Wednesday of last week was “national girls and women in sports day.” It was first celebrated in 1987 as a tribute to late Olympic volleyball star Flo Hyman.
It also overlapped with a letter sent by 16 University of Pennsylvania female swimmers to their school and the Ivy League voicing opposition to transgender teammate Lia Thomas competing in the NCAA swim championships in March.
Two paragraphs from the letter (the 16 signers remained anonymous) may be the most succinct and clear about this issue, in my mind:
“We fully support Lia Thomas in her decision to affirm her gender identity and to transition from a man to a woman,” the letter reads. “Lia has every right to live her life authentically. However, we also recognize that when it comes to sports competition, that the biology of sex is a separate issue from someone’s gender identity.
“Biologically, Lia holds an unfair advantage over competition in the women’s category, as evidenced by her rankings that have bounced from #462 as a male to #1 as a female. If she were to be eligible to compete against us, she could now break Penn, Ivy and NCAA women’s swimming records; feats she could never have done as a male athlete.”