In the second part of an exclusive interview with a female swimmer on the University of Pennsylvania’s swimming team, one of the swimmers describes the toxic environment that surrounds the women this year.
Accusations of entitlement, selfishness, and a general disregard for overall performance have plagued the team since Lia Thomas, a biological male, started swimming on their team.
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The crux of the swimmers’ complaints is the biological advantage that Lia has over female teammates. The swimmers were promised competition between females, not men who want to be female. Yet, there’s also the matter of an apparently inflated ego.
“She compares herself to Jackie Robinson,” the female swimmer told me. “She said she is like the Jackie Robinson of trans sports.”
“I try not to be around her because the whole situation makes me so mad,” the swimmer added. “I don’t think Lia is a bad person. She’s very quiet and kind of introverted … It’s just really hard for me to respect her at all because of what she’s doing to my team and what she’s doing to women in general and not caring.”
She asserted that Thomas evinces a lack of sincerity and empathy toward teammates.
“She laughs about it and mocks the situation,” the female swimmer told me. “Instead of caring or showing that she cares about what she’s doing or what she’s doing to her teammates, she’s not sympathetic or empathetic at all. Lia never addressed our team. She never asked if it was OK. She never asked how we felt. She never tried to explain how she feels. She never has said anything to us as a group. She never addressed anything.”
“All she does is make comments to people like, ‘At least I’m still No. 1 in the country,’ and those kinds of cocky things,” she said. “She doesn’t care how all this is affecting us and how this is affecting our relationship to swimming. She doesn’t care, and it makes it really hard to like her.”
She also described how Thomas failed to follow rules the school implemented specifically for her during a recent training trip in Florida.
“On our last training trip, we were told not to wear Penn gear on our trip to Florida, on the off chance that we would get harassed or anything,” she said. “So, everyone went out of their way — now, about 75% of our athletic wardrobe is Penn — we went out of our way to not pack any Penn stuff. Except Lia. Every single day at the airport and at the gym, Lia made sure to wear a big Penn shirt with ‘Penn Swim and Dive’ on it. And she was the only one. We weren’t allowed to wear it because of her, and she did it every day.”
“She was doing it just to make a point,” the swimmer said. “We all went out of our way for her.”
It is certainly understandable why this would cause tension. College athletes routinely walk around in clothes that feature their school’s name and sport. In many ways, it is a sense of pride in their hard work and accomplishments. Yet, it seems Penn stopped caring about the hard work and accomplishments of its female swimmers when it decided to let a man competitively swim against women.
“I can’t wear my own school attire that I’m supposed to be representing, but she’s going to go out of her way to do it?” the female student-athlete remarked. “It makes it really hard to like her when she does stuff like that and she makes the comments she makes. We’re supposed to respect how she feels, but she doesn’t respect her teammates at all.”
Another example was during a formal dinner held for members of the school’s team. There are separate dinners for the female and male teams. A swimmer is supposed to attend only one of the dinners, as they are financed by alumni. But Lia Thomas allegedly did not think that applied to her.
“When she first announced she was transgender and was still on the men’s team, she went to both the men’s and women’s swimming team dinners on our training trip,” said the swimmer. “It really rubbed me the wrong way because if you’re saying you’re a woman, then why go to the men’s team? And if you want to go to the men’s team because all your friends are there, OK, understandable. But then why are you going to the women’s team dinner? You shouldn’t get to bend the rules.”
Out the swimming pool, there have also been confrontations. The school has warned the swimmers to be careful in what they say in response to inquiries about the situation because they did not want to see anyone “jeopardize their future.”
“We were told, ‘You guys can say whatever you want, but we don’t want you to ruin your future. So, we will help you, whatever you want to say,’” the swimmer said.
Female swimmers shouldn’t have to worry about their futures for having an opinion about what it’s like to have a male swimmer compete against them. Moreover, they should not be afraid for wanting the school to honor its agreement of fair and equal female swimming competition between women upon admission to the school.
“It’s been super draining and frustrating,” she said, “because no one seems to care about the actual women.”
