Ladies, Why Let Them Do This to Us?
September 2024
The day a US Supreme Court nominee refused to provide a definition for the word “woman” during her confirmation hearing, and instead responded “I can’t…. I’m not a biologist,” I instinctively knew biological women were headed into a battle—the likes of which we hadn’t faced before.
While I’m not a biologist either, I unequivocally knew from the moment I gave birth to my two children that each was a biological male. At the birth of my first four grandchildren, I unequivocally knew each of them were biological females. When my fifth grandchild was born, there was no doubt he was a “he,” not a “she.”
It was easy to discern each child’s gender with just a quick glance at body parts. No one in the family, regardless of their age, needed a degree in biology to identify what body parts made the two genders distinctly different. By middle school, every member of our family knew about XX and XY chromosomes, and they clearly understood human beings have no third option for gender.
IMHO, any biological woman who can’t define what a woman is either isn’t one or she lacks the basic knowledge expected of any career professional. Such an individual shouldn’t be appointed/elected as a county judge, let alone be confirmed as a Justice of the United States Supreme Court.
Now, with the absurdness of the 2024 Summer Olympics behind us, let’s quickly review how biological boys got the green light to compete in women’s sports.
Born to Carrie and Bob Thomas, Wes Thomas and his younger brother—eventually renamed Lia— were born and raised in Austin, Texas. While growing up, both boys set records in swimming competitions as student athletes. The younger Thomas brother, born in May 1999, started swimming at age five and in his teens placed sixth in his state high school swimming finals.
Both boys attended the University of Pennsylvania (UPenn). The younger brother began taking classes there in 2017, and he competed in swimming meets for UPenn men’s team from 2017 to 2020. After completing one year of college, this younger brother “came out” to his family. He formally changed his name to Lia Catherine Thomas on January 1st, 2020. Lia underwent hormone therapy from 2019 to 2021 while still competing on the men’s team.
Lia Thomas became eligible to compete in women’s swimming events under a 2010 NCAA rule that granted eligibility for trans women who had completed one year of hormone therapy. When Lia began competing in swimming meets for the UPenn women’s team in 2021 – 2022, “she” became the face of a heated debate about whether transgender athletes should be allowed to participate in women’s athletics.
In early December 2021, Lia Thomas swam the fastest times in the nation in the women’s 200 and 500 freestyles at the Zippy Invitational. UPenn parents immediately wrote letters to the school and to the NCAA protesting Lia’s participation on the women’s team. By the end of that month, USA Swimming official, Cynthia Millen, resigned in protest of Lia competing.
Upon winning the women’s 500-yard freestyle in March of 2022, Lia became the first openly transgender athlete to win a NCAA Division I national championship in any sport. By the time Lia’s UPenn swimming career came to an end in 2022, Thomas had moved up from 65th on the men’s team to first place on the women’s team.
Lia’s supporters cited the importance of Lia’s mental health and inclusion. Lia’s opponents claimed Lia’s inclusion created an unfair advantage over biological female participants.
Eventually, Swimming’s governing body–World Aquatics, based in Switzerland—responded by banning male-to-female transgender athletes from the female category unless they transitioned before the age of 12. In January 2024, the 25-year-old Thomas filed legal paperwork against World Aquatics. A Court of Arbitration for Sport ruled in June 2024 that Thomas lacked standing, just days before the 2024 US Olympic swimming trials began. World Aquatics officials said in a statement their decision was “a major step forward in our efforts to protect women’s sports.”
Let’s now look at a biological woman’s side of this story.
Born in Nashville, TN in April 2000, Riley Marie Gaines—whose married name is Riley Gaines Barker—was a competitive female swimmer in high school. She won the 100-yard butterfly and the 100-yard freestyle as a junior in the TISCA High School Swim & Dive Championship in 2017.
While attending the University of Kentucky (UKY), Riley made the All-SEC Freshman team in 2019, and the All-SEC Second Team in 2019 and 2020. She made the All-SEC First team in 2021. Swimming for UKY in 2022, Riley tied for fifth place with UPenn’s Lia Thomas in the 200-yard NCAA freestyle championship.
Interestingly, Lia Thomas was given the championship trophy for photo op purposes, while Riley had to wait for her trophy to arrive in the mail. As if that wasn’t humiliating enough for Riley, she and the other women team members had to share locker room space with Thomas—who still had intact male genitalia.
While Riley went on to become the Southeastern Conference Women’s Swimming and Diving Scholar Athlete of the Year, did anyone care about the mental health of all the women who had to endure the humiliating conditions created by the inclusion of Lia Thomas? No wonder Riley Gaines has become an activist against biological men competing in women’s sports.
From where I stand, after having spent the past 15 years fostering the development and advancement of women in leadership, the inclusion of biological males in women’s sports is the antithesis of creating an environment that promotes fairness, respect, equal opportunities, positive mental health, and physical safety for athletes.
Now let’s look at a more recent women’s sporting event that took place at the 2024 Summer Olympics in Paris.
Italy’s Angela Carini, a biological female boxer, felt compelled to quit her women’s welterweight match against an Algerina boxer with male chromosomes, Imane Kelif—for her own safety—after enduring a 46-second pummeling. Following the event, the distraught Carini told reporters she had never been hit so hard. “I had to preserve my life.” The contest was completely unfair—not just because of Khelif’s strength, but this boxer had male chromosomes!
In the end, the 2024 Olympic women’s boxing championship resulted in two wanna-be women being awarded gold medals: (1) the 5’9” Lin Yu-Ting, who won Taiwan’s first-ever Olympic gold medal in boxing, in the women’s featherweight division, and (2) the 5’10” Imane Khelif, an Algerian boxer who won the gold medal in the women’s welterweight division. To add insult to injury for biological women boxers like Angela Carini, Khelif was awarded the honor of carrying his country’s flag in the closing ceremony.
Mind you, both of these gold medalists had failed the International Boxing Association’s (IBA) genetic gender eligibility tests at the 2023 world championships—which proved they had XY chromosomes. As a result, they were both banned from fighting in the IBA women’s division. Yet, because the Olympics gender standard is based on “identity,” they were eligible to compete in the 2024 Olympics.
Meanwhile, International Olympic Committee (IOC) president, Thomas Bach, claimed that identifying people’s biologic sex based on their chromosomes is outdated. “This is not a question of inclusion … this is a question of justice … the XX or XY is … scientifically not true anymore, and therefore these two are women, and they have the right to participate in the women’s competition.”
To make matters worse, the day after the 2024 Olympics closing ceremony, the IOC shut down any remaining debate by announcing the 2028 games in Los Angeles will NOT include any boxing category. They actually blamed the International Boxing Association and ruled that boxing may not return to the Olympics until it is “organized by a credible, well-governed International Federation.”
Perhaps it is all for the best. Regardless of the IOC’s position, men have long had their own sports teams, and women deserve—and should rightfully demand—to have their own sports teams where they will not be invalidated or made to suffer physical or mental abuse by confused, puberty-blocked men. I say, “Shut down ALL Olympic sports categories and see how long the IOC stays in business.”
Thank goodness on August 16, 2024, the United States Supreme Court–in a 5-4 decision–rejected the Biden Administration's request to temporarily enforce most of an April 2024 rule implementing Title IX, which would have added “gender identity” to the list of protections from sex-based discrimination.
Had the Biden Administration’s request been approved by SCOTUS, biological men would have been permitted to participate in women's sports. They would have been granted access to women’s bathrooms, locker rooms, and dorms; and the use of certain speech would be mandated.
It may come as no surprise to learn that Justice Ketanji Brown Jackson—who couldn’t define the word woman during her confirmation hearing—was one of the four Justices who dissented the decision.