Lia Thomas

Lia Catherine Thomas, born in 1998/1999 as a biological male named Will Thomas, became notable as a transgender competitive swimmer at the University of Pennsylvania. In 2021 and 2022, their athletic achievements as a trans woman triggered a public debate about transgender women in sports, and about cultural control and media censorship.

Early life and education

Thomas grew up in Austin, Texas, and has an older brother. He began swimming at the age of five.

Thomas was sixth in the state high school swimming championships, competing for Westlake High School. Towards the end of high school, Thomas began to question his gender identity. After his freshman year at the University of Pennsylvania, during the summer of 2018, Thomas came out as transgender to his family. From that moment all mainstream media organs began to refer to Thomas using only female pronouns. A small minority of commenters used gender neutral pronouns, while a few right-wing bloggers continued to use male terms to describe Thomas. The progressive website Wikipedia censored many details about Thomas's life and cultural impact, even banning mention of their birth name (Will Thomas), as per the site's political policies.

Swimming career

Thomas began swimming on the men's swim team at University of Pennsylvania in 2017, and during his freshman year, recorded a time of 8 minutes and 57.55 seconds in the 1,000-yard freestyle that ranked as the sixth-fastest national men's time, as well as 500-yard freestyle and 1,650-yard freestyle times ranked within the national top 100. On the men's swim team in 2018–2019, Thomas finished second in the men’s 500, 1,000, and 1,650-yard freestyle at the Ivy League championships as a sophomore in 2019. During the 2018–2019 season, Thomas recorded the top university men's team times in the 500 free, 1000 free, and 1650 free.

Thomas began transitioning using hormone replacement therapy in May 2019, and came out as a trans woman during their junior year at the University of Pennsylvania. Thomas was required to swim for the men's team in the 2019–2020 academic year as a junior while undergoing hormone therapy and then swam on the women's team in 2021 after taking a year off school to maintain eligibility to compete while competitive swimming was canceled due to the COVID-19 pandemic. Thomas has followed all of the gender-related policies to be eligible to compete as a woman in NCAA swimming.

Thomas then went on to have great success swimming against biological women, setting many new records, winning most but not every race against female swimmers.

According to Sports Illustrated, Thomas applied to law school and planned to swim at the 2024 Summer Olympics trials.

Public debate

In 2021, predominantly conservative media started widely covering Thomas, including Fox News. In early December, anonymous parents of University of Pennsylvania swim team members wrote to the NCAA, seeking for Thomas to be declared ineligible to compete. In December 2021, USA Swimming official Cynthia Millen resigned after 30 years in protest of Thomas' eligibility to compete and then appeared on the Fox News show The Ingraham Angle.

In January 2022, The University of Pennsylvania, multiple organizations affiliated with the University of Pennsylvania Law School, and the Ivy League issued statements supporting Thomas. In February 2022, sixteen anonymous members of the University of Pennsylvania women's swimming team sent a letter to the university and Ivy League officials asking them not to take legal action against the NCAA's new transgender athlete policy that could prevent Thomas from competing in the NCAA championships. Another group of swimmers from Thomas's swim team made a separate statement supporting them competing on the women's team.

Brooke Forde, an Olympic silver medalist, said of Thomas that: "I believe that treating people with respect and dignity is more important than any trophy or record will ever be, which is why I will not have a problem racing against Lia at NCAAs this year".

In February 2022, Vicky Hartzler, a Republican Senate candidate in Missouri, featured Thomas in a campaign advertisement asserting that "Women's sports are for women, not men pretending to be women", which was described by CNN as "a transphobic trope belittling trans women". In March 2022, roughly 50 protesters and counter-protesters gathered outside the Georgia Tech Aquatic Center when Thomas swam in the NCAA Division I national championship. Some in the stands carried banners saying "Save Women's Sports". On day 2 of the championships, around 10 protesters from the group "Save Women's Sports" protested during the preliminaries of the women's 500 freestyle. Reka Gyorgy finished in 17th-place in the 500-yard freestyle event which Thomas won, one place short of qualifying for finals, and wrote a letter to the NCAA expressing her frustration: "It feels like that final spot was taken away from me because of the NCAA's decision to let someone who is not a biological female compete ... Every event that transgender athletes competed in was one spot taken away from biological females throughout the meet."

In February 2022, CNN described Thomas as "the face of the debate on transgender women in sports", and in March 2022, Sports Illustrated described Thomas as "the most controversial athlete in America".