For all the think pieces and Twitter tirades penned over the transgender athlete debate, in the end, it really was a picture that said the definitive thousand words. After winning the NCAA 500-yard freestyle by just shy of two seconds, transgender Penn student Lia Thomas stood victorious next to the two girls relegated to second and third place.
In the picture, Lia carries the trophy. Lia stands atop the highest podium. And next to second-place winner Emma Weyant and third place Erica Sullivan, Lia’s body is clearly not that of a biological woman.
From @DailyMail: ‘University of Virginia swimmer Emma Weyant, who is Olympic silver medalist, is hailed as a heroine on social media after coming second in NCAA championships to controversial trans rival Lia Thomas.’ https://t.co/CNMpSPJ71J pic.twitter.com/QMmqzUB6ua
— Byron York (@ByronYork) March 18, 2022
The radical science deniers hijacking a century of feminism would have us believe that sexual dimorphism is a social construct and any biological differences that do exist between men and birthing people are mere coincidence at best, and unfortunate consequences of our capacity to create a new human life at worst. Acknowledging the difference between the body of Thomas versus those of Weyant and Sullivan would either deny Thomas her right to feel like a woman or, even crueler in the minds of certain activists who smear us fuddy-duddy feminists as “gender essentialists,” center reproductive capabilities as the bifurcation of gender.
OK, so let’s deny the existence of basic human biology. In that case, it’s pure physics that rigs the game for Lia Thomas.
Thomas is 6-foot-3, putting her height in the 98th percentile for men and literally off the chart for women. Although, in accordance with NCAA rules, Thomas has been on hormone replacement therapy for over a year (the 22-year-old told Sports Illustrated she began in 2019), the body developed by male puberty remains. Her hips are narrow, not remotely wide enough to birth a child, and her lean legs and torso connected without a hint of a curve. Her jacket is hung like a cape over strapping, broad shoulders, concealing a chest flat as a board.
The two women next to Thomas swam without the advantage of large hands and a disproportionately long torso, having less height to overpower the resistance created by the greater circumference of biologically female hips. The women who excel in swimming, like other aerobic sports such as running, largely tend to have slimmer and less curvy bodies than average, but especially next to Thomas, the difference between even elite cisgendered female athletes and a trans one cannot be ignored. Weyant’s thighs are undeniably curved, and Sullivan’s shoulders and chest are rounder.
Scientifically speaking, these differences also translate to significant differences in body fat. Whereas elite male athletes can safely maintain body fat percentages down in the single digits, women require, at minimum, 11% body fat in order to maintain regular periods, although many require much more fat to do so.
So ignore the political and biological aspects of the debate, and just consider the raw physics. Wider hips and other curves create greater frontal resistance while swimming than an overall narrower body, and greater body fat percentages render those bodies more buoyant. All of this explains how both Weyant and Sullivan are literal Olympians, whereas Thomas was ranked in the mid-500s among men in the 500-yard freestyle.
