If you want to talk respectfully about the implications of transgender athletes in sport, that's one thing. But what you are doing is not that. You're trying to dismiss the plight of trans people at large.
What I have an issue with is this type of behavior where they turn things upside down without any care for others. In this case, they're stealing glory from and seriously hampering the careers of lifelong female athletes.
Imagine lifting since you were a teenage girl, and someone else in their mid 30's, who would not have qualified for the men's competition, comes along to take your Olympic medal after going through a sex change procedure. It's deeply disrespectful to women. It requires a certain zealotry to bully your way into female spaces like this.
That said, I don't really agree with this clarification either: no trans woman is setting out to have gender reassignment to bully their way into competing against women who were lifting since they were teenagers. I think you are attributing this to malice that is simply not there, and it is only an artifact of unfortunate circumstance. Trans women certainly don't want to be in this situation either: I'm sure they would much rather be born biologically female and compete that way!
This is the problem. There's no difference to people. Arguing any nuanced part of the conversation is often met with exaggerated reactions of "you're anti-trans" or "you're dismissing transexualism as a whole", which is not the case.
So yes, the pro-trans movement on many online spaces is very ideological - they even claim it themselves (transmedicalism vs. gender identity, etc). Very little of it these days is based on science or medical prognosis.
I do understand as well your reticence around the ideological space that a lot of online spaces take place in. To that I’d just say that this stuff is fairly new, and you have a lot of young people finding and differentiating their identities as they’re going through quite a process.
My opinion is frankly it’s a wonderful thing, to have it so people can prioritize their emotional well being enough to not have their natural individual differentiations beat out of them as so many cultures have done. In doing so, discovering how much of a thing gender dysphoria is for some, and allowing them to lead much much better lives.
If we're talking about someone who transitions in their teens and has no other options for sport in their adolescence, I would agree that's a much more difficult and ambiguous situation.
Hubbard has been free to do olympic weightlifting her entire life. Against similarly bodied individuals (men).
I too am excluded from competing in women's weightlifting contests. That is absolutely for the best (though everyone we're talking about here can likely lift more than I can).
What other animals have a similar level of consciousness? You can‘t form the idea that you are “in the wrong body” unless that idea has been provided to you by your culture. You need linguistic and social support to even have the concept.
EDIT: Oh, you may be interested in the phenomenon of what you might call “trans” non-human animals: individuals who behave like those of the opposite sex. Apparently in some species their physical characteristics can even change, such as female lions that grow manes. But nobody is confused enough to say “trans lady lions are lady lions“; that confusion is reserved for humans. In mammals, the sex can not change. But it‘s an interesting phenomenon.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Irreversible_Damage
If you have a peer-reviewed study, that would be much more worthwhile to look at.
The layman's explanation of the phenomenon is that parents observe a rapidly onset expression of gender dysphoria in their teenage daughters which "seemed to occur in the context of belonging to a peer group where one, multiple, or even all of the friends have become gender dysphoric and transgender-identified during the same timeframe."
https://www.theguardian.com/society/2018/oct/16/academics-ar...
In my puberty I had a strong feeling of rather being a girl and this caused significant mental anguish and some self harm. If had known as much about transgender people back then as I do know I would have likely transitioned then.
Today I'm pretty okay with being a man. I still sometimes have problems with it but not in the same order of magnitude.
From these personal experiences I think it is plausible that more people transition because more people are aware of the possibility and knowing other trans people in their age. I have no idea how big that group is however.
This is an interesting case that went through the UK courts. Very analogous to OP’s situation had it happened today.
Abigail Shrier is a writer and not a scientist, and it can be clearly seen even from the title of the book that she has an agenda. The thesis of the book has been "rejected by the American Psychiatric Association, the American Academy of Pediatrics, the Endocrine Society, the American Academy of Child and Adolescent Psychiatry, and the World Professional Association for Transgender Health."
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Irreversible_Damage
If you have a peer-reviewed study, that would be much more worthwhile to look at.
Interviewing parents seems like a problematic basis for an entirely new condition to me.