I don’t think it’s political at all. It’s just that in my field trans people would very likely be outside of the scope of most studies. Genomics is still expensive and including someone on HRT is going to create outliers regardless whether you assign them to male or female group. It’s not terrific to exclude them, but that’s the realities of life.

So, when I’m at a conference and someone gives a talk on how live birth leads to microbiota transfer from mother to child, it’s clear who we talk about when we say “mother”. I’m not sure there’s a case for fighting for someone’s mental health here.