Transgender and Women’s-Rights Activists Clash as Lia Thomas Dominates Opening of NCAA Championships

Atlanta, Ga. — As expected, Lia Thomas finished first in the 500-yard freestyle prelims this morning at the NCAA Women’s Swimming and Diving Championships. Thomas set a new record, coming in at 4:33.82 and beating Olympic swimmer Brooke Forde of Stanford. (Forde came in second place at 4:38.19.)

Both inside and outside the McAuley Aquatic Center, transgender and women’s-rights activists went head-to-head.

While Thomas was racing ahead, I witnessed an altercation between Kellie Jay Keen-Minshull, a women’s-rights activist from England, and Schuyler Bailar, a Harvard alumnus and the first transgender-identifying (biologically female) NCAA Division I swimmer to compete on any men’s team.

As Thomas walked toward the changing room, Bailar leaned forward to offer congratulations. Keen-Minshull shouted “cheat!”

Outside the swimming center, protesters and counterprotesters gathered on opposite sides of the street, mostly shouting past one another.

I followed up with Keen-Minshull on the women’s-rights side.

ME: Do you worry that by wearing a T-Shirt saying, “that man is a cheat” and by starting confrontations with transgender activists, you are coming across as overly aggressive and insufficiently compassionate on this issue?

KEEN MINSHULL: I think that would be a reasonable summation about what is going on if women’s rights weren’t at stake. And I think that women have often been in a defensive position, trying to defend the attack on our rights. And I think actually, we need to be far more on the front foot, far more taking the conversation to the trans activists. The reason I had a confrontation in Atlanta today was the woman who calls herself a man sat in front of me and started cheering on Lia, you know, Will Thomas in a women’s race. And so, I felt it was necessary to actually have that conversation. Our rights are totally attacked, so we can never truly be agitators because our situation is presented by others and formed by others; we are merely responding to the attacks.

ME: Do you think there is any validity in the position of the other side?

KEEN MINSHULL: No, I don’t think there’s any validity in the fiction that men can be women and women can be men. Certainly, no validity in men competing in women’s sports, men existing in women’s spaces, men destroying women’s rights, and doctors destroying children’s bodies. There was no validity in any of those positions. There’s absurdity, but not validity.

I crossed the street and spoke to Bailar.

ME: Do you think there is any validity in the argument that sports should be sex-exclusive (sex defined as what people are born as)?

BAILAR: I don’t think there’s validity in the arguments that the people on the other side of the street are saying right now. I think that most people don’t know deeply what they’re talking about. I think a lot of people think that they’re experts. I think most people do not care at all about women’s sports, for the most part. And we can see that by the fact that nobody watches the WNBA. . . . A lot of these people who are here do not care about the wage gap between professional women athletes, professional men athletes. People are not fighting against this rampant sexual abuse of girl athletes that’s happening all around the country. So, there’s a lot of things that people don’t care about within women’s sports until a trans woman wants to play, and suddenly everybody is a woman sports-fairness advocate. So, I don’t think that there’s much validity to their arguments.

ME: What about the argument that biological sex confers irreversible advantages on those who are born male?

BAILAR: So, I’m not a sports physiologist, and most people, by the way, over there [at the women’s-rights protest] are not, either. I defer to the people who are the sports experts. And the No. 1, most respected, most elite sports committee would be the IOC, right? The International Olympic Committee, who has said that it is fair for trans athletes to be included in sports, aligned with their gender identity.

We can expect tensions to rise as the championships continue.