Lia Thomas, a transgender swimmer, has slammed women who don’t want her to compete in women’s sports.
Thomas, the first transgender athlete to win an NCAA Division I title, accused such women of being transphobes who “hide their true, hateful beliefs behind the guise of feminism.”
The swimmer joined Schuyler Bailar on his podcast ‘Dear Schuyler’ to discuss the division over whether or not trans-female athletes should be on women’s sports teams.
She said;
‘They’re like: “Oh, we respect Lia as a woman, as a trans woman, whatever, we respect her identity, we just don’t think it’s fair.
‘You can’t really have that half support. Like I respect you as a woman here, but not here,’ the NCAA gold medalist said on a promotional clip for the podcast, posted to Instagram.
‘They’re using the guise of feminism to sort of push transphobic beliefs. I think a lot of people in that camp sort of carry an implicit bias against trans people, but don’t want to, I guess, fully manifest or speak that out. And so they try to just play it off as this sort of half-support.
‘You can’t do that you can’t sort of break down me as a person into little pieces.’
Bailar agreed with the controversial athlete, saying:
‘They’re coming from…this whole protect “protect women’s sports,” [which] has become a very big movement and that they do it under the guise of feminism. “Oh, we’re just feminists, we’re just fighting for women,” and whenever anybody says that I’m always [like]: ‘Okay, you’re fighting for women by excluding women so that’s not fighting for women.’
The athletes discussed how black women faced the same criticism that transgender women now face, saying that people ‘don’t want a woman who doesn’t look like you perhaps or who isn’t fitting your version of womanhood to win.’
Bailar went on to say that feminism has become ‘twisted’ and ‘turned into excluding women’ and reduced them to ‘reproductive capacity.’
Many international sporting organizations have approved restrictions prohibiting transgender athletes from competing in female competitions in recent months. Everything has been done in the name of equality for female athletes.
The latest revelation comes just days after House Republicans voted to prohibit transgender athletes from participation in women’s sports, a decision that will undoubtedly have an influence on Lia Thomas and her eligibility to compete in NCAA women’s contests.
Thomas used to compete against men but transitioned to females after beginning hormone therapy in 2019. Sge faced backlash after practically every event in which she triumphed over biological women. Her detractors claimed she had an unfair edge and should have been forced to participate in a different category.
Her teammates’ parents submitted a letter to the NCAA in December, urging that the rules that allowed the young transgender athlete to compete be changed, stating that “the integrity of women’s sports is at stake here.”