Not just inciting violence, but a credible and immediate incitement to violence. "Hurtful" describes a feeling felt by the listener. Would people have felt hurt by someone opposing racial preferences in admissions [1]? Maybe: their feelings are their own, and I'm not going to tell someone their feelings are wrong. But it's unambiguously not a credible and specific incitement to violence. The questions to ask are: is the speech calling for an immediate act of violence [2]? And is the speech calling for violence against a specific identifiable person or group?
2. Sometimes people will try to argue for an indirect threat of violence. E.g. that opposing trans men in female sports amounts to a call of violence because it reduces respect for trans people, which in turn increases likelihood of violence perpetrated against them. But this is a very indirect relationship. As a general rule of thumb, if someone is making a claim that some speech is probabilistically increasing violence, it's not a incitement to violence.
What I think is going to inevitably happen in sports is that the gender segregated (but not sex segregated) women's leagues will become dominated by trans women, and cis women will leave and form their own female-only league.
Another alternative is for women to refuse to participate in such competitions en masse, or to threaten to. Basically taking strike action against unfair conditions.
"The UCI's decision came amid a growing backlash from within the sport, with the Guardian understanding that a number of female riders were talking about boycotting the event in Derby because they felt that Bridges, who was on the Great Britain Academy programme as a male rider until being dropped in 2020, had an unfair advantage."
1. https://www.nytimes.com/2021/10/20/us/dorian-abbot-mit.html
2. Sometimes people will try to argue for an indirect threat of violence. E.g. that opposing trans men in female sports amounts to a call of violence because it reduces respect for trans people, which in turn increases likelihood of violence perpetrated against them. But this is a very indirect relationship. As a general rule of thumb, if someone is making a claim that some speech is probabilistically increasing violence, it's not a incitement to violence.