We have previously noted how the left attempt to use control of language to control the argument. The Associated Press Stylebook, which is used by many, though certainly not all, credentialed media sources, specifies language which reinforces the notion that a person can define his ‘gender’ as something different from his biological sex, and that such choices can, should, and must be accepted by society as real. The First Street Journal maintains its own Stylebook, and we do not go along with the silliness of the AP.

The Philadelphia Inquirer either uses the AP Stylebook, or maintains its own policies to identify the ‘transgendered’ by the gender they claim to be rather than their actual sex, but reporter Susan Snyder decided to go one step further, and hammer down on the feminine pronouns, just to make sure the reader got it.

Transgender swimmer at the core of controversy over funding withdrawal at Penn vows to fight for trans inclusion in sports

“It’s so easy to feel isolated and alone and demoralized especially nowadays in the current political climate,” said former Penn swimmer Lia Thomas. “We have to stick together and support each other.”

by Susan Snyder | Saturday, March 29, 2025 | 3:28 PM EDT

The transgender swimmer at the core of the controversy over the federal funding pause at the University of Pennsylvania said she will continue to stand up for inclusion of transgender people in sports.

“I am going to keep fighting as much as I am able to,” Lia Thomas said during a trans youth forum held on Zoom Saturday.

Earlier this month, President Donald Trump’s administration decided to pause $175 million in funding to Penn because the Ivy League university allowed Thomas to swim on the women’s team during the 2021-22 season after she had transitioned. She did not specifically address the president’s decision at the forum and did not respond to a previous request from The Inquirer for comment.

There’s much more at the original, all of it sympathetic to Will Thomas, the ‘transgender’ swimmer who calls himself “Lia.” This site has covered Mr Thomas’ actions extensively.

We might not have bothered with this, save for one paragraph, the fourth, screen captured and shown at the right.

Any English professor, any journalism instructor, any creative writing teacher, would have told Miss Snyder, a graduate of Indiana University of Pennsylvania, and a “Pulitzer-prize winning journalist with decades of experience in education reporting,” according to her LinkedIn profile, that using three separate pronouns in the same sentence while not using the subject’s name is poor prose. Miss Snyder’s editor — assuming an editor at the newspaper actually reviewed her story — should have caught that, and changed one of those pronouns to “Thomas,” but that never happened.

Throughout Miss Snyder’s article, I counted 38 separate uses of the feminine pronouns to refer to Mr Thomas.

The newspaper then gave Mr Thomas space to explain why he performed so much better against women:

She performed on the men’s team as a freshman and sophomore and competed in a few meets as a junior before COVID-19 canceled the next season. She returned in August 2021 for her senior year as a member of the women’s team and posted some of the fastest times in the nation among college women.

She said she thinks people don’t understand the importance of athletes’ mental state in driving their performance. It’s as important, if not more, than the physical aspect, she said.

Thomas recalled the heavy depression she felt her sophomore year before transitioning and how that impacted her swimming ability. Once on the women’s team, she said she was much happier and “that happiness translated into feeling better in the water and being able to give my all in a way that I wasn’t able to before and that showed in my results.”

No, of course it had nothing to do, nothing at all, with Mr Thomas being a 6’2″ or 6’3″ tall athlete who had gone through male puberty, who had the heart and musculature and hip structure of an adult male. He just went from being the 462^nd ranked male collegiate swimmer to number one among women because he was happier.

To us, the issue of language is not a small one. If people refer to Will Thomas as “Lia”, if they use the feminine pronouns to refer to him, they are reinforcing the idea that girls can be boys and boys can be girls. Some might see it as just being polite, but we do not; we recognize that debate is conveyed by language, and that the left are attempting to push the debate in the direction they wish. We don’t accept the left setting the definitions, and neither should you.