Ever since the story broke of the University of Pennsylvania’s transgender swimmer, Lia Thomas, ESPN has remained conspicuously silent.
Even as the story made national headlines, even after I personally interviewed a female swimmer complaining about this biologically male swimmer robbing opportunities from women, ESPN ignored what was occurring in women’s collegiate athletics. That is until this weekend, when they finally published this article.
The entire country is talking about how biological men competing in female sports are taking away opportunities from women. But you wouldn’t know from reading the worldwide leader in sports, which just came out with guns blazing, defending those biological men.
There was nothing in the article about female athletes who lose their opportunities because of males with gender dysphoria and massive biological athletic advantages over them. There was nothing about how a male could break all the sporting records of legitimate female athletes. It was a typical puff piece about the difficulties facing transgender athletes and the potential challenges they face in the future.
Granted, ESPN has the right to publish material from whatever viewpoint or perspective it chooses. But one would think, given the sports network’s previous declarations of allegiance to women, it would actually, you know, defend women. Instead, ESPN opted to prioritize males with gender dysphoria over women’s equality.
It’s further proof of what a Penn swimmer told me in our interview: “Women are now third-class citizens.”
The article criticizes the recent decision by the NCAA regarding the eligibility of transgender athletes. It highlights the difficulties that transgender athletes face in college athletics.
“They caved and panicked in the light of the public pressure, and they’ve come up now with a policy that I’m not even sure how they would enforce,” former UMass swim coach Pat Griffin told ESPN regarding the NCAA. Griffin offers a very biased perspective, however, as he is an activist who helped draft the original (and ludicrous) guidelines for transgender athlete participation.
The article also quoted Nancy Hogshead-Makar, who opposes transgender competition from males in women’s sports. Hogshead-Makar is a former swimmer and a three-time Olympic gold medalist. She advocates that only biological women, that is, human beings possessing two X chromosomes, be allowed to compete in women’s sports.
“It remains unclear if the NCAA women swimmers will have to compete in an unfair playing field or if current women’s records held by Missy Franklin and Katie Ledecky are at risk,” Hogshead-Makar said. “Justice delayed is justice denied, and that will certainly be true for these women.”
The rest of the article quoted other people who support Lia Thomas and other transgender athletes.
It was disappointing that ESPN never tried to cover this story from the perspective of any of the female swimmers on the Penn team. The network also doesn’t appear to have ever published any story showing the downside of men stealing opportunities from women in this way. ESPN appears to be more interested in promoting transgender propaganda than defending the female college athletes who are being marginalized.
