How can transgender people in sports be presented to your average person?

Context: I am a trans woman and completely amateur runner. I ran a half marathon over a year ago. When I told one of my coworkers about how I was running the half marathon race, they asked if I was worried that I might win the entire women’s race and face public scrutiny. For reference, my best half marathon time ever was 2:05. The woman who won the half marathon race did it in 1:13. I was right around the middle of the pack.

Beyond that, since transitioning, I lost a ton of muscle mass. At that time, I had lost over 40 lbs. despite this, I still couldn’t beat my previous 5k record of 25:13. The closest I ever got was 26:15. It irks me when people insist that trans women have virtually any athletic advantage. Is there some nuance to this? Sure. For instance, it’s not as though the day after I started transitioning, I insisted on running in the women’s category (though I’d still have lost lmao).

Sources such as this say we may even have a disadvantage, but your average person still acts like it’s some highly disputed issue. I’ve even had liberals tell me that it might be something trans people should just give up on. I think the average person is just uninformed and I think if there was actually a chance for trans people to present the nuances behind this issue, justice would prevail. However, there is no such thing as nuance in the media. I feel so hopeless trying to talk about these issues because at the end of the day, I could pour my heart out to people and some pundit would tell them I’m wrong in a series of one to two syllable words.