She compares herself to Jackie Robinson
The crux of the swimmers’ complaints is the biological advantage that Lia has over female teammates. The swimmers were promised competition between females, not men who want to be female. Yet, there’s also the matter of an apparently inflated ego.
“She compares herself to Jackie Robinson,” the female swimmer told me. “She said she is like the Jackie Robinson of trans sports.”
But Lia Thomas isn’t in trans sports. If he were there would be no problem. Lia Thomas has forced his way into women’s sports, thus ruining it for the women. He’s not the Jackie Robinson of trans sports, he’s the comet striking women’s sports.
“I try not to be around her because the whole situation makes me so mad,” the swimmer added. “I don’t think Lia is a bad person. She’s very quiet and kind of introverted … It’s just really hard for me to respect her at all because of what she’s doing to my team and what she’s doing to women in general and not caring.”
Well that is a bad person though. That describes a bad person.
Mind you, he’s also young, and could become a better person over time. But what he’s doing, and his indifference to the consequences for people who are less strong than he is, is bad, and that makes him at least situationally a bad person.
“She laughs about it and mocks the situation,” the female swimmer told me. “Instead of caring or showing that she cares about what she’s doing or what she’s doing to her teammates, she’s not sympathetic or empathetic at all. Lia never addressed our team. She never asked if it was OK. She never asked how we felt. She never tried to explain how she feels. She never has said anything to us as a group. She never addressed anything.”
“All she does is make comments to people like, ‘At least I’m still No. 1 in the country,’ and those kinds of cocky things,” she said. “She doesn’t care how all this is affecting us and how this is affecting our relationship to swimming. She doesn’t care, and it makes it really hard to like her.”
Indeed, and that difficulty in liking is a pretty good sign of a Bad Person.
“On our last training trip, we were told not to wear Penn gear on our trip to Florida, on the off chance that we would get harassed or anything,” she said. “So, everyone went out of their way — now, about 75% of our athletic wardrobe is Penn — we went out of our way to not pack any Penn stuff. Except Lia. Every single day at the airport and at the gym, Lia made sure to wear a big Penn shirt with ‘Penn Swim and Dive’ on it. And she was the only one. We weren’t allowed to wear it because of her, and she did it every day.”
“She was doing it just to make a point,” the swimmer said. “We all went out of our way for her.”
In other words he was rubbing the women’s noses in it. I say not a good person.
The school has warned the swimmers to be careful in what they say in response to inquiries about the situation because they did not want to see anyone “jeopardize their future.”
Is that a threat? That sounds like a threat to me. “It would be a shame if anything happened to this nice little future of yours.”
“We were told, ‘You guys can say whatever you want, but we don’t want you to ruin your future. So, we will help you, whatever you want to say,’” the swimmer said.
Whatever you want to say that won’t ruin your future according to us, the people who are forcing you into this grotesque unjust farce.
The article supports my theory that Lia Thomas is mainly getting off on violating women’s boundaries. Assuming he “identifies” as a woman is giving him too much charity.
Protesting Lia “Willy” Thomas outside the recent swim meet, @RevFemRebels were thanked by a father (sent out by a real swimmer) for saying what she and others couldn’t say (everyone knows it’s unfair).
They got a mention in the Washington Post (“A cold reception” section), one of the first mainstream press articles to even include “both sides.” Curiously, the initial article (later revised) literally violently misgendered once, with a he-said / she-said typo when quoting Thomas.
Jackie Robinson kicked ass in men’s professional baseball because he was an extraordinary athlete. Willy competes against girls because he’s a pansy ass scrub who can’t compete against other men. There is no comparison.
Ophelia — “…he’s also young, and could become a better person over time.” I’ll betcha a fiver on that, but there’s hopin’. ;)
I really hate the fact that most of the coverage of this is coming from conservative media (like the Washington Examiner) as it is easily dismissed as not credible by progressives, among other things. I also don’t believe that this is due to a deep support of women’s rights among conservatives (ha!), but is seen as a great wedge issue to exploit. The Washington Post had an article a couple of days ago titled “A transgender college swimmer is shattering records, sparking a debate over fairness” which contains a few quotes from anonymous parents of other swimmers on the team, but nothing from the swimmers themselves. Lia Thomas gets space for his views, and there’s this:
It’s maddening. And the waffling about a lack of scientific consensus strikes me as ridiculous. The fact that LT transitioned from second-tier swimmer on the men’s team to record-shattering swimmer on the erstwhile women’s team should be evidence alone of the unfair advantage derived from having a male body. To be fair, the article points out that LT actually lost 2 (!) races (one a relay, which is only partially in his control). Note, too, the TIF who won that race has said she is not yet taking hormones because she wanted to continue competing. Hmm, is it possible she wouldn’t be as competitive against the men?
You want to be like Jackie Robinson? Then compete on an equitable basis. Jackie Robinson had to overcome a structural disadvantage to excel in his chosen sport, he didn’t get to walk over others on his way there, he was walked over by those others.
Maybe try being like Genevieve Beacom, the first female pitcher for an Australian professional baseball team.
All this at 17, achieved by dedication, hard work, and being her true, female, self, taking on the men on their own ballpark.
https://www.abc.net.au/news/2022-01-09/teenager-makes-australian-baseball-history/100746500
Dave @ 1 – I think it’s about violating women’s boundaries and about winning. He “broke” all those records.
To be fair, I think that applies to all of them – the males who cheat. I see no reason to believe a single one of them really “identifies as” a woman.
He compares himself.
He’s no Jackie Robinson.
He’s punching down, not punching up.