"Transgender swimming champion Lia Thomas will be stripped of University of Pennsylvania swimming titles after the Ivy League school bowed to pressure from the Trump administration."

"The university will also issue formal apologies to every biological female competitor who lost out to a transgender competitor following an investigation by the Department of Education’s Office for Civil Rights (OCR). The probe found UPenn violated Title IX by 'allowing a male to compete in female athletic programs and occupy female-only intimate facilities.' 'Today’s resolution agreement with UPenn is yet another example of the Trump effect in action...' Secretary of Education Linda McMahon said in a statement...."

From "Trans UPenn swimmer Lia Thomas will be stripped of her titles after university bends the knee to Trump admin" (NY Post).

"There were no gyms open... and so every day, I swam miles aimlessly in the lake. I'd put on a wet suit..."

"... and I'd jump in the boat dock and I'd swim down, by Johnny Cash's house, and I came back, and I did the same route every single day. Because... I knew that I had to if I wanted to continue this breakout season I was having my sophomore year into my junior year. Right? And the amount of snakes that I swam by and, like, dead catfish that are floating on top of the water that, like, hit you in your face while you're swimming is not pleasant...."

Said Riley Gaines, describing the difficulty of training during the Covid lockdown. That's part of a 2-and-a-half-hour discussion with Joe Rogan, which is mostly about her staunch opposition to allowing transgender women to compete against biologically female athletes. I've listened to the whole thing, and I think Joe is boldly risking his reputation with this material. He's very supportive of Gaines, and the two of them frequently declare that the world has gone crazy:

"I’m beginning to question the idea of sex segregation in sport. We need to learn to sit with discomfort."

Said Anna Posbergh, a doctoral candidate at the University of Maryland, "a former pole-vaulter who studies the mechanics of human movement and gender and athletes [who] sees notions of gender disadvantage in sports as rooted in culture and an outdated view of what women can achieve."

Quoted in "What Lia Thomas Could Mean for Women’s Elite Sports/Although the number of top transgender athletes is small, the disagreements are profound, cutting to the core of the debate around gender identity and biological sex" (NYT).

What do you do with discomfort? Sit with it?

Ah! I see it's mental health jargon:

"I'm getting so tired of this woke world."

I got there via the link in this Fox News tweet (which I saw because Caitlin Jenner is trending on Twitter):

WHAT A PAIR: @Caitlyn_Jenner blasts NCAA for policies that give advantages to transgender athletes over biological women. https://t.co/upC0NTIsmm pic.twitter.com/UhXF5pIkig

— Fox News (@FoxNews) March 19, 2022

ADDED:

Do not underestimate the amount of justified contempt this creates for the trans movement.

I’m trans and this pisses me off- I can only imagine how the rest of the world feels. pic.twitter.com/gjdInZSYMU

— Blaire White (@MsBlaireWhite) March 18, 2022

"[Lia] Thomas and her rise... forced the typically plodding N.C.A.A. to grapple more quickly with a subject that scientists are still examining and its consequences for sports competitions."

"Comprehensive research in athletes is still lacking, but early studies suggest that suppressing testosterone in transgender women decreases muscle mass and hemoglobin levels, reducing how much oxygen can be carried through the bloodstream. Most of the changes occur within the first year of hormone suppression, but transgender women may still have more muscle mass than their cisgender peers even after three years. As some insist that no amount of testosterone suppression can undo the physiological changes linked to male puberty, like taller height and larger hands and feet, others dispute that transgender women have a built-in advantage and have argued that inclusion should outweigh competition."

From "Lia Thomas Wins an N.C.A.A. Swimming Title/With her victory in Atlanta, Thomas, who competes for the University of Pennsylvania, became the first openly transgender woman to win an N.C.A.A. swimming championship" (NYT).

Here's the ESPN coverage: "Amid protests, Penn swimmer Lia Thomas becomes first known transgender athlete to win Division I national championship." 

"At the non-elite level... an athlete can elect to change their competition category in order for them to experience the sport of swimming in a manner that is consistent with their gender identity and expression."

"At the elite level, a policy has been created for transgender athlete participation in the U.S. that relies on science and medical evidence-based methods to provide a level-playing field for elite cisgender women, and to mitigate the advantages associated with male puberty and physiology.... Evidence that the prior physical development of the athlete as a male, as mitigated by any medical intervention, does not give the athlete a competitive advantage over the athlete’s cisgender female competitors...."

From the new USA Swimming policy, quoted in "Lia Thomas’ future murkier as USA Swimming releases new policy, Penn teammates express support" (NY Post).

Also quoted, Independent Women’s Law Center (IWLC) and Independent Women’s Forum (IWF) condemned USA Swimming’s policies: "USA Swimming’s insistence that there is some way to eliminate the athletic advantage that post-pubescent males have over females denies science. But it also ignores the fact that... [a]llowing male-bodied athletes to compete on limited roster teams inevitably means that there are fewer opportunities for female athletes (to be recruited, to receive a scholarship, or to participate in competitions). Make no mistake, taking athletic opportunities away from female athletes violates Title IX."

"I think secretly everyone just knows it’s the wrong thing to do... When the whole team is together, we have to be like, ‘Oh my gosh, go Lia, that’s great, you’re amazing.’ It’s very fake...."

"There are a bunch of comments on the Internet about how, ‘Oh, these girls are just letting this happen. They should just boycott or protest.’ At the end of the day, it’s an individual sport. If we protest it, we’re only hurting ourselves because we’re going to miss out on all that we’ve been working for." 

From "Penn Trans Swimmer's Teammate Speaks Out as Lia Thomas Smashes More Records" (Outkick).

Women, being fake? That's an old sexist stereotype — female guile and deceit. 

And speaking of old patterns... feminism always steps back politely and allows others to go first. Young girls get the message: Don't be mean. No one will love you if you are mean. 

ADDED: Surely, Lia Thomas has read this news — the news that these teammates are 2-faced, fake friends. Here's a test of femaleness, just a thought experiment, not a real, proposed test: Did Thomas break down and cry? Did Thomas confront the teammates in an emotional outburst?: How could you treat me this way? Lying to my face! I thought you were my friends!

It occurs to me that the project of women's sports has played out. There was an idea — something that began after I graduated from high school (1969) — that sports could transform women into empowered competitors. Feminism boosted female athletes, and some young women participated, and they were highlighted and extolled, even as — everyone knew — they only excelled compared to each other.

Listen to Serena Williams. There's no stronger woman, but "I only want to play girls":

 

Maybe that's something beautiful — something women created that should be celebrated and preserved and jealously guarded.

But look at what transgender women bring to the discussion. It's the idea that there is an inward psychology that is female, that's more important than any outward manifestation. Does that feeling include athletic competitiveness? That's what the women-in-sports movement believed could be created. But if women in sports were really aggressively competitive, they would fight to exclude the transgender competitor, not welcome and cheer on this person who's going to deprive them of their victories. 

If kindness and friendship and sociability are predominant elements of the female psyche, then the transgender female destroys the foundation of the women-in-sports movement, though women can still do sports in a traditional female way — for fun, for good times with friends, for good health. It won't matter who wins. That's the male style of sports, where the saying is "winning isn't everything, it's the only thing."

But the women on Lia Thomas's team did not completely melt into kindness and inclusivity. That's only how they acted on the outside. Inside, they felt aggrieved. But perhaps that's the female way — nice on the outside, chronically unsatisfied on the inside. And that's a core concern of feminism. But to raise that concern in this context is to be a TERF. And mainstream feminism is now staunchly TERFphobic.