The Sports Illustrated interview with Lia Thomas slobbers all over him.
Fresh off her final practice of the week, the most controversial athlete in America sat in the corner of a nearly empty Philadelphia coffeehouse with her back to the wall. Lia Thomas had done some of her best work this season while feeling cornered.
Aw diddums. Imagine how the women feel – then laugh a callous laugh and go back to fawning over Lia.
The shy senior economics major from Austin became one of the most dominant college athletes in the country and, as a result, the center of a national debate—a living, breathing, real-time Rorschach test for how society views those who challenge conventions.
He’s not “challenging conventions.” Quite the opposite – he’s exploiting a new convention in order to cheat his way to medals and records. Also, obviously, if he were genuinely shy he wouldn’t be doing any of this.
In her first year swimming for the Penn women’s team after three seasons competing against men, Thomas throttled her competition.
Interesting choice of word.
When she swims at the NCAA Women’s Division I Swimming and Diving Championships, which begin March 16 in Atlanta, Thomas is a favorite to win individual titles in the 200- and 500-yard freestyle events, and also has a shot in the 100-yard freestyle. She has an outside chance to break longstanding collegiate records held by Katie Ledecky and Missy Franklin, two of the most beloved American Olympians of this century.
Outside chance? From what I’ve seen it’s considered inevitable. He’s a man.
Thomas’s story has also become a right-wing obsession, a regular topic of discussion on Fox News. Conservative opinion sites have called her a man and deadnamed her, purposely using the name she went by before transitioning. Her moves have been minutely tracked by the U.K.’s Daily Mail, including once with cruel detail about her habits in the women’s locker room provided by an anonymous teammate.
Cruel? What about what he’s doing to those teammates?
“I’m a woman, just like anybody else on the team,” Thomas says. “I’ve always viewed myself as just a swimmer. It’s what I’ve done for so long; it’s what I love.” She’s not thinking about wins or records, she insists. “I get into the water every day and do my best.”
And what possible reason could we have for not believing a word of that?
Every day this season felt like a challenge to her humanity. Part of her wanted people to know her journey to this moment, to know what it felt like to be in a body but not be of that body. She wanted people to know what it was like to finally live an authentic life and what it meant for her to finish a race, to look up at a timing board and see the name lia thomas next to the names of other women. What it meant to her to stand on a podium with other women and be counted as an equal.
Now let’s talk about those other women, the only actual women on the podium – let’s talk about what it meant to them to have him standing there towering over them.
Comments
29 responses to “Puff puff puff”
How wonderfully poetic and philosophical and shiz. But what does it mean? Oh, nothing? Then never mind.
How do you think the media would react if he would sexually assault one of his teammates? Probably just pretend it didn’t happen, I guess.
Yeah, that jumped off the page at me, too. Dude, you need help. Not affirmation.
GW @1 I agree with Peter, that is far fom philosophical, it’s more like mental illness. But yeah, meaningless.
All right, it’s happened, as I once predicted it would. I have heard the word authentic one time too many. I have now officially lost my control and am likely to say what I think to the next person who says that to me face to face.
Especially in this context. He is not living an authentic life, he’s living a fake life, a delusion.
Oh, he’s coming to Atlanta. Great. I have half a mind to go, and then boo at the top of my lungs. :P
ikn @5 Yes indeed, authenticity is one of my pet interests, from Sartre to Trilling. Fascinating stuff, but also irritating. It’s a wonder how phony the concept of authenticity can be. Willy is about as authentic as a wooden nickel.
Of course it’s “right wing” and “conservative” people who “obsess” over him. No mention of progressive arguments against his participation in women’s sports. I guess Title IX was a right-wing policy.
Also, ESPN notes that he wants to try out for the 2024 Olympic Women’s team. Guess he won’t stop till he proves that Katy Ledecky was just a piker. (They also note that he’s applying for law school; no mention of his LSAT scores, though.)
No. That would only be the case if people were accusing him of being a sealion or an otter. He is a man. Men are human.
Well, part of his journey to this moment consisted of going by another name and not being particularly top notch in men’s swimming. Pointing that out in contrast to his spectacular (and spectacularly dishonest and unfair) performance when swimming against women is a particularly interesting and compelling part of his “journey,” which interrupted and derailed the journeys of any number of young women whom he has cheated out of team spots, wins and records he doesn’t deserve.
But this current life is dishonest and wicked in its calculating unfairness and opportunism. If that is him being “authentic,” then he is a bad person with huge character flaws.
He’s not a woman. He’s a man. The women on the podium did not cheat. He did. He is not their equal, he is a cheat and a fraud. A cheat who enjoys cheating and a fraud who really enjoys the fraud, making people squirm, and bend, and lie to his will, rubbing our noses in his narcissism and blatant mendacity. Someone who uses women as props and tools for “validation”, who ruins the dreams of women who are just supposed to shut up, sit down, and take it, on penalty of ostracism and ejection from the team. No, sorry. I’m wrong. The women on the team he has thrust himself into are expected to enthusiastically celebrate his dishonesty and protect his precious ego at their own cost. How soul-crushing is that? What about their humanity? He’s the perfect poster-boy for Team Lysenko. He is beneath contempt.
I mentioned this on Spinster and Ovarit, and am still curious if anyone knows/has read…where are his parents in all this? Do they attend his competitions? Are they proud of him? What do they think of their son’s behaviour? (I bet they’ll be pretty excited to have an Olympic gold medalist in their family.)
Good grief. Sport isn’t about affirming individuals as their authentic selves, it’s about competition with a group of your peers who are all doing their best to win. Fairness is something that deeply matters in sport because we want winners who don’t cheat. That’s why we have rules and referees to monitor athletes who may, out of a misplaced desire to win, cheat. Thomas has found a way to cheat that not only evades the rules by confusing gender with sex, but also lets him bask in the limelight as someone who has not only won races, but say he’s triumphed over adversity. To the contrary, Thomas is just a selfish man who doesn’t care for anyone except himself.
Please forgive me for being flippant and rather crude:
“That’s one Swimsuit Edition I’m not gonna flip through…”
So it’s “challenging conventions” now for men to exclude women from a fair place to take part, eh? Funny, I thought that that was absolutely conventional.
@11 This whole thing, especially your point that “Sport isn’t about affirming individuals as their authentic selves”, reminds me of the whole episode with Trump and the Purple Heart of Courage. Somehow Trump identified his authentic self as a winner of the Purple Heart, and an actual winner of it was foolish enough to gives his to Trump, and Trump believed that this somehow made him a winner of a Purple Heart.
This could be the biggest philosophical breakthrough of all time.! Imagine the response from dear old Plato if he was still around. The consciousness of Lia Thomas or whatever his real name is, floats about inside his body like goldfish at constant equilibrium with the water inside its bowl; IN THE BOWL BUT NOT OF IT.! Drop the bowl on the floor and smash it, and there will be the goldfish flapping about, free.
Another term for ‘consciousness’ is ‘soul’, proving that the soul is not only independent of the body, but will not die if and when the body dies. The soul is therefore immortal.!
One important question remains. Does this apply to all souls, or just to the souls of trans types.? If just to the latter, I should imagine that there will soon enough be a trans-rush, to make the 19thC gold rush to the Klondike look like a Sunday school picnic.
ALL ABOARD.!!
(Sorry about all the block caps. But there are not too many days AS EXCITING AS THIS.!!!)
As I recall, Dan Dennett calls this sort of thing a “deepity”. Here’s a fun read on that subject:
On Deepities and Bullshit – Neil Van Leeuwen
It not for HIS glory, no. That would be vain and he’s too humble for that. He’s doing it for the freakin’ kids who are in the wrong body.
God Bless Him, He’s a saint!
(Mike, in case you were wondering – you misspelled your last name!)
[…] a comment by Omar on Puff puff […]
Pay no attention to the self-interest behind that curtain of virtue! The Great and Mighty Trans has spoken!
Well, that’s just a flat out lie. You’re not a woman of any kind. You are not a woman precisely because your sex is absolutely, objectively UNlike anyone else’s on the team. Liar and cheat.
It’s amazing how many saints we have these days. Saint Putin, who never spilled coffee on my shirt. “Lia” Thomas never spilled coffee on my shirt, either. Sainthood!
Saint inflation is inevitable when you drop the entrance requirement of Martyrdom.
By the way, why the title “Puff Puff Puff”? What is that supposed to mean?
GW, it’s a “puff piece”, a journalistic form of puffery.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Puffery#Puff_piece
“…while feeling cornered” – but Lia is the one moving into the space of other people, and they are the ones having to make room.
“…those who challenge conventions” frames Lia as a brave and innovative swimmer, when all he is doing is exploiting a loophole.
Ophelia, you’re one of the few people in the world who would catch that!
(Thanks!)
Heh! I meant in case you were wondering why your comment was delayed, but maybe you didn’t notice it was.
Late to the party, but: “Motorcyclist identifies as bicyclist” .. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ipvesqJP1e4