A Blow to Trans Insanity, a Victory for Common Sense

National Review Online

Thursday, July 03, 2025

 

The University of Pennsylvania issued a statement on Tuesday announcing that it would comply with the Trump administration’s policies on Title IX and single-sex sports, in a signal victory for common sense, women’s sports, and the Trump administration.

 

According to a press release from the Department of Education, the school will adopt “biology-based definitions” of “male” and “female” to ensure the integrity of single-sex teams and facilities like locker rooms. The university must also try to make amends: It will restore to female swimmers all individual records, titles, or recognitions previously given to male athletes, and it must send a personalized apology letter to impacted female swimmers.

 

In other words, it was a near-total capitulation by an institution that was at the forefront of the trans insanity in sports about three years ago.

 

By allowing a man to compete in women’s sports and use women’s facilities, the University of Pennsylvania violated Title IX. That’s the conclusion of an investigation by the Department of Education’s Office for Civil Rights into the case of swimmer William “Lia” Thomas.

 

“While Penn’s policies during the 2021-2022 swim season were in accordance with NCAA eligibility rules at the time, we acknowledge that some student-athletes were disadvantaged by these rules,” reads a statement by the president of the university. Although he didn’t directly apologize himself, he did say that the school will apologize: “We recognize this and will apologize to those who experienced a competitive disadvantage or experienced anxiety because of the policies in effect at the time.”

 

Of course, “competitive disadvantage” is a euphemism for “discrimination, denial of opportunity, and stolen awards,” while “experienced anxiety” is a slighting way to put the normal reaction of female athletes forced to share locker rooms with males.

 

The university repeats the same tired verbiage about remaining “committed to fostering a community that is welcoming, inclusive, and open to all students, faculty, and staff.” Not too long ago, in the name of these ideals, the school unreservedly supported Thomas while ignoring his female teammates.

 

In 2021, Penn Athletics shamelessly boasted that Thomas “delivered another record-breaking performance” at an event and “won the race by nearly seven seconds and her [sic] time was the fastest in the country.” Yeah, of course he did. We noted at the time that Thomas was “an average swimmer for the men’s swimming division,” whose biological advantages allowed him to reach the No. 1 ranking in the women’s division and smash records. Nonetheless, in 2022, the university nominated Thomas for the NCAA Woman of the Year award.

 

When female competitors raised complaints about Thomas’s presence in the changing rooms, one team member told the media that the school said they “could not ostracize Lia by not having her [sic] 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.” Former UPenn swimmer Paula Scanlan has said that she and the other women on the team were “forc[ed]” to undress with him 18 times a week. Indeed, some female swimmers chose to undress in the janitor’s closet to avoid disrobing in front of Thomas and seeing his intact male genitalia. As one team member summarized succinctly in 2022, “The 35 of us are just supposed to accept being uncomfortable in our own space and locker room for, like, the feelings of one.”

 

This never should have happened, and it’s never going to be possible to make up for the heartache that women who had worked their entire lives to excel in the pool — and in other sports — experienced as a result of this insanity. Other universities where similar injustices occurred — including San Jose State University, which mistreated the women’s volleyball team — should follow suit right away.

 

The sooner that the idea that men should compete against women in single-sex sports feels like an artifact of another era, the better.