This site has fairly thoroughly documented the case of Will Thomas, the former male swimmer for the University of Pennsylvania, who then decided that no, he wasn’t a man guy, but a woman. With the suspension of so much of life due to the COVID-19 panicdemic — not a typographical error, but spelled exactly the way it should be — Mr Thomas had a year off to ‘transition’ into a woman, through testosterone suppressants and female hormone supplements, though he hadn’t been castrated had any ‘gender reassignment surgery’ at the time.

Had the story ended there, Mr Thomas, now calling himself “Lia,” nobody other than his friends would have noticed or cared. But nope, the story didn’t end there: Mr Thomas decided that he wanted to compete on Penn’s women’s swim team, and the University, which does have biology courses, professors, and even its own medical school, allowed it. As we previously noted, some of the real women on the swim team were unhappy with this, but the team members had been ‘strongly advised’ to say nothing to the press, and only a couple of team members did speak to the media, under the condition of anonymity.

Why anonymity? The first swimmer to speak out said that she feared for her ability to find employment after being graduated from college for sharing her opinion about a transgender teammate, a fear the University pushed.

That was late 2021, and Joe Biden was just beginning his term in office. The Democrats controlled both Houses of Congress, and the silliness that girls could be boys and boys could be girls was politically ascendant, even if the fans in the stands didn’t see it that way.

It seems the American people didn’t see it that way, either. Donald Trump and Republican candidates raised the issue of fairness to women, and the American people responded by electing Mr Trump, and giving the Republicans an additional four seats, and the majority, in the Senate. British writer J K Rowling, herself very politically on just about every other issue, sent out the tweet shown above as President Trump was signing an Executive Order to try to keep males out of women’s sports.

Three of Lia Thomas’ swim teammates at Penn sue the school, saying inclusion of the trans athlete violated their rights

In the days following the lawsuit, President Donald Trump signed an executive order banning transgender athletes from women’s sports, and the U.S. Department of Education opened a probe into Penn.

by Abraham Gutman | Thursday, February 6, 2025 | 4:29 PM EST | Updated: 5:39 PM EST

A day before President Donald Trump signed an executive order banning transgender athletes from women’s sports, three University of Pennsylvania graduates sued their alma mater over the inclusion of a transgender student in a women’s swimming competition.

The complaint focuses on the Ivy League Women’s Swimming and Diving Championships that took place at Harvard University in February 2022, in which Lia Thomas, a transgender woman from Penn, was named Ivy League champion and broke records.

Though we note in our published Stylebook that we always refer to the ‘transgendered’ by their real names, and use pronouns and other references in accordance with their actual sex rather than their fantasized ‘gender,’ we do not change the direct quotations of others, and The Philadelphia Inquirer, the cited source, goes along with ‘transgender’ silliness. It’s actually useful not to edit their quotes, because such simply exposes their silliness even more.

The proposed class-action lawsuit was filed in U.S. District Court of Massachusetts on behalf of three former Penn swimmers: Grace Estabrook and Margot Kaczorowski, who competed alongside Thomas in the Ivy League Championship, and Ellen Holmquist, who qualified for the event at every opportunity while at Penn except 2022 when Thomas was on the team. All three have graduated.

The complaint says that by allowing Thomas to compete, Penn, Harvard, the Ivy League, and the National Collegiate Athletic Association “deprived” the swimmers of “equal opportunities as women to compete and win.”

It also says that by providing Thomas with access to the women’s locker room, the schools and organizations failed to protect the privacy of the swimmers.

It seems now that some of the University’s women’s swim team members have shed their anonymity to file this lawsuit. Perhaps the election of more sensible politicians has something to do with that.

Advocates for transgender rights noted that Thomas didn’t dominate every competition she participated in, and has lost to swimmers who were assigned female at birth. And other transgender athletes applauded her for “lifesaving” visibility.

We have also noted how the Inquirer has gone all-in on transgenderism, including the unscientific formulation “assigned female at birth”. No, babies are recognized as being male or female at birth, but the determination of which sex they will be is made at conception, depending upon whether the father’s sperm which fertilizes the mother’s egg is carrying the X or the Y sex chromosome. This is something which we have known for a century, but the ‘transgender’ advocates persist in using the unscientific formulation, because they see it as somehow advancing their cause.

If Jack wants to call himself Jill, it’s really nobody else’s business. But if Jack wants to use the force of government to require everyone else to recognize and treat him as Jill, then he has made it other people’s business. Sensible people will not consent to lying to others, and to themselves, and recognize Jack as being Jack.