It's unfortunate because trans people are just as much people as cis people and deserve complete equality, but the reality of equality is that it can be very hard to do right.

Civil rights are hard because there are a lot of "rights" that can be applied to oppress others. Freedom of speech can absolutely be used to crush others, so how do you enact reasonable limits to prevent that without simultaneously causing the oppression that you aimed to prevent?

There are statutes in the US that put requirements on public school sports in relation to sex (sex is the quantifier used in Title IX). This to some effect limits men's sports in schools because of requirements for equality (typically represented as having an equal number of men's/women's sports). We consider this acceptable because otherwise there is the possibility that woman's sports are underrepresented because men's sports are more popular. In this case it's important to remember that there is limited funding.

The thing is, the class you are "bringing up" here is ~50% of the population. You're slightly limiting the other 50%, but it's barely of consequence. You are simply ensuring that to some extent funding isn't biased.

For trans women athletes, you are taking about a <1% subset of the population. This is not to say that minority populations don't matter (the United States is a great place because of minority populations). But if the majority of the women population say "no" to the <1%, then frankly at some point that's how the cookie crumbles. They still have the option of men's sports, they aren't restricted from competing there. They certainly are a huge gray area with the respect to physicality, even more so at younger ages when trans people are less likely to have transitioned (and more likely to be competing in a sport).

> The people whose opinion should be polled should be actual competing athletes

Really? In this case are you limiting it to just Olympic athletes? Can we include Diamond League athletes? Collegiate? Local 5k runners?

What even defines an athlete? Do I have to enter a race every so many months to maintain "athlete" status? Is a local race fine or do I need to be in Boston? This is silly gatekeeping.

> The biggest anti-trans athlete is some 5th place loser

Does this matter? It's also just "the biggest anti-trans athlete" that you know about. I'm sure there are some other women out there that are more hateful.

There are nuanced arguments to have about the trans women in sports situation, but the right is entirely against having them on completely bigoted basis, and then there is a very small subset of people who poison the well by turning good faith discussions about the topic into just hating the people having the discussions. At no point have I said anything disparaging about trans people or athletes. I'm just bringing up the reality of the situation being complicated, and as you called out: very unfortunate. It's unfortunate for trans men too, but nobody seems to complain about that one. :)