U of Penn Was Right to Disallow Lia Thomas’ Swim Records

In case you missed it, the University of Pennsylvania, where my brother was a professor, has disallowed the swim records of transgender athlete Lia Thomas. I applaud this decision with all my heart and before you call me a hater of transgender folks, I have nothing against them. I wish them happy and prosperous lives. It’s just that they don’t belong in competitions against women. Why? Because it’s unfair to women. Full stop. Period.

Penn changed its position after Trump threatened to remove federal funding from the university unless it stopped allowing men to compete vs. women. That dose of harsh reality helped Penn come to its senses. Penn also will apologize to female athletes negatively affected by having Thomas on the team and in the locker room. Penn also will adopt definitions of male and female based on biology.

I am against transgender athletes taking medals away from women and from them being in women’s locker rooms. I don’t think my position is radical. It is sensible.

I also am against transgender athletes competing against women in contact sports where they can hurt women. That is not fair competition. Any man who has gone through male puberty does not belong in women’s sports. I don’t care how many puberty blockers he took.

What can transgender athletes do when it comes to competition? They can compete against men, or athletic associations can create special categories for transgender men to compete against each other. That would be fair.

I don’t want to get into the intricacies of who’s a man and who’s a woman, although I assert there are only two sexes, and I sure don’t want to walk down the linguistic dead end of pronouns. So, I’ll make it simple. For the purposes of sport, there are two sexes, man and woman. Full stop. Period.