The mother of a collegiate female swimmer who competed against UPenn transgender athlete Lia Thomas gave an emotional testimony detailing the discrimination and disempowerment her daughter and her teammates are enduring due to the latest inclusivity push in sports.
Going under the pseudonym “Margaret” to shield her daughter, the mother participated in a press call, hosted by the Independent Women’s Forum, with Republican senators in honor of National Women and Girls in Sports Day.
She urged listeners to consider the degrading logic behind allowing transgender women to compete on the same playing field as biological women.
“When trans women compete against women, the idea is that a male body can be artificially limited by hormones,” she said.
Sports policy makers are asking a question that is offensive to women at its heart, she suggested.
“‘Just how much do we need to impair male performance to be equated to that of women?’ This argument, this experience is NOT empowering for women. It is damaging, it is deeply misogynistic. It is demeaning. We are NOT encumbered male bodies. We are female and we should not have to fight for representation or reward physically against biology that does not compare to our own,” she declared.
She tearfully relayed the grievances, confidence struggles, and deflated spirits of her daughter’s swimmer friends, who all feel that the game has been rigged against them, but they’ve been asked to grin and bear it for the greater good of inclusivity.
Despite the measures athletic bodies have implemented to level the races, such as testosterone suppression treatment, the mother asserted that girls are still no match for the enhanced bodies who have intruded in their space. For instance, Thomas, who her daughter raced against, still underwent puberty and received all the benefits of male muscular development and other processes, regardless of recent gender transition measures.
“Lia, who was not an NCAA championship competitor against men, but is in competition with only Olympians against women. Lia who has a male built body aided by years of testosterone with unalterable attributes. Win or lose, the physiological or hormonal advantages Lia has are not accessible or attainable for any biological woman,” she said.
After competing in the men’s swimming division for three years, Thomas adopted a female name and joined the women’s team at UPenn. Thomas has since been smashing records, technically boasting the fastest 500-yard female freestyle in the country and the all-time record for the Penn women’s team. Amid the drama that erupted, the Ivy League released a statement of solidarity with Thomas, affirming that athletes have the right to compete according to their gender preference.
“This is not a measure of female athleticism or ability. This is not something we can aspire to. It is a new standard women are being asked to measure up to: that of a hormonally influenced male body. The race feels fixed, the rules feel wrong, weighted with concern and preference for this male body,” the mother lamented.
She said that many of the girls on her daughter’s team thought administrators would come to their defense but instead they’ve been urged not to speak out.
And of course, the long-fought feminist battle to create sports spaces exclusively for women has been severely undermined by the same proponents, an irony which Senator Tommy Tuberville pointed out.
“A lot of the same people who fought for Title IX are now fighting for transgender athletes to be able to compete in women’s sports and that’s totally wrong,” he said.
The NCAA recently updated its transgender athlete participation guidelines to leave the issue up to each sport’s respective governing body, a move which Tuberville said “caved to the progressive agenda” and “kicked the can down the road.”
“We have been marginalized and undervalued over all history simply because of the physical constraints of our sex. Now after decades of progress, the organizations in charge of policy are using the spirit of inclusivity to distribute pain as they wash their hands of the value of women. Sex based categories in competitive sports have been a huge part in women’s success of overcoming marginalization,” the mother noted.
Senators Joni Ernst, Mike Lee, Marsha Blackburn and Cindy Hyde-Smith, who have co-sponsored legislation in Congress to prohibit biological male participation in women’s athletics in federally funded K-12 and academia in accordance with Title IX, all echoed this sentiment during the conversation.
The progressive campaigns to invite biological men into female sports will be regressive for women and society, eliminating women’s opportunities for athletic success and scholarships, they said.
“Sex-based rights are not a buffet for those to join our numbers but do not share in the biological basis of our burdens and our oppression. I will gladly fight for trans right but I will not fight for the abolition of sex…Inclusivity cannot be an accepted code word for discrimination on the basis of sex,” the mother concluded.