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This week, the University of Pennsylvania succumbed to reality and the Trump administration in an agreement that saw the school ban men from women’s sports and strip trans swimmer Lia Thomas of his records.
It is justice for victims of Penn’s previous policy, including Thomas, himself.
Penn’s capitulation to the Trump administration is the latest nail in the coffin of the transgender movement, because the central premise of that movement is that there is no difference between a woman and a man pretending to be a woman.
UPENN AGREES TO FOLLOW TRUMP’S MANDATE ON PROTECTING WOMEN’S SPORTS, EDUCATION DEPARTMENT SAYS
If, as Penn now admits, men posing as women have distinct advantages in sports, then the entire edifice of transgenderism comes crashing down, and in this case it has fallen onto the head and shoulders of Lia Thomas.
Thomas began his college swimming career in 2017 on Penn’s men’s team and was a middling performer. Just prior to COVID, he began transitioning and, by the 2021 season, had met the NCAA’s hormone requirements to compete on the women’s team.
Mar 18, 2022; Atlanta, Georgia, USA; Penn Quakers swimmer Lia Thomas prepares for the 200 free at the NCAA Swimming & Diving Championships at Georgia Tech. (Brett Davis-USA TODAY Sports)
We all saw what happened next. Thomas not only beat, but humiliated the women he competed against. Some, such as swimmer Riley Gaines, were brave enough to call out the rank unfairness only to be branded as transphobic bigots.
Of course, Gaines and others of her ilk were victims of the policies of Penn and the NCAA. Today they have emerged victorious, and while nothing can give them back their college careers, they have protected those of girls and women following in their paths.
Thomas, on the other hand, has gone from hero of the trans movement to a disgraced former athlete whose records are being scrubbed and the poster child for the lie that those at Penn, whose job it was to protect and educate him, perpetuated.
At a sane university, in a sane world, Thomas would have been told, when he tried to join the women’s team, that he is a man and to pretend otherwise is pure make-believe. But our academic elites decided long ago that gender is a subjective, inscrutable mystery.
Even Supreme Court Justice Ketanji Brown Jackson has been so twisted by progressive jibber-jabber that she cannot define what a woman is. It’s laughable, but in the case of Thomas, it has also caused a lot of harm.
The general attitude of Americans towards transgenderism is that they don’t really care how adults choose to live, but if it is unfair to women, such as men in their sports, shelters, or prisons, we can’t allow that.
Riley Gaines emerged as a social influencer for saying something she didn’t think was controversial – «men and women are different.» (Fox & Friends Weekend/Screengrab)
This balance has increasingly served to protect women, as Penn’s decision this week has, but it doesn’t do anything to protect the teenagers and young adults whose fantasies are being indulged by left-wing ideologues.
In retrospect, and for many of us at the time, it is completely obvious that encouraging Thomas to beat the hell out of women in the pool and then celebrate it as a civil rights victory was not about helping Thomas, but the progressive cause.
Thomas cannot be completely exonerated for his role in stealing the athletic glory of women. After all, he was technically an adult by the time of his transition. But adults, educators who should have known better, celebrated Thomas’ delusions when they should have been helping him accept reality.
Gaines told Fox News Channel Tuesday that Penn’s admission of wrongdoing was vindication and that she felt like «pigs are flying.»
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But in a way, it is the opposite because the Ivy League institution is finally accepting that, in fact, pigs cannot fly and men cannot become women.
After Tuesday’s decision by Penn to acknowledge the reality of biological sex and gender, it can no longer be considered responsible to encourage children or adults to pretend they are a gender they are not.
To indulge gender fantasies is not a neutral position, it is rather the promulgation of a dangerous and harmful lie, and sadly, Lia Thomas will not be its last victim.
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The tide on transgenderism isn’t changing anymore, it has changed. The concept has been rejected, and we must, at every level, make it clear that biological sex is reality.
Penn’s decision this week, and the ones that will likely follow from other schools, will protect women athletes. That is a huge win, but we must also protect the other victims of transgenderism, those, who, like Lia Thomas, are taught to live a lie. For them, reality eventually always comes knocking.
