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Lia Thomas calls out 'misogynistic' feminists for being transphobic against her

Home> News

Published 03:14 26 Apr 2023 GMT+1

Lia Thomas calls out 'misogynistic' feminists for being transphobic against her

The trans swimmer was furious with her former teammates who didn't want her to compete in women's events.

Stewart Perrie

Stewart Perrie

Lia Thomas has ripped into supposed feminists who have been 'transphobic' against her.

The trans swimmer has sparked a huge controversy in American professional swimming after she transitioned and started winning titles.

The NCAA gold medalist sat down with fellow trans swimmer Schuyler Bailar to talk about the topic about them competing in sport.

But Thomas focused on her former teammates from the University of Pennsylvania.

Nearly a dozen parents of students from the university wrote a letter in December last year asking for Thomas to be disallowed from competing in women's events because they felt she had an unfair advantage by being born male.

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The parents were worried the 'integrity of women's sports' was in jeopardy if Thomas kept competing.

Lia said on Bailar's podcast, Dear Schuyler, that it was hurtful to see them turn against her.

"They’re like, ‘Oh, we respect Lia, as a woman, as a trans woman or whatever, we respect her identity, we just don’t think it’s fair'," she said.

"You can’t really have that sort of half-support where you’re like, ‘Oh, I respect her as a woman here, but not here'.

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“They’re using the guise of feminism to sort of push transphobic beliefs.

"I think a lot of people in that camp sort of carry an implicit bias against trans people, but don’t want to, I guess, fully manifest or speak that out. And so they try to just play it off as this sort of half-support.”

Bailar, who was the first openly transgender NCAA Division I swimmer in a male category, agreed and said the people angry with them competing were using 'women's sport' as a scapegoat to hide their transphobia.

"They're coming from...this whole protect 'protect women's sports', [which] has become a very big movement and that they do it under the guise of feminism," he said.

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"'Oh, we're just feminists, we're just fighting for women', and whenever anybody says that I'm always [like]: 'Okay, you're fighting for women by excluding women so that's not fighting for women'."

He said the word 'feminism' has been 'twisted' recently to exclude certain people to fit a certain narrative.

Trans women have been banned from competing in female events after the world governing body voted on the move last year.

FINA took its vote on the matter during an extraordinary general congress at the World Championships in Budapest, where 152 members submitted their decision on the matter.

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More than 70 per cent of voters opted to stop trans athletes from competing in women's elite races if they have gone through any part of the process of male puberty.

That means transgender competitors will have now had to have completed their transition by the age of 12 - i.e. have had male puberty suppressed by hormone blockers - in order to compete.

Featured Image Credit: Instagram/Schuyler Bailar. Instagram/Lia Thomas

Topics: LGBTQ, Sport

Stewart Perrie
Stewart Perrie

Stewart Perrie is a Senior Journalist at LADbible. Stewart has covered the conflict in Syria for LADbible, interviewing a doctor on the front line, and has contributed to the hugely successful UOKM8 campaign. He is in charge of the LADbible Australia editorial content and social presence.

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@stewartperrie

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