This is exactly the kind of inconsistent argument I’m complaining about.
“Biological female” athletes are supposed to just take it in stride that they’re intrinsically not entitled to the same amounts of public attention, popularity, money, or respect that male athletes are, “just because of the way they’re born”. In general, female athletes from day one have had their noses rubbed in the fact that they’re on average athletically inferior to male athletes, and that their achievements are correspondingly less worthy and less valued. (The use of sneering comparisons to female athletes in order to mock and denigrate male athletes is just one of many examples.)
The intrinsic unfairness of the underlying biological disparity, and the social inferiority that’s ascribed to it, is something that female athletes are just expected to accept as part of life, rather than whining that they’re “not being granted a fair chance just because of the way they’re born”.
But as soon as a transgender girl takes an occasional spot on some girls’ team (which of course is a very far cry from wholesale “removing girls’ opportunities to play competitive, high end sports”), all of a sudden we’re supposed to worry about the “emotional harm” caused by cisgender girls’ feeling that they’re “not being granted a fair chance”?
Nah, I don’t buy it. Occasional outlier big/strong/fast individuals out-compete more averagely built athletes for spots on teams all the time, “just because of the way they’re born”. An unusually tall girl, or a girl with an unusually early birthday who’s older and stronger than most of her teammates, or a cisgender girl with high testosterone levels, etc., can have a natural physiological advantage over her competitors.
And we expect her competitors to accept that and not sulk like little boys when that advantage works in her favor. ISTM quite reasonable to treat the equally natural fact that (some) transgender girls have a physiological advantage over cisgender girls in the same way.
Suddenly discovering a bunch of concern that occasionally losing to a transgender girl might cause cisgender girls “emotional harm” from feeling that they’re “not being granted a fair chance” because of their physiology smells like bullshit to me.
(I wonder if the real concern in some cases might actually about about potential emotional harm to insecure men and boys from the prospect that, on the contrary, the transgender girls will sometimes lose to cisgender ones.)