Every single time there is a major sport competition, like clockworks, a woman (generally of color) gets accused of having an "unfair advantage" over other women due to having more testosterone than average or some bullshit like that. Last time it was Caster Semenya, this year it's Imane Khelif, and this shit has been going on since the 50s when sex verification in sports was introduced. Ohhh a woman with more testosterone has an unfair advantage over other women, we should ban her! And also people who live in mountains have a higher lung capacity and that's an unfair advantage, we should ban them too! Also, also, people who live in cold countries have more opportunities to learn how to do winter sports, that's an unfair advantage! Come on, let's ban them all! No one should be allowed in the Olympics ever!!

This was sarcasm. This entire situation is fucking stupid. The whole point of sports competition is "look at these people having bodies way out of the norm and being able to do things way out of the norm." Why regulate specifically testosterone of all things, and none of the other stuff I talked about?

Because this isn't actually about sports. This isn't about unfair advantages at all. It's about politics. That's why transphobes are shitting on Imane (who is, for a reminder, a whole-ass cis woman.) They don't actually care if a trans woman gets in the Olympics (they know that's not possible under the current regulations) they just need a scapegoat to point at and go "look! We're right! Trans women ARE opportunistic predators who will steal goals from us """real""" women!" Likewise, I don't think the initial sex verifications were about fair advantages at all; they were about enforcing the sex binary again, reaffirming the idea that if you're outside the arbitrary sex norms that has been set then you don't belong anywhere in society, including in sports.

My trans brethens, please. When you call out the bigotry Imane is currently facing, do call out the transphobia, but don't forget that this is also intersexism (and while this isn't what this blog is about, it's also very much racism; standards of feminity and "what a woman must be like" were very much set based on white standards. Don't forget about the racism either.)