On Wednesday Iowa State University’s Women and Gender Studies program along with the Center for LGBTQIA+ Student Success and the Committee on Lectures hosted a panel consisting of:
*Will (Lia) Thomas, a transgender athlete who became notable for competing in women’s swimming.
*Dr. Christina Roberts, a Professor of Pediatrics who works at Mount Sinai Adolescent Health Center in New York.
*Keenan Crow, director of Policy and Advocacy at One Iowa which is a state wide LGBTQQIP2SAA+ advocacy organization.
Dr. Kelly L. Winfrey, Director of the Women’s and Gender Studies Program and an associate professor and director of Graduate Education in the Greenlee School of Journalism and Communication at Iowa State moderated the discussion
The panel was only open to students. Originally, a live stream of the event was going to require a student login to access it but the lecture was eventually made available for anyone. Questions were submitted by text to staff running the event. Staff approved what questions would be given to the panel. The questions that were selected as acceptable were written down and passed to a runner who carried notes with approved questions between the staff monitoring questions and Dr. Winfrey. who would then ask the question.
The opening question was about the fairness of not permitting trans athletes to participate in athletic programs as the gender they identify as rather than the sex they are. The panel interpreted this as excluding trans athletes from competing altogether. Crow was the first to address the question.
“There is often a specific and narrow focus on competition and on fairness in competition,” Crow said. “I want to kinda get away from that black and white, are we talking about competition or are we not and think about what kinds of thing sport generally does for the majority of us.”
Crow explained that since such a small number of athletes will ever really get to take advantage of the opportunities that competition can provide, things like school scholarships, we shouldn’t be paying attention to them when we are talking about confused men wanting to compete in the women’s divisions.
“What the majority of people are getting out of sports has nothing to do with medals or scholarships. What the majority of people get out of sport is enjoyment,” Crow said.
To Crow, the social aspects of being on a team should be good enough compensation for the hard work and dedication real athletes put into their sport. Thus, it shouldn’t be a problem if a man steals an award from a woman.
Dr. Roberts echoed Crow’s sentiments by asking the audience to raise their hands if they were a high school, college or Olympic athlete and then made note of the fact that the number of hands went down with each question. Once again saying competition doesn’t matter because most people won’t compete at that level anyway.
“The sports bans, they focus on the rare people who make the Olympics. But it’s the 13-year-old who just wants to play softball with her (his) friends,” Robert said
Everything that was addressed was from the angle of men being blocked from competing with girls. The idea of women competing with men is never addressed. This is because, despite what the panelists would want you to believe, men have a massive advantage when it comes to physical activities. Even after starting hormones, men still dominate women’s competitions. The most famous example of this was sitting on the panel.
Will did not contribute to the conversation as much as Crow and Roberts did and was most likely there because he decided he didn’t like being irrelevant to the news cycle anymore. He tells his story as a long struggle with his own self-identity and explains that he did not want to compete as a girl because he wanted to win. He did it so he could “Live as his authentic self.”
Will also claims that he has no inherent advantage over women, and even goes so far as to say his height, a massive advantage is swimming, is actually a disadvantage because it means he has to work harder to stay afloat
An article posted by Swimming World Magazine breaks down Will’s times and rankings pre- and post-transition. The result is what you would expect. Will went from being ranked 554th in the 200 freestyle when competing as a man to being ranked first in that same event on the women’s side. Thomas was winning by an entire length of the pool ahead of his competition. Despite this, he still claims he has no advantage over the women he swam against.
Why discriminate for age, why can’t High School seniors compete with third graders? Why discriminate for species, why can’t a horse compete with humans in a cross country race?