Lia Thomas became the first transgender person to win an NCAA Division 1 swimming championship, destroying the competition to win the 500-yard freestyle event by nearly two seconds.
Three years ago, a transgender hurdler, Cece Telfer, became the first transgender person to capture an NCAA championship.
Thomas refused to attend the mandatory NCAA news conference after the victory but this apparently won’t affect the simmer’s participation in other events.
Through Nancy Hogshead-Makar, a lawyer who won three Olympic gold medals in swimming in the 1980s, more than a dozen members of Penn’s team sent an anonymous letter to the university and the Ivy League last month to complain that Thomas had “an unfair advantage over competition in the women’s category.” They cited her rapid ascension in the rankings, from high-quality conference swimmer to national title contender, and asserted that her victories and potential to break women’s records were “feats she could never have done as a male athlete.”
The Times and other media outlets are pretending to be astonished at Thomas’s transformation from a male swimmer ranked 462 to the number one women’s division swimmer in the NCAA. It’s a question of wokeness winning over common sense.
This alone would only be a matter of stupidity. But when combined with draconian penalties for disagreeing with the narrative that transgender people who choose to be women are no stronger, no faster, and have no more endurance than other biological females, Lia Thomas gives the lie to that nonsense at every competition.
No, this title-winning effort in the 500-yard freestyle should be met with nothing less than a head shake, an eye roll or a shrug of the shoulders. Why? Because Lia Thomas’ victory is an insult to the biological women who raced against her. Against those who fought for Title IX and equal opportunities for female athletes. Against science, and the unmistakable physiological differences between the male and female sexes.
Even the suggestion that additional study is needed to determine if transgender people have any kind of advantage over biological women is discouraged. Do hormone levels — estrogen and testosterone — tell the whole story? Are there other factors that have contributed to Thomas’s spectacular rise in the rankings?
No one is saying that the swimmer Lia Thomas didn’t work extremely hard. But the issue is too important to biological women and to the very concept of fairness in sports competition to leave to political correctness. Answers are needed. Trans activists and woke school administrators don’t want to know those answers and they don’t want to deal with the implications.
Because the NCAA only required one year of hormone-suppressant therapy for a transgender female to compete in women’s sports, Thomas was eligible to race for the Quakers. And, to be clear, Thomas has followed all rules. The problem is that the NCAA’s guidelines were based on outdated science and didn’t account for the advantages of Thomas undergoing male puberty and significant testosterone production. A 6-3 frame. Greater natural strength. Larger hands and feet. Enhanced lung capacity. None of these edges, for the record, can be fully mitigated.
At the Zippy Invitational in Ohio in early December, Thomas posted times in the 200 freestyle and 500 freestyle that ranked No. 1 in the nation. Through two eye-opening performances, Thomas established herself as an NCAA title contender. More, the spotlight shone much brighter on the primary issue at hand: A transgender female competing against biological females is not a fair fight.
This fight is far from over. And in some small sense, the tide may be turning. But nothing will be done until the trans activist Nazis allow a full and complete study of all the issues relating to transgender athletes. There is no “settled science” with regards to transgenderism.
Pretending there is only reveals a towering and dangerous ignorance that hurts everyone.
Join the conversation as a VIP Member