I am catching up, but a couple of threads ago someone commented on how frustrating it was that it was seemingly so hard for some people to understand that women want safety, privacy and dignity and therefore single sex spaces. I think lots of people are conditioned to ‘be kind’ to the person in front of them, and they are therefore a little embarrassed to need to explain, either to Beth, or say to a colleague who has a trans child, that statistically men are a risk to women, because it seems to imply something negative about a particular person.
And that I think is why sports have been, to a certain extent, an opinion leader on this. Because saying that a man would easily beat a woman in a sport is not implying anything negative about the man. So it is easier to put forward as a neutral point of view.