Don’t call them transphobic.
An underground network of mothers of athletes is rallying after transgender swimmer Lia Thomas joined the University of Pennsylvania women’s swim team last fall and began hitting her teammates. In March, Thomas became the first openly transgender athlete to win an NCAA Division I national championship when she placed first in the women’s 500-yard freestyle event.
The group doesn’t have a formal name yet, but many members spoke to The Post about how angry and upset they get when they see their daughters lose to a person born male.
“My daughter swam Lia at Yale this year and it was an all-round miserable experience,” a mother told the Post. “We are literally leaning towards male privilege. It’s humbling.”
“We are ashamed and must remain silent,” said three-time NCAA team swimming champion Jeri Shanteau of the move to bar Lia Thomas from competing against biological women at NCAA swimming championships. Amy Mikler
Most of the mothers spoke on condition of anonymity because they say they have been accused of hate speech and transphobia – although many identify as Liberal Democrats. They say it’s unfair to label them fanatics and insist they focus on ensuring their daughters compete on a level playing field as more transgender girls enter the sport with what they feel is an unfair physical advantage . Many were inspired by an emotional video entitled “Story of a Mother of a Swimmer” which has more than 32,000 views on YouTube.
The mother of a 20-year-old Penn swimmer who swam with Lia called the season, which ended last month, a “disaster.”
She said her daughter has been swimming since she was 5 and has been competitive since she was 7. $15,000 a year.
Her daughter swam the same events as Lia and trained with her four hours a day in the pool, her mother said.
“She still believed that she could still beat Lia. Then competition came and Lia turned up her pace. Lia is big, but it’s not just size. Look at the length of her arms. They’re almost a foot taller than the girls.” The single mum added that she wishes she could go public but that her daughter, who has a year before she graduates, is too scared .
Lia Thomas, 22, swam as Will Thomas for her first three years at Penn but was not at the helm. But when Lia competed in the NCAA championships last month, she was the No. 1 collegiate woman. She told Sports Illustrated in a recent cover story, “I’m a woman.”
Scientists say that when a biological male goes through puberty, he has the physical benefits of testosterone even if he transitions to a female and is on hormone suppression therapy. All that testosterone will dramatically increase muscle mass and strength, and young men will begin to outperform women in athletic activity, writes Harvard biologist Carole Hooven in her book T: The Story of Testosterone, the Hormone that Dominates and Divides Us. .
The group Save Women’s Sports has protested at sports competitions involving trans athletes across the country. Save Women Sports
A mother in Boston told the Post that her daughter will lose her position on the “top boat” at a top Boston-area private high school this rowing season because of a younger boy who decided to identify himself as a girl this year , this does not expect to take its place. A mother in San Francisco said her high school-age daughter competes in a region with two trans women who win races. One of the trans girls won an athletic scholarship to compete in women’s sports at the college level, she said.
“Imagine being a biological female competing against Lia,” Martina Navratilova told The Post. “A top swimmer literally has to be incredible to beat an average male swimmer who identifies as a woman. Hormone suppression therapy does not diminish the advantage they have over biological women.”
The underground moms communicate via secret chains of emails and phone calls organized in part by four-time Olympic medalist and longtime civil rights attorney Nancy Hogshead-Makar, an icon in the swimming world. Hogshead-Makar runs Champion Women, a non-profit organization that advocates for the rights of women in sport.
In March, Thomas became the first openly transgender athlete to win an NCAA Division I national championship when she placed first in the women’s 500-yard freestyle event, AP
Thomas’ supporters strongly disagree with activists like Hogshead-Makar and Navratilova, who see them as anti-trans or transphobes. Purdue University professor Cheryl Cooky compared Thomas to Jackie Robinson, who broke the sport’s color barrier in an op-ed for NBC News, and claimed that trans women do not have an unfair advantage over cisgender women.
“We’re not anti-trans, we’re certainly not anti-Lia,” the mother of a student who swam against Thomas at Harvard last season told The Post. “We are in favor of our girls having the right to compete under fair conditions. It’s not fair for her to compete against a biological male, it just isn’t. We were silenced. Our daughters are told by their coaches and athletic directors to shut up and keep quiet. But we’re done being nice. Being nice has gotten us everywhere. We feel so helpless. Nobody hears us.”
Tennis legend Martina Navratilova told The Post that “hormone suppression therapy doesn’t diminish the benefit [trans women] About Biological Women” at the sports competition.Getty Images
Many mothers recounted how their daughters worked hard for up to 15 years, sometimes spending four hours in a pool six days a week from the age of five in hopes of achieving elite athlete status.
“You sacrifice so much to get to that elite level,” said Jeri Shanteau, 37, of Austin, Texas, a three-time NCAA team champion and 11-time All American and one of the few in the movement who will speak publicly. “You never go to parties. You’re not going to homecoming. You have this inner drive to achieve your goals and you’re motivated by having to hit all those milestones along the way.”
Shanteau said the confidence she gained through her swimming career made all the difference as she went out into the world.
“We rob girls of that confidence today,” Shanteau said. “We are ashamed to remain silent and (worryingly) that we will receive negative backlash for speaking out. It’s very undermining when the idea of a man competing against you is normalized. It’s so demoralizing it’s hard to care for. The swimmers at UPenn are so scared of all the attention that they don’t wear their UPenn sweatshirts anymore. You can’t be proud of yourself anymore. It’s all about Lia.”
In a December article for Swimmers World, Hogshead-Makar wrote that transgender women should be allowed in women’s sports as long as they can “mitigate the athletic benefits that come with male puberty” — which she says is easier said than done .
Hogshead-Makar said she was “in the room” in 2010 when the NCAA instituted its first rules for transgender athletes, which required a year of hormone suppression therapy in order to compete. She said it made sense to her at the time. Now it doesn’t. Both she and Navratilova say that recent scientific studies have shown that hormone therapy alone does not reverse the effects of about eight years of testosterone in trans female athletes.
“After puberty, there’s no way you can keep up as a woman,” Navratilova said. “Okay before puberty if they’re on hormones, but we don’t really want to advocate for that.”
Olympian Nancy Hogshead-Makar said that by supporting ideologies, women are giving up gender rights. Disney General Entertainment Con
Finding a solution, both say, is difficult, but must be done if the Equality Act passed in the House of Representatives goes to the Senate for a vote. The Equality Act would outlaw discrimination based on sex and gender identity and remove many gender-based protections.
“If we recognize the Equality Act, someone could identify themselves as a woman just before Wimbledon, receive the $4 million prize and give themselves back to a man the next day,” said Hogshead-Makar, 59, who won three golds and one silver at the 1984 Olympics. “It would be illegal to ask for any evidence.”
“The transgender movement was ahead of the women’s movement in insisting that trans women are women,” Hogshead-Makar said. “Of course you think trans women are women — especially in the classroom and at work. But no one stopped to consider what you are giving up for this ideology. What they are giving up is women’s gender rights.”
Biologically born women face a bleak future in the sport, said the mother, whose daughter is an elite high school rower.
“Morale is appallingly low,” she said. “These girls are working their ass off and should be proud of what they have achieved. But they’ve come to terms with it because they’re told not to say a word. How important is it how hard they work because the 6ft 3 person with long arms and big shoulders will always be stronger than them? you can see it The girls now descend with their heads bowed in an attitude of submission. They are shadows of what they were.
Beth Stelzer is the founder of Save Women’s Sports.Beth Stelzer
Few women are willing to speak out publicly. One is amateur powerlifter and mother Beth Stelzer, 37, founder of Save Women’s Sports, a grassroots group protesting at sports competitions involving trans athletes across the country. Stelzer believes the underground mothers will eventually persuade local and national sports officials to look more closely at policies favoring trans women over biological women.
“The revolution is here,” Stelzer said of the emerging counter-reaction. “It doesn’t come easy – it’s there.”