On July 1, the University of Pennsylvania was forced to apologize and retract awards from transgender swimmer Lia (Will) Thomas after a federal investigation found the school violated Title IX by allowing him to compete on the women’s team. Awards and titles were restored to their proper female competitors approximately three years after Thomas stole them. On top of that, UPenn banned transgender athletes from competing in women’s sports altogether.
Rest assured, “UPenn is not sincere in their apologies,” says Liz Wheeler, BlazeTV host of “The Liz Wheeler Show.” “They’re just trying not to have their federal dollars taken away from them by President Trump.”
To get the insider scoop on what it was like to train with and compete against Thomas, Liz invites former UPenn swimmer Paula Scanlan to the show.
Paula recalls the first time she saw Will Thomas, who was a swimmer on UPenn’s men’s swim team before he decided he was a girl. She was a sophomore and only 19 years old when one day, a meeting was called and Thomas was brought before the team.
“He just looks at us and goes, ‘Hey guys, just wanted to let you know I’m transgender; I’ll be joining your team next season. Please refer to me now with she/her pronouns, and I’ll let you guys know soon what I’m going to rename myself to, but for now, you can keep calling me Will,”’ she says. “I actually thought this was a prank. … I thought [my coach] was just going to say, ‘Gotcha!”’
She quickly found out that it wasn’t a prank when anyone who did not refer to Thomas using female pronouns was labeled “hateful and transphobic.” Many of the female swimmers, however, welcomed Thomas with open arms. “I saw my teammates clapping. They were like, ‘We’re so proud of you. We’re so excited for you being your authentic self. Thank you for sharing this with us,”’ Paula recalls.
Confused, she looked up the NCAA handbook and sure enough found the “transgender inclusion handbook,” which states that “if a man wants to join a women’s swim team, he just has to suppress his testosterone for one year [and] he’s good to go in any women’s sport.”
The season kicked off, and Paula and her teammates were forced not only to practice with and compete with Thomas, they were also forced to share a locker room with him. “We were dressing in the locker room with him 18 times per week,” she says, noting that swimming is not like other sports in that being naked to change in and out of swimsuits is a requirement.
“That aspect was really, really hard,” she says.
Some teammates raised concerns about sharing a locker room with Thomas, but these complaints were always filed “privately” to avoid being seen as bigoted. Publicly, most swimmers, even the ones who secretly begged coaches not to room them with Thomas at travel meets, cheered that UPenn was “progressing transgender rights.”
Paula, however, was “open” about her opposition to Thomas competing on the women’s team. She even conducted some “anonymous interviews” with media outlets to get the word out about the injustice the UPenn women’s team was experiencing.
But when word got out on the team that she was the one behind these secret interviews, Paula was ambushed by her progressive teammates. One of them sent her the following text message:
“Now I think [the message] is funny,” says Paula, but “in the moment, I felt really alone and isolated in dealing with this.”
In the days following UPenn’s apology and restoration of awards to the proper winners, Paula hasn’t heard from many of her teammates. “Most of them agree with me. They just don’t really feel comfortable saying that or sharing that,” which “shows why this was something that happened because if no one was willing to speak up, even though we all agreed, that’s how the crazies were able to put in these nasty, wild policies.”
To hear more details of Paula’s story and the role she played in advocating for women’s rights, watch the video above.
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