Univ of Pennsylvania agrees to strip Lia Thomas of titles

[HelleneS]

Under an agreement reached on 1 June with the U.S. Dept of Education (DOE), the Univ of Pennsylvania has agreed to rescind swimmer Lia Thomas's wins and records, to prohibit transgender athletes from participating in women's athletics, and to restore the records and titles previously set by female U Penn swimmers.

U Penn has also agreed to issue personal letters of apology to all women athletes who were affected by Thomas's year-long participation on the women's swimming team.

The agreement will settle a DOE investigation into U Penn's violation of U.S. law against sex discrimination in education.

Well done to Riley and everyone who fought this

I'd be happier if the university had come to this decision because they realised it's the right thing to do. But I'm betting it was more to do with the government withholding 175 million dollars in funding.

He is the one who decided to game the system.

He decided to get his cock and balls out in a room full of women when he knew they did not want him there.

He knew this act would disrupt their focus.

He could have stunniny and bravely used the mens changing rooms.

He did not care that the girls were being bullied by the school over his actions.

And actively worked to include more men in womens swimming.

The school (staff and admin) has to answer for its own actions but he made his choice.

No sympathy for him at all, he knew exactly what he was doing. He knew he was cheating and he knew he was unwelcome, but he didn't give a damn. He was reported to have walked around the changing room with an erection, for goodness sake, in front of upset women. How can anyone feel sorry for a man who does that?

Absolutely no sympathy for the creep, but reading the thread, continued disgust and the BBC and CNN for telling flat-out lies. Still.

I don't know how they can write such nonsense and still consider themselves to be serious journalists. Surely anyone with half a brain would read that and realise how dishonest it is. Or perhaps people are quite content in their misinformation bubbles.

it's the right result delivered by the wrong means

i have some sympathy for this view - that you’d rather achieve it by winning hearts and minds. And ruling by decree means it’s easy for a future POTUS to issue another decree. My thoughts are though that there’s another three and a half years to go before the chance of a Democrat in the WH, and in that time maybe women’s rights campaigners can make headway in untangling themselves from the progressive omnicause of the American left. And the increased awareness of the issues means at least it will be a lot harder to justify why the Lia Thomases of the world deserve to be in the women’s locker rooms and women’s sports. If the pendulum swings back to TRA favour in the future, I’m hopeful it won’t go back to where it got to.

If US TRA focused on getting federal rights in the mould of the U.K. EA that would be a good start. It would be very interesting to see how much headway they made with that in a country that’s never ratified the Equal Rights Amendment abolishing sex based discrimination.

Yes but Trump paused $175m funding to penn.

I'm sure its nuanced but it feels coercive and with the forced non sincere apology is just something that can be used as the alternative left to scream "Look! See! Men in frocks ARE the victims!!! Protect the dolllllllls!!!"

This is doing zero for hearts and minds

I'm not sure why my comment was deleted.

Thomas is biologically male so can be called a man, and this is important information in the context of him competing in female-only competitions.

Men competing in female-only competitions are cheating.

Men who expose their genitals in front of non-consenting women are, in my opinion, perverted. It's literally a crime.

Where are our male visitors this morning? Conspicuously absent from this one thread.

i wonder if a lot of Democrats are secretly happy that he is attacking (among other things which really matter to me) gender ideology, and once the Democrats are back in power have no intention of rolling some of these things back.

Oh absolutely

They need a way to climb down from an untenable position, but they don't want to admit they got it wrong.

This way, they can simply back off altogether and it sorts itself. Trump does their dirty work for them.

Dishonest fuckery obviously, but I bet there are loads of Dems who would be totally happy with this outcome:

The people who saw that man compete and saw a fair competition between woman, and knew that man was in the changing room with female competitors and supported it, are never going to be convinced that legal means to stop it is fair, and especially one implemented by Trump.

They are the same people who support men in female prisons, and when talking about men raping womens and girls, shrug and say women do it to.

We cant wait for these people to catch up, or waste time trying to find solutions that are palatable to them, because they dont have the same morales as the rest of us. They are never going to prioritise safeguarding or women rights. I dont care if the men of reddit and politicans like Nicola Sturgeon never truly catch up. What i want them to realise that the law applies to them in the same way it does to everyone. They dont get to decide who gets priority and that the truth doesn’t matter.

All we can do is sort out this mess and leave the true believe to figure it out in their own time.

the problem for people who don't really believe the TWAW mantra, is that they have been forced to accept de facto SelfID and "no debate" and all the rest. Thre is no backtracking now. Anyone who looked at Thomas and automatically thought "woman" is delusional. And even after hearing "transwoman" should immediately have realised that there is a massive disparity between his ability and that of a regular, highly trained, female swimmer.

And that is even before you get into the details of exactly what goes on in their changing rooms (the time it takes to get their swimsuits on was a shocker to me) etc etc.

Cynical? for sure. But we also need to be aware that women's rights are also under attack here and stop him before it all goes too far. Thanks to the TRAs (gays and lesbians who have been fully in support of the TRAs are now learning the price they have to pay for supporting, without question, something that is now affecting acceptance of gay and lesbian rights. I am going to be VERY BLOODY CROSS INDEED if i have to start campaigning, for eg, to keep same sex marriage)

all those missed opportunities for those women. So so frustrating.

I think there are people who dont think TWAW really, but want to be polite. And governments did sell it as if it just legal processes that don't impact anyone else. So they are just polite, law abiding people.

But if they are polite and law abiding, they would be equally polite to women, and they would respect the laws when they dont go in TRA favour.

If I were being blunt, I’d say fuck him and those who supported him - they are getting all they deserve, and I only hope he one day feels as guilty and ashamed of what he has done as he should.

Other than that, I say congratulations to all those so wrongly displaced from their rightful places in both sports and female history.
Thank you Riley for your voice, and persistence.

As for Thomas and all those who allowed (and encouraged) such deranged, unethical and unscientific behaviour and rules, I have nothing but contempt and derision. I am actually pleased that they will only be known for cheating and fraud.

This ^^

It is purely and solely on the authorities who allowed this to happen and should have and could have stopped the madness before it ever started. In ‘being kind’ they made it worse for Lia and for the all the women who lost out to this male bodied swimmer. Utter madness.

This part..: "Physical attributes that could work in a trans girl’s favor, like height or limb length, for example, appear to be “less malleable,” the study said, but it also pointed out that there are no efforts to restrict cisgender athletes who are taller than average or exceptionally gifted physically in any other way".

... Is SUCH a fallacy. Yes, some women can be statistically significantly taller than average women, but they are, statistically speaking, a minority - whereas even an average man will be taller than most woman.

In the Western world, the average height for adult women is about 164.7cm (5'4.5"), while the average height for adult men is about 178.4cm (5'10"). Using these figures and typical height variations, approximately 96.9% (or more than 9 in 10) of men are taller than the average-height woman. This means that there is a 90.6% chance that a person picked at random from a group of males will have a higher height than a person picked at random from a female group.

This is because the vast majority (96.9% )* *of men fall above 164cm, given the higher average and relatively small overlap (35%) between male and female height distributions. All figures can be checked from diagram below, which is available here: ourworldindata.org/human-height

This is one of the reasons sex categories matter. Yes, some people are exceptional or gifted, and this confers a competitive advantage. But that doesn't mean we should include people (men) with special advantages that don't mean they are exceptional or gifted - e.g., the height advantages that 96.9% of men share.

Yes. This is sadly the inevitable result of allowing these policies to be approved in the first place.

That article is horrifyingly inaccurate and misleading. It claims that transgender athletes are being banned from participating in sport, rather than males being banned from participating in female sports.

As many people as possible need to complain. It's not enough to just criticise it online - that won't result in action. This breaches their editorial standards and policies about the BBC being a trustworthy news source.

https://www.bbc.co.uk/contact/complaints/make-a-complaint/#/Complaint%20Summary

I've written. Bias and inaccuracy are what I focused my complaint on; the fact that they make no mention of the lawsuit re LT using women's changing rooms and that they call him 'she', plus the misleading headline that states that UPenn is 'banning' trans athletes.
I'm sick of this shit from the BBC.

I'm mildly bemused by people saying it's coercive that Trump has withheld federal funding from TWAW-minded organisations.

Yet, here in the UK, arts funding has been withheld from those advocating TWANW.

Yin is to Yang....

If those supporting either ideology didn't use state-structures to further their cause, none of this mess would gather any attention.

My thoughts exactly. I'm glad this happened, I just wish it didn't happen under Trump's regime. TRAs are going to become even more insufferable.