Whatever happened to feminism?
That’s a question for the University of Pennsylvania. The school is allowing a biological male who identifies as a woman to compete on its female swim team, even though he competed on its male swim team for the past three years.
Lia Thomas, a transgender student who started transitioning in 2019, was granted permission to compete against women after undergoing testosterone suppression treatment for a year. However, as one of his teammates pointed out, Thomas has a male physique, which gives him a distinct advantage over the women he’s competing against. He has a larger frame, bigger hands, and bigger feet. And he has trained for years with testosterone, which has made him faster and stronger than all of his female teammates.
His records prove as much. Thomas is smashing NCAA times previously set by biological females left and right. In one of his recent races, the 1,650 freestyle final, he beat the second-place swimmer, Penn’s Anna Kalandadze, by 38 seconds. If this trend continues, he could go on to break records set by Missy Franklin and Katie Ledecky, two of the best female swimmers of all time, says John Lohn, the editor of Swimming World magazine.
And Penn’s female swimmers are supposed to sit down and accept this, knowing full well that they will never win a race again, so long as Thomas is competing against them, because to do otherwise would be to stand against “progress.”
Women fought too long and too hard for equal rights and a governing standard of fairness just to watch a man, who might want very desperately to be a woman, erode their accomplishments. But that’s exactly what’s happening in the athletic world. Soon enough, there will be a Thomas on every single collegiate and professional female sports team in the country, and women won’t stand a chance.
But apparently, that’s a form of patriarchy we’re just supposed to accept.
