William, aka Lia Thomas

Given our highly civilized condition we refuse to offend anyone. We refuse to allow anyone to offend anyone. We are acutely sensitive to the sensitivities of those most sensitive and will severely punish anyone who says or implies anything untoward about them.

Am I being perfectly clear? 

While we are at it, we are especially conscious of anything that might offend, might cause discomfort, or, heaven forbid, trigger your anxiety.

If we may be forgiven a brief foray into sexism, we are especially repulsed by anyone anywhere who would say anything that would disparage, disrespect, harass or otherwise abuse a member of the female gender.

Of course, this rule does not apply to one Bill Clinton, who, for his support of abortion rights, has been given a pass when it comes to sexual harassment and rape. And we glory in his wondrous wife, the nation’s leading enabler of sexual harassment.

We need to keep our moral compass pointing in the right direction.

Anyone, all of these pious injunctions against offensive and discomforting behavior were merely for show. When a larger issue is on the line we may easily toss them out with the trash.

The issue today is that of someone named William, aka Lia Thomas. You know the story. One William, aka Lia Thomas, a full bodied male swimmer at the University of Pennsylvania announced one day that he was going to pretend to be female. Henceforth, he would compete against the distaff gender, and not among those who were sexed as he was.

The result was not surprising. Young William, aka Lia Thomas won all of his races-- all but one, that is. And he outswam his female competitors at a ridiculous rate. Apparently, the male body type, sustained by XY chromosomes, is better equipped to perform feats of athletic daring do.

The outcry has been clear, even from many feminist quarters. William, aka Lia Thomas is in the process of destroying women’s sports, all by himself. He thinks that he is Rosa Parks for the transgendered. How did such a feeble mind gain admissions to what used to be a great university?

And some have even pointed out that, effectively, William aka Lia Thomas is juiced. That is, he is using banned steroids. Being as steroids are synthetic testosterone, the male bodied Thomas has an evidently unfair advantage when competing against females whose bodies are naturally deficient in steroids. 

But that is not all. The authorities at the University of Pennsylvania have decided the losing races was insufficient punishment for female swimmers-- they were being punished for their gender-- they needed to submit to the indignity of having William, aka Lia Thomas change in their locker room. There, he could, under the normal course of things, wave his dick at them. At times said virile organ even made an appearance in a turgid state. Anyone who took offense at the display was obviously transphobic and needed to shut the fuck up. Anyone who was triggered, offended or discomforted needed also to shut the fuck up.

Somehow or other, some of the female swimmers, the transphobic sort who did not like having a dick thrust at them, have objected. Their objections were ignored.

One notes, with one’s limited knowledge of the law, that if a male human person exposes his distended virile organ to a female in a public park, he will be arrested and either jailed or remanded for psychiatric treatment. Such actions are grossly disrespectful, and often totally gross.

As though that were not enough, the obvious fact is that women members of a swim team disrobe and even shower in the locker room. And thus, they are obliged to do so in the presence of the dread male gaze. 

You know about the dread male gaze. Feminists have been up in arms at the male gaze, about the indignity that befalls them when said dread gaze is directed at their nether regions. To be fair, some women, women of a certain age, will confess that when they reach a certain age, they no longer attract the male gaze, and they miss it. Obviously, we will need to turn them in for feminist thought reform.

In any event the women of the Penn swim team do not like to have a man in their locker room exposing his male organ and they do not like to have his male gaze directed at them when they are changing into or out of their swim suits. It does not take an adult education to understand this.

To which the authorities at the University have said: tough luck, chicks.

The New York Post reports this salient story:

A member of the University of Pennsylvania women’s swim team said some team members are uncomfortable changing in the locker room with transgender swimmer Lia Thomas, according to a teammate.

Thomas, 22, who spent the previous three years swimming with the men’s team before she began transitioning to a woman, has created an uneasy environment in the locker room, as she still retains her biologically male genitalia — which are sometimes exposed — and is attracted to women, one teammate told the Daily Mail in an interview.

“It’s definitely awkward because Lia still has male body parts and is still attracted to women,” the swimmer said. Thomas has reportedly told her teammates that she dates women.

The swimmer told the outlet that other team members have spoken to the team’s coaches about possibly getting Thomas to change elsewhere from the rest of the team, but those discussions haven’t gone anywhere.

“Multiple swimmers have raised it, multiple different times,” she said. “But we were basically told that we could not ostracize Lia by not having her in the locker room and that there’s nothing we can do about it, that we basically have to roll over and accept it, or we cannot use our own locker room.”

She added, “It’s really upsetting because Lia doesn’t seem to care how it makes anyone else feel. The 35 of us are just supposed to accept being uncomfortable in our own space and locker room for, like, the feelings of one.”

“The school was so focused on making sure Lia was okay, and doing everything they possibly could do for her, that they didn’t even think about the rest of us,” the teammate told the Daily Mail.

So much for women’s rights. So much for women’s sensitivities or comfort level. It all gets tossed when some guy decides he is a girl and invades the women’s locker room. If you have hope for the survival of our civilization, we may take a line from Dante: "Abandon all hope ye who enter here."

By now, of course, the NCAA has imposed new guidelines and new criteria for participation in women’s sports. In truth, the better approach would have been for the women of the Penn swim team to resign from the team, to boycott events and to denounce the administration.

And yet, today, in the land of the free and the home of the brave, such actions would have such dire reputational consequences that no one dares do so. 

The swimmer told the outlet that most of the team is scared to speak out about their discomfort for fear of being labeled “transphobic.”

If this gets a little bit bigger, I might go on the record, but I’m definitely a little afraid,” she said. “What I’m afraid of is that potential employers will Google my name and see commentary about things I said and think, ‘Oh, this person’s transphobic.'”

Some teammates have discussed possibly protesting a swim meet, she said, but many don’t want to possibly put their swim careers on hold after having lost a year of competition to the COVID-19 pandemic.

There you have it. The oppression of women is alive and well in today’s America. All the talk about respecting women’s privacy, whatever you think of the way the courts apply the concepts, turns out to be just talk. All a male need do is declare himself to be female and he can invade a woman’s privacy to his heart’s content. However we got to this place, we should get out of it, post haste.