I am sickened on many levels as Lia Thomas continues to mock women’s sport. Thomas is destroying collegiate swimming, but how long will it take before this dilemma hits the Olympics, professional, or even high school athletics?
All of this damage to sport is aided by a Woke society that is willing to look past common sense to preserve the rights of one individual.
I thought this assault on NCAA women’s swimming by Lia Thomas would be short-lived. I wondered how someone could look themselves in the mirror and still dive into the pool, knowing they had a massive advantage over their competitors. I do not care if he is a he or she. He is a person who, if he has a conscience, would know he is doing wrong.
Earlier this year, USA Swimming changed its requirements for trans competitors, mandating three years of low testosterone levels. The NCAA declined to immediately adopt those restrictions, which would have barred Thomas from the female competition. But The NCAA will likely feel pressure from the public and politicians to adopt more stringent standards for trans athletes.
Several state legislatures are considering laws that would regulate trans sports participation, some of which critics claim are harmful to transgender children and discriminatory. The requirements and laws that are implemented or passed are not to infringe on the rights of transgendered. They are about protecting the integrity of sport and ensuring the safety of all participants.
Lia competed for Penn as a male swimmer and now as a woman. She is within the NCAA rules, but that does not make it right. She is taking the spot of a cisgender woman on the team and preventing her teammates from their potential success. Lia has the benefits of being born a male. She has a larger heart, bigger lungs, more muscular arm and leg muscles, and bigger hands. All of these physical traits lead to higher performance and unfair advantage.
Lia is rewriting the NCAA record book. Her competing as a woman is unjust for the women athletes she is supplanting. They earned their records as a woman competing against women. Lia is erasing their accomplishments by competing as transgender.
There were some transgender athletes competing in the Summer and Winter Olympics with mixed results. An incident in a recent MMA match is evidence of the danger. Transgender Fallon Fox fractured the skull and broke the eye socket of her female opponent. Her opponent claimed she had never been so mismatched.
I am not judging Transgender individuals, but when their decisions and actions impact others, they have overstepped. Common sense has to trump Woke thinking. Some states are taking action and restricting all sports to cisgender participants, and this appears to be the correct decision. Hopefully, the NCAA will regain their senses, stop trying to reinvent the wheel for the sake of a minuscule percentage of people, and preserve male and female sports.
