Another teammate of controversial transgender swimmer Lia Thomas has spoken out against the school and the NCAA for allowing the biological male to join the women’s swim team.
Thomas, a bioloigcal male who has taken record wins in the 100-yard and 200-yard freestyle races and has easily beaten all natural-born opponents after joining the university’s women’s swim team this season, has become the focus of criticism throughout the season.
Now, another teammate is speaking out but doing so anonymously to avoid retaliation by the school.
“Lia was not even close to being competitive as a man in the 50 and the 100. But just because Lia is biologically a man, [Lia] is just naturally better than many females in the 50 and the 100 or anything that [Lia] wasn’t good at as a man,” the unnamed UPenn swimmer told the Washington Examiner.
“The top people at NCAA, who are on the board of directors … they are not protecting women’s rights. Imagine if there was this kind of inequality in men’s sports. Or someone found out about doping in a men’s sport. It would be fixed in a blink of an eye. Everyone would be all over it. But because it’s women, they don’t care,” the swimmer added.
Lia Thomas, a transgender woman (C), gathers with her teammates before she swims for the University of Pennsylvania at an Ivy League swim meet against Harvard University in Cambridge, Massachusetts, on January 22, 2022. (Photo by Joseph Prezioso / AFP) (Photo by JOSEPH PREZIOSO/AFP via Getty Images)
“People have come up to me and said this is so wrong,” the unnamed swimmer said. “I am typically liberal, but this is past that. This is so wrong. This doesn’t make any sense. … I’m trying to do everything I can without harming my future from stopping this from happening. I can’t just sit back and let something like this happen. I’m not just going to sit back and say, ‘My rights are being taken away, too bad.’ It’s embarrassing that people aren’t speaking out more.”
“I can’t see how anyone could feel good about this,” she insisted.
This latest UPenn swimmer is at least the third member of Thomas’s team to speak out against allowing the biologically male swimmer to join the women’s team.
Lia Thomas, a transgender woman, warms up before swimming for the University of Pennsylvania at an Ivy League meet against Harvard University in Cambridge, Massachusetts, on January 22, 2022. (Photo by Joseph Prezioso / AFP) (Photo by JOSEPH PREZIOSO/AFP via Getty Images)
Early in December, one UPenn swimmer anonymously told the media that “Everyone knows it’s the wrong thing to do” to allow Thomas to compete as a woman. And a week later, another of Thomas’ teammates who commented anonymously revealed that Thomas had bragged about beating his natural-born female opponents.
By the end of December, a USA Swimming official resigned her position in protest over Thomas, saying that allowing Thomas to compete as a woman is “destroying women’s swimming.”
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