Disney owns 80% of ESPN, and that may explain why the sports network is not really the sports network at all, but the woke sports network, dutifully standing up and applauding and energetically promoting every flavor-of-the-month insanity from the Left. In a segment dedicated to touting pioneering and talented female athletes for Women’s History Month, the far-Left sports-and-agitprop outlet included swimmer Lia Thomas, who won the women’s 500-yard freestyle event at the NCAA Division I national championship competition last year. This would be completely unremarkable and wouldn’t in itself land Thomas a spot in a segment on great female athletes, were it not for one small detail: Lia Thomas is a guy. And one real female champion swimmer has had enough.
Riley Gaines really is a female collegiate swimmer of considerable accomplishment. The University of Kentucky (UK) notes that she is a “multi-time SEC champion, conference record holder, NCAA silver medalist and record holder in six separate events at UK. She was most recently named the 2022 SEC Female Scholar-Athlete of the Year.” She was also “recently inducted into the 2022 UK Athletics Frank G. Ham Society of Character, one of UK Athletics’ most prestigious honors that recognizes student-athletes who show the utmost commitment to academic excellence, athletics participation, personal development, community service and career preparation.”
Gaines’ sterling character shows through in her fearless willingness to go up against the Left’s favored fantasies and delusions. On Sunday, she challenged ESPN directly for praising Thomas, tweeting: “Lia Thomas is not a brave, courageous woman who EARNED a national title. He is an arrogant, [sic] cheat who STOLE a national title from a hardworking, deserving woman. The @ncaa is responsible. If I was a woman working at ESPN, I would walk out. You’re spineless @espn #boycottESPN.” Exactly so.
Lia Thomas is not a brave, courageous woman who EARNED a national title. He is an arrogant, cheat who STOLE a national title from a hardworking, deserving woman. The @ncaa is responsible.
If I was a woman working at ESPN, I would walk out. You're spineless @espn #boycottESPN https://t.co/DF3n5RWsmV
— Riley Gaines (@Riley_Gaines_) March 26, 2023
ESPN is indeed spineless. While Leftists like to laud each other for being “courageous,” courage is actually in quite short supply among them. In reality, they’re a bunch of fearful conformists who know that men are men and women are women, but don’t dare say so out loud for fear of suffering the inevitable professional consequences. Oh, and then there are those who really are insane, or are so ideologically blinkered that they really believe that mutilating someone and pumping his or her body full of the wrong hormones will magically transform him or her into the opposite sex.
Gaines has actually competed against Thomas, and said that it “felt like I was going into the race with my hands tied behind my back.” Back in February, she recounted what happened when she was forced to share a locker room with Thomas: “We were not forewarned beforehand that we would be sharing a locker room with Lia. We did not give our consent, they did not ask for our consent, but in that locker room we turned around, and there’s a 6’4″ biological man dropping his pants and watching us undress, and we were exposed to male genitalia.” This is where the transgender madness has brought us, and ESPN is paving the way for innumerable other girls’ spaces to be violated in the same way.
Lia Thomas himself, however, insists that it all has to be done: “Being trans is not a choice,” he claims. “I didn’t have any other choice because not transitioning was not getting me anywhere.” Yeah, buddy, you were a mediocre male swimmer, at best. Thomas continued, “People will say, ‘Oh, she just transitioned so she would have an advantage so she could win.’” Well, yeah. But he says that is not the case at all: “I transitioned to be happy.” Well, that’s swell, and I’m so glad you’re happy now, big guy, but what about the women whose hopes and dreams are dashed so that you can live out your fantasies? Does their happiness count for anything?
Related: Vermont Girls’ School Strikes Back Against the Trans Madness
Not to Lia Thomas, apparently. As Gaines has said, “Lia Thomas has shown extreme selfishness and a major lack of awareness — and just an utter disregard for women.” And now ESPN has shown the same things by joining in and pretending that Lia Thomas is a woman, and a trailblazing, admirable woman at that.
One day all this will pass, like the Salem Witch Trials era passed, and people will look back in wonderment at how our technologically advanced and complex society succumbed to this mass hysteria and started pretending — on pain of charges of “bigotry” and “hatred” — that men such as Lia Thomas were women. But the insanity hasn’t departed from us yet, not by a long shot.
