WashPost Columnist Defends Lia Thomas: 'In a Way, Everyone Is Trans… There Is No Normal'

Transgender male intrusion into women’s swimming is all OK because people should recognize that sports are about personal liberation, not fair rules competition, according to Sally Jenkins, a writer at Jeff Bezos’s Washington Post. 

“One of the things that makes NCAA sport so captivating is the vast assortment of characters emerging from their chrysalis [like a transformed butterfly] into the broader world,” Jenkins wrote March 17.

“Hate to tell you, but in a way, everyone is trans,” Jenkins wrote.

On March 17, Lia Thomas, the trans male butterfly, emerged from his chrysalis to shove three non-trans women down the podium at the awards ceremony for the NCAA’s 2022 500-yard freestyle competition. “The race was close until the final 100 yards …. [and] Thomas was stronger at the end,” NBC reported.

All of the women in the race were demoted one place by Thomas’s victory. “All of us in life’s competitive arena are on the way to becoming someone profoundly different than we were,” Jenkins wrote, without using the words “female” or “subordinate.”

Round of applause for Emma Weyant, the UVA swimmer who placed second in the 500y freestyle tonight, behind Lia Thomas. Second is the new first. #savewomenssports pic.twitter.com/NtHookm3qQ

— Angela Morabito (@AngelaLMorabito) March 18, 2022

Sports is about personal liberation, regardless of yesterday’s focus on fairness, teams, leagues, scores, rules, boundaries, definitions, or society, says Jenkins, the wealthy author of several best-sellers:

What is the real aim and value of NCAA competition? Is it not to grow people? Surely, it’s about more than just vaulting a small subset of young talents on to a podium for the sake of name-image-and-likeness deals and spots in the Olympics. It’s supposed to be about exploring who you are, whether on the pool deck or starting block or basketball floor, and the truth is that “every person has multitudes in them,” as [T.] Cooper’s wife, journalist Allison Glock, observed in her own work. That’s the real worthwhile inquiry of college sports.

Using this as a starting point in the Thomas debate seems a much smarter approach than the uncivil fearmongering over bone density and hand size. And it allows you to ask without insult: Is Thomas’s presence preventing other swimmers from finding out who they are?

Besides, the difference between men and women is all very complicated, confounding, and confusing, she wrote. People, sex, sports are all very complex, and “the science remains unsettled,” so the opponents of men in women’s sports really have no foundation to demand fairness, she wrote.

Jenkins’ argument is a noble-sounding response to the many polls that show the public wants sports to be about fair competition on level fields, within clear rules, and according to consistent definitions. “Right now, our opposition wins the debate on trans youth in sports against any and all arguments we have tried for our side,” admitted a  recent “Messaging Guide” by the Transgender Law Center in California.

Once sports is no longer about fair competion, men would display their liberation in any sport, Jenkins suggests:

We can only continue to calibrate judgments around the important question: Does our current collegiate model, with its inclusion of Thomas and other trans athletes, call forth competition that is interesting, meaningful and valuable? The answer is yes.

Pro-transgender sports can be a mechanism for progressives to transform society from the ugly caterpillar of traditional rules into a new butterfly of progressive possibility, according to a pro-transgender legal claim quoted by Jenkins:

There is no normal. There’s common, there’s typical, but there’s no normal. Whether it’s gender, physical or mental ability, or another categorization used to make assumptions about people, sports help break down barriers that society imposes. If we can begin to shift away from the mirage of normalcy and instead view deviations from the common through a lens of possibility, we can increase access to sports and all the benefits they provide.

Still, progressives’ welcome of transgender butterflies and rule-ending possibilities does not apply to the sources of their own wealth and status. For example, Jenkins is happy to have her books and university credentials guarded against copyright-violating, chrysalis-emerging butterflies by the very non-diverse chainmail fist of federal copyright law.