When we are talking about esports we are not talking about “the average” person. I know a lot of women who played video games religiously and two people in the hobby of video-games have no real advantage over the other based on experience.

What stops a lot of the participation of women who play in esports and things like competition trading card games is the culture that places them under a microscope because of their sex or that constantly treats their participation as a novelty. Growing up with a male socialization doesn’t help on that front because the application of misogyny is often not something that trans women were raised in to find the various forms of resistance or coping as normal. Trans women facing misogyny often are paralysed at first by just not knowing what to do. A lot of them lean on trans masculine people a bit to trade the tricks and tips normally passed woman to woman to deal with a whole different set of social expectations and form strategies to deal with threatening men knowing your muscle mass is below par enough to never be trusted to keep you generally safe ever again. If a space is hostile towards women trans women are usually equally vulnerable or worse because they’re still figuring everything out without the benefit of a period being a young girl where the support system recognizes their vulnerability and lack of experience and is prepped to correct, advise, help and hone survival instincts. Trans women also can’t naturally assume the cis women in the room will watch their backs the same way they would a cis woman.

What a lot of transphobes seem to latch onto is this idea that the dangers and roadblocks they are used to encountering can’t also apply to trans women. Cis women must be the most in danger and the most worthy of protection and their spaces cloistered because to accept that trans women need the same social support is to have sympathy for someone they see as privileged… However trans women often actively surrender their male privileges good and bad without gaining the security net of solidarity with other people lacking that privilege. Banning them from women centric communities and spaces denies them those secure bonds and makes them overall more vulnerable.