Following the announcement that the transgender swimmer that sparked such virulent fights over the participation of transgender athletes in women’s sports, Lia Thomas, was nominated for the NCAA’s 2022 “Woman of the Year” award by the University of Pennsylvania, tennis legend Martina Navratilova took to Twitter to express the sentiment that many people have when it comes to biological men competing in women’s sports.
Sounding off on Twitter in the form of a comment on a TMZ post saying “NCAA championship swimmer Lia Thomas has been nominated by the University of Pennsylvania for one of the most prestigious awards in college athletics … NCAA Woman of the Year.“, Navratilova, a nine-time Wimbledon singles champion, said:
“Not enough fabulous biological women athletes, NCAA?!? What is wrong with you?!!!!!!!?”
Now, she got the main fact of the story wrong. It was the University of Pennsylvania, where Thomas swam as a college athlete, that made the nomination. Not the NCAA. That organization is included in the name of the award because of its involvement in running college sports, but it doesn’t play a role in nominating the athletes for the award.
So, though Navratilova’s point is well taken, the outrage should be directed not at the NCAA but at the University of Pennsylvania.
In any case, the basic sentiment expressed by Navratilova is one held by many Americans, whoever they blame for the situation.
That’s because, whatever their opinions on transgenderism generally, they very much dislike seeing those who have a biological edge (the male puberty process) dominate women’s sports and blow girls who have trained their whole lives for an activity out of the water on the basis of that biology.
And that’s something that appears to be the case for Thomas and the past swimming season that Thomas dominated, as the Blaze reported, saying:
As you may have heard, UPenn nominated Thomas — a biological male who in 2017 ranked as the 462nd-best male swimmer on the school’s men’s team — for the National Collegiate Athletic Association’s 2022 “Woman of the Year” award. Thomas joined the women’s team in 2020 after transitioning and almost immediately became the No. 1-ranked female collegiate swimmer in the country.
Say what you will about transgenderism generally, but it seems unfair to girls to nominate someone who was 462nd but then became #1 after “transitioning” for the “NCAA Woman of the Year” award. Why not give that award to a biological woman that dominated her sport because of skill?
This isn’t the first time that Navratilova has commented on the Lia Thomas issue. She did so as well in an interview with NewsNation, saying:
“It’s not about excluding transgender women from winning, ever. But it is about not allowing them to win when they were not anywhere near winning as men. You try to keep it as close as possible to what it would have been had you been born in the female biological body in the first place.”
“The solution perhaps for now is (for Thomas) to swim in another lane or you can compete but you don’t get the medal because the (NCAA) rules are not correct,” Navratilova said. “Right now, the rules are what they are. Maybe put an asterisk there, if she starts breaking records left and right and if Lia goes to the Olympics because she’s hitting her prime now physically.”
“In the future, maybe it should be an open category for everybody and then biological females, so trans women can compete but they compete against men and trans men have a choice.”
That’s more or less what FINA, the governing body for the sport, decided on; from now on, there will be an “open” category for swimming, but to compete in a gendered competition the athlete must have been that gender at age 12, so before puberty kicks into high gear.
By: Gen Z Conservative, editor of GenZConservative.com. Follow me on Facebook and Subscribe to My Email List
