Former Kentucky swimmer Riley Gaines was among more than a dozen college athletes who filed a lawsuit against the NCAA on Thursday, accusing it of violating their Title IX rights by allowing transgender woman Lia Thomas to compete at the national championships in 2022.
The lawsuit, filed in U.S. District Court in Atlanta, details the shock Gaines and other swimmers felt when they learned they would have to share a locker room with Thomas at the championships in Atlanta. It documents a number of races they swam in with Thomas, including the 200-yard final in which Thomas and Gaines tied for fifth but Thomas, not Gaines, was handed the fifth-place trophy.
Thomas swam for Pennsylvania. She competed for the men’s team at Penn before her gender transition.
Thomas was the first openly transgender athlete to win a Division I title in any sport, finishing in front of three Olympic medalists for the championship. By not making the final, the lawsuit mentions that Florida swimmer Tylor Mathieu, who was not a plaintiff, was denied first-team All-American honors in that event.
Other plaintiffs included athletes from volleyball and track.
This is why I’ve felt that if we are going to stop trans women from competing with women, it’s time to do away with the gender aspect of sport where possible. The Paralymics maintain ratings for the severity of disability that an athlete is overcoming. Why couldn’t we do similar for natural ability in other sport, not unlike weight classes?
It’s all very hypothetical, but with a perfect system we’d be seeing ability bands of athletes with a high confidence that the only difference between competitors is the effort and strategy that they put into their sport, rather than any kind of natural advantage. Men and women would occasionally compete together and it’d be great.
So just get rid of women’s sports?
In my hypothetical setup, I guess so? Are you concerned that no one would engage with anything less than the ‘top class’ of ability which would mean in many sports women would mostly be marginalised? Because it’s a fair concern