The Left is asking everyone to deny reality by pretending there is nothing wrong with Lia Thomas winning the NCAA Women’s 500 Freestyle despite his hulking shoulders and obvious physical advantages. He may also be the only NCAA swimmer ever to receive coverage on the Today show:
Watch how giddy NBC's 'Today' show is about Lia Thomas crushing the competition at the NCAA D1 women's swimming and diving championships.
Gross. pic.twitter.com/wJb8AWBAdK
— Curtis Houck (@CurtisHouck) March 17, 2022
As everyone knows, Thomas’s story is unique because his name used to be Will, and the corporate media is trying to convince you that him breaking women’s records and winning women’s races is totally fine. Usually, swimming only gets national coverage during the Olympics and only if we have a dominant gold medal winner. Even more disgusting, it looks like NBC airbrushed a photo of the finish to soften Thomas’s jawline and complexion:
NBC accused of airbrushing photo of biological male Lia Thomas in TODAY Show segmenthttps://t.co/HMYdBL4YS8
— Mia Cathell (@MiaCathell) March 20, 2022
As insulting as the fawning coverage is to the young women who lost out on competing or first place because Thomas’s broad shoulders edged them out, there is something even more infuriating. While Thomas has broken women’s records this year, according to the University of Pennsylvania Athletic Department’s website, Lia holds the second-fastest time in school history for the men’s 500 Freestyle event.
The Left tells us Lia was born in the wrong body and is now living as his authentic self, stealing easy wins in elite college swimming. It does not matter that the only typically female features he has are shoulder-length hair and a smattering of make-up. Every member of the ’80s band Poison had better hair and more makeup, but I digress.
Thomas’s allies insist that the men’s record he holds on Penn’s website proves that he should be swimming with women; it is nearly 15 seconds faster than the program record he set as Lia on March 17 at the NCAA finals. If that is your position, fine. However, it also means that the attribution of the record time needs to read “William Thomas,” his given name.
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Twitter tells us that would “deadnaming,” but when it comes to records, that concept does not apply. Dead people can hold records and frequently have historically. If the individual known as Lia Thomas no longer possesses the physical capability to achieve that lower time, the person named Lia Thomas is not the record holder. The person named William is.
Thomas’s teammates already accused him of intentionally losing to a trans man swimmer still competing as a woman. Caitlyn Jenner, who may have just a little bit of knowledge about how much athletic ability a trans woman retains, jumped on the hoofing it bandwagon when Thomas came in fifth in the 200 Freestyle. Thomas broke records in that event earlier in the season. Jenner asserted that Thomas was taking it easy so as not to beat the record of swimming star Katie Ledecky, who smashed previous records in her prime.
Jenner acknowledged that Thomas was ‘playing within the rules.’ But she told Fox News: ‘What I’ve said from the beginning: the rules aren’t tough enough.
‘Just being on testosterone depressants for a year or two, whatever the rules are now, they keep changing, obviously, it is not enough.’
At least one study supports the idea that Thomas has not lost as much ground as the times posted for his races indicate. The researchers measured grip strength and lean muscle mass in trans men and trans women on hormone therapy. The men taking medication to suppress testosterone showed a lower loss of strength and lean muscle than the woman taking testosterone did. The researchers noted after the year-long study:
It might possibly take longer for muscles to decrease in proteins due to lack of testosterone, than it is to increase due to administration of testosterone. However, to fully understand the difference, more research is necessary. After 12 months, the median grip strength of transwomen still falls into the 95th percentile for age-matched females. The median grip strength of transmen after 12 months falls into the 25th percentile of age-matched males. Thus, transwomen are still stronger than average females and transmen are still weaker than average males.
Transwomen are far stronger than the average female; the study subjects were not elite athletes. Yet, the men suppressing their testosterone levels still scored in the 95% percentile for grip strength among women. The average men of all ages in the study are already in the tail of a normal distribution. Imagine how much of an advantage an elite male athlete could retain. In which case, Penn should not credit Lia Thomas with the women’s swimming record.
Yet, he holds the University of Pennsylvania women’s swimming record in the 100 Freestyle, the 200 Freestyle, the 500 Freestyle, the 1000 Freestyle, and the 1650 Freestyle. Sorry, Lia can’t have it both ways. His name either needs to come off the men’s records or women’s. The case is substantially more straightforward that he had an unfair advantage in women’s competition, no matter what the NCAA rules say. A picture is worth 1,000 words:
Champagne podium meme but they actually deserve the champagne. Congrats, Emma and Erica. pic.twitter.com/zHRlhrynPo
— Mary Katharine Ham (@mkhammer) March 18, 2022
Thomas needs to decide if the speed or the rank matters the most. Any truly competitive swimmer knows it is the time that counts. It is all they care about when they hit the wall because it is an individual sport, and you are your own primary competition. Lia either can’t or won’t compete with William.
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