Transgender swimmer Leah Thomas showed off her new nasal septum piercing on Wednesday as she trains for championship races, which is sure to spark further outrage over her participation in women’s sports.
Thomas, 22, was seen relaxing by the pool on Wednesday with a piercing that goes through a piece of flesh separating his nostrils.
It’s unclear if she’ll keep her septum piercing for her first competition on Thursday, the women’s 500m preliminary freestyle. The final will take place on Friday.
Thomas’s many victories and record-breaking performances made the news around the world and sparked claims that she had an unfair advantage over other competitors because she went through puberty as a child before becoming a woman.
The swimmer does not break any rules and has completed the required year of hormonal treatment in order to participate. But those same rules are now likely to be changed amid growing fear of Thomas’ apparent pool advantage.
The Texas student swam on the UPenn men’s team in 2019 when she began transitioning for medical reasons while taking testosterone and estrogen blockers.
She is allowed to compete as a woman because she completed a mandatory year of NCAA hormone treatment. On February 10, the NCAA announced that it would not follow the U.S. lead in swimming and would require 36 consecutive months of treatment with testosterone blockers this year.
Nevertheless, Thomas’ involvement remains controversial.
The UPenn swimmer speaks with head coach Mike Schnur on Wednesday.
On Wednesday, Leah Thomas watches the NCAA swimming championship at Georgia Tech. On Thursday, she will attend the meeting for the first time.
Thomas, with a new septum piercing, is scheduled to compete Thursday in the 500-yard freestyle.
On the eve of her swim, NBC News added fuel to the fire with an article titled: “Leah Thomas and the Long Tradition of ‘Gender Control’ of Female Athletes.”
The author, Julie Compton, wrote the story of female athletes who were asked questions about their gender if they were successful in the sport, detailing the challenges American Olympic runner Helen Stephens faced in 1937, and writing about the South African middle distance runner Caster Semenya.
Internet critics noted that it was unfair to classify Thomas, who was born male and went through puberty as a male, in the same star category as tennis player Martina Navratilova, contested due to her muscular build and sexuality.
“Totally absurd,” said one reader.
“The #liathomas situation has NOTHING to do with the historical “sex police” in sports.
NBC News on the eve of Thomas’s swim ran an article about athletes whose muscular physiques led them to face questions about their own gender.
On February 19, Thomas won the 100-yard race at the Ivy League Women’s Swimming and Diving Championships at Harvard University.
“There was NEVER any doubt that Leah Thomas is a born man. There was NEVER any doubt that LT had male puberty. There was NEVER any doubt that LT performed like a man.”
Another added: “Clickbait from @NBCNews.
“I will not refer to this garbage. The ideology of gender identity has already seized on the word “woman”. Now they distort the biological nomenclature of sex classification by claiming the word “female”.
A third commented, “This is so offensive to women and is a legacy of the actual oppression that women have faced.” Leah Thomas is not a woman in sports and you know it.
In an interview with Sports Illustrated earlier this month, she defended her place on the team.
However, her teammates’ parents told the magazine that she was “eliminating women from the sport”.
Thomas said: “I am a woman, as is everyone on the team. I’ve always considered myself just a swimmer. This is what I’ve been doing for so long; this is what I love.
“I go into the water every day and do my best,” she said.
The magazine writer said Leah “insists” she doesn’t care about winning or breaking records.
– A very simple answer: I’m not a man. I am a woman, so I belong to the women’s team.
“Trans people deserve as much respect as any other athlete,” she later said in an interview.
Thomas told how she began to have doubts about her gender when she was in high school.
“I felt disconnected from my body,” she said.
She googled what she felt and then stumbled across stories of transgender women she sympathized with. UPenn then gave her a trans mentor.
Like, “Wow, that’s such an accurate reflection of how I feel.” It started to make sense.”
She told her parents and brother that she identified as a woman during the summer between freshman and sophomore at UPenn.
Her father Bob told the magazine: “We will do whatever it takes to make Leah a part of this family. We weren’t going to lose her.
Leah with her teammates at swimming practice in Florida last December.
Leah with her teammates on February 19, 2022 at a meeting in Boston.
She continued to go to school as a man, but became depressed and had panic attacks in the pool.
Thomas on the cover of Sports Illustrated
“I was very depressed. I got to the point where I couldn’t go to school. I skipped classes.
“My sleep schedule was very messed up. For several days I could not get out of bed.
“At that moment, I knew that I needed to do something to solve this problem.
“I tried my best to get close to close friends, a couple of coaches.
“But in this depressing, highly stressed state of mind, it’s hard to make progress when so much of my energy is wasted trying to get through each day,” she said.
In 2019, she started taking the hormone therapeutic drug HRT and says she knew it would make her less strong.
“I took HRT knowing and accepting that I might not swim anymore. I was just trying to live my life,” she said, adding that she “immediately” felt better as soon as she started taking it.
“It surprised me. Psychologically, I felt much better and healthier pretty quickly. The relief that this brought me was quite significant.
In her junior year, she confessed to her swim coaches at the University of Pennsylvania. He says that they immediately supported.
She went by her old name – Will – until New Year’s Eve 2020, and then started using Leah.
“This is a milestone in a very long transition process where you feel like this is who I am and I’m going to live it.
“In a way, it was a kind of rebirth, for the first time in my life I felt completely connected with my name and who I am, and live for who I am. I’m Leah, she said.
But her continued participation in women’s competition has caused deep controversy, as former Olympian Caitlyn Jenner, who won gold in the decathlon as Bruce Jenner, was among those who criticized Thomas for swimming in the women’s races.
“If a cis woman is caught taking testosterone twice, she will be disqualified for life, while Leah has already had 10 years of testosterone,” said Nancy Hogshead-Makar, three-time Olympic swimming champion and president of the Champion Women advocacy group. .
“It’s about keeping the sport gender-segregated: a space where women are really respected and where they can win,” she said.
Hogshead-Makar agreed to a letter signed by 16 anonymous teammates of Thomas expressing concerns about her involvement.
Thomas will compete in the NCAA championship this week.
“We fully support Leah Thomas in her decision to reaffirm her gender identity and transition from male to female,” the letter says, according to CNN.
“Leah has every right to live her life. However, we also understand that when it comes to competitive sports, the biology of gender is a separate issue from anyone’s gender identity.
“Biologically, Leah has an unfair advantage over her competition in the women’s category, as evidenced by her ranking jumping from 462nd in the male category to 1st in the female category.”
However, other members of the team spoke out in support of Thomas.
“We want to express our full support for Leah in her transition,” the athletes said.
“We appreciate her as a person, teammate and friend. The views expressed by an anonymous member of our team do not reflect the feelings, values, or opinions of the entire Penn team of 39 women from diverse backgrounds.
“We understand that this is a big controversy and we are doing our best to deal with it, while still focusing on doing our best in the pool and in the classroom.”
RULES FOR TRANSGENDER ATHLETES AND WHEN THEY CAN COMPETE FOR THE GENDER THEY TRANSFER TO
Liya began taking hormone therapy back in May 2019, when she was still competing among men.
Under US swimming regulations, athletes had to have low testosterone levels for 36 months to compete in women’s competition.
This meant that Leah did not qualify for the championship that month.
But the tournament organizers, the NCAA, have said she will be allowed to compete because they refuse to accept the threshold this year.
Last month, an NCAA committee said, “The subcommittee decided that making further changes at this time could have unfair and potentially detrimental consequences for schools and student-athletes intending to compete in the NCAA women’s swimming championships in 2022.”
However, it is not known what they will do next year.