn't how we view transgender women.
As I said in a previous post, we don't look at transgender women in the same way we look at other women. We think of them as retaining all of advantages of someone who never underwent hormonal replacement or surgery, wearing the clothing a gender that isn't theirs, asking for unreasonable concessions because we don't want to do the necessary and messy work in our heads to undo our preconceptions and prejudices.
But this question is always asked as a gotcha with a zero sum goal in mind.
