So I'm A Queer/disabled Former Wheelchair Athlete (gasp A Trans Person Who's Participated In Elite-level

So I'm a queer/disabled former wheelchair athlete (*gasp* a trans person who's participated in elite-level sports? The horror!!) And there's something about this whole "we have to protect women's spaces" argument that really has been getting under my skin (aside from it being blatantly transphobic, of course)

How come that doesn't apply to disabled women? Specifically, women in disability sports? If having "biological men" is so dangerous, where's the outcry for disabled women's safety? Because they play with actual cis men.

TW: very brief mention of assault statistics against disabled women

Most disability sports don't have the numbers to divide based on gender, or at least didn't when they started out. Eventually, it just kind of...became part of the culture, at least here in Australia. Everyone plays together, even in sports that do have the numbers to have gender divides now. In sports like wheelchair basketball, you really only start seeing gender divisions at the national league level. There's a dedicated women's national league (WNWBL), and there is technically a men's national league (NWBL), but there's just as many women in those teams as men. In fact, in my last few years of playing in the WNWBL, 8 out of the 12 girls on my team also played in the men's league, or had played in the men's league before.

You only really see strict gender divisions at international level (ie world championships and paralynpics) and even then, the mens and women's paralypic teams train together and very frequently play together in practice matches where, with the Aussie teams at least, the women almost always win. That's basketball though, there are some sports, like wheelchair rugby (also known as quad rugby or murderball for how rough and aggressive it can get) that aren't divided by gender at all, even in the paralypics.

So why is men and women playing together SO dangerous that it can't be allowed in able bodied sport, but it's totally fine to put female athletes "at risk" when they're disabled? It can't be because no one would "do anything" to disabled women, since the rates of assault on them is double what it is for able bodied women according to the Australian Royal Commission done on the subject.

Keeping that stat in mind, I would also like to point out that disabled athletes don't have changing rooms/lockerrooms most of the time. The ones most venues have are not accessible, and one or two disabled toilets is not enough for 30-120 people, all who need the accessible bathroom, so our changing room is the side of the court. Some women wore singlets under their game singlet, so when we changed, people couldn't see our bras, but most didn't. They couldn't, this is Australia, it gets hot, especially in venues without air con, and many had disabilities that impacted their ability to cool their bodies. It wasn't safe to wear multiple layers. Even on mixed gender teams, there was no privacy for changing.

So disabled women have to change in front of their male teammates, sometimes in front of crowds, the opposing teams etc, and that's fine? But letting able bodied men and women just exist in the same space is dangerous? Because to me that either sounds like:

A: you don't care about the safety of disabled women/you only care about it when it might effect you.

B: you don't care about women's safety, you just dont want a system where trans/nonbinary people can feel welcome and be comfortable.

Or C: both.

And look, despite everything I said here, I never felt like I was in any danger in those environments. The benefit of all this just being a normalised part of the culture means men are socilised differently, especially the ones who grew up surrounded by it, and they do the work to keep others in check. We look out for each other. We very occasionally get a guy being a creep, usually newly disabled guys who were expecting us to be just like abled athletes, but they always got put in their place REALLY quick. That behaviour doesn't last long when others hold them accountable, people actually call them out for their bad behaviour, and event/team staff actually take complaints seriously and act.

But according to these kinds of people, this sort of thing is impossible, so where is the outcry for them?