Will make history

Lia gonna make history this week.

This week, a male collegiate swimmer who identifies as a woman will compete in the women’s NCAA Div. 1 Women’s Swimming & Diving Championships. Lia Thomas is the top seed in both the 200-yard and 500-yard freestyle races and will make history as one of the first openly transgender athletes in women’s collegiate sports, no matter how he performs.

It’s a crappy kind of history to make though – embarrassing as opposed to glorious. Or not so much embarrassing as shameful. Shameful of him, and shameful of all the people letting it happen. People would get this if it were a huge muscular man “making history” by playing Little League baseball, but somehow we’ve been bullied into pretending Thomas’s grotesque cheating is a glorious moment for justice.

Now, in Thomas’ first year swimming against women, Sports Illustrated describes him as throttling the competition and says Thomas has “set pool, school and Ivy League records en route to becoming the nation’s most powerful female collegiate swimmer.”

Except for the “female” part. He won’t actually be setting any records at all.

One USA Swimming official has resigned in protest.

Cynthia Millen made the decision late last year after learning that Thomas was competing in women’s meets. She describes being stunned after working for years to ensure athletes had optimal and fair conditions in which to compete.

“I thought, ‘This is wrong. This betrays all of this fairness,'” she told CBN News. “I mean, if a swimmer was wearing an illegal swimsuit we would tell the swimmer ‘go change your swimsuit. That’s not the right fabric. It’s giving you an advantage.'”

Details matter, except just this one little tiny one…

12 Responses to “Will make history”