Editor feedback: Lia Thomas and the NCAA

On how torturing language and denying reality makes civil debate impossible

While I would indulge Thomas's pronouns in a personal relationship, this is not personal.  We are torturing language and denying reality in the public square. How is it possible to make a point that a man should not be competing in a womens sport event if journalists have to write about him as a her? The backstory:

The following column was submitted on March 23rd for publication in the Spokesman-Review. You didn’t see this column printed or online in the largest regional daily newspaper in eastern Washington and north Idaho because it violated the standards of the Associated Press Stylebook. The editor sent it back suggesting changes. I have a good editor, she was following protocol, and I found myself faced with a line I could not cross. I refused to change clear words for obfuscation. Read it for yourself, as submitted, and see if you can pick out the problematic language:

Defining women

Woman is a good word, with a longstanding definition based on objective metrics. It’s a word the NCAA leadership needs to refamiliarize themselves with as they reconsider the rules for women’s sports under Title IX.

Will Thomas is a University of Pennsylvania swimmer who competed for three years in the NCAA Men’s Division. In 2019 he decided to make some changes. Newly rechristened as Lia, in 2021 Thomas joined the women’s swim team. This month, Thomas won the NCAA Women’s division 500-meter freestyle title.

To be fair to Thomas, he/she did follow the NCAA rules allowing a male athlete to declare himself transgender and be eligible to compete with the women after a short course of hormone treatment. No doubt Will/Lia is dealing with gender confusion, and for that deserves sympathy, respect and kindness. It’s not an easy path. But there is also no doubt the athlete who won the womens 500-meter freestyle championship on March 17, 2022 had unfair advantages based on biological sex.

Kara Dansky is president of the U.S. Chapter of Women’s Declaration International, a global organization focused on protecting women’s sex-based rights. When President Richard Nixon signed Title IX into law in 1972 banning discrimination on the basis of sex, no one needed to define sex. Now we do.

Dansky submitted written testimony to federal rule-makers following President Biden’s broadly worded Executive Order in 2021 broadly banning discrimination on the basis of gender identity. She included this helpful definition, with a recommendation to add it to the Title IX rules:

“Sex means the distinction between male and female, or the property or character by which an animal is male or female; a classification of male or female based on anatomic and chromosomal characteristics; determined by gametes, which are sex cells containing only one set of dissimilar chromosomes, or half the genetic material necessary to form a complete organism.” These definitions are taken from Black’s Law Dictionary, Mosby’s Dictionary of Medicine, Nursing & Health Professions, and Encyclopedia Britannica, respectively. These are reputable and credible sources on which to rely in providing a regulatory definition of sex for the purpose of protecting the rights, privacy, and safety of women and girls as a sex class under Title IX.”

Sex is an objective fact, gender is a spectrum of expected behaviors varying by culture and era. Before Title IX, American girls were routinely excluded from “boy” activities, including shop class, advanced math placement, and many sports. Feminists spent decades working to break down the gender stereotypes holding back girls and boys from finding their full potential as women and men.

Changes were forced into the language to reinforce this cultural shift. Firemen logically became firefighters, mailmen turned into mail carriers and policemen were easily replaced with police officers. The language embraced new gender-neutral terms when they added value to communication but recognizing sometimes “man” still usefully refers to all humans. “Personhole covers” just never caught on as the name for those heavy cast iron lids covering the access to a utility vault. And even when she’s a woman, it’s a journeyman lineman who goes up in the bucket truck to repair high voltage lines.

That earlier generation of radical 20th century feminists understood how language drives narratives, but narratives also drive language and the narrative has changed. Now the loudest voices declare sex is merely assigned at birth, or sometimes before birth by unenlightened parents holding a gender reveal party. Now sex is determined by feelings rather than observed as a biological reality. Now 21st century non-binary gender fluid radicals are un-ironically working to reinforce old gender stereotypes while at the same time denying the reality of biological sex-based differences.

John Lohn, Editor-in-Chief for “Swimming World” magazine, weighed in after the NCAA Women’s Swimming and Diving Championships, writing in an editorial published the day of the race that  “Lia Thomas’ victory is an insult to the biological women who raced against her. Against those who fought for Title IX and equal opportunities for female athletes. Against science, and the unmistakable physiological differences between the male and female sexes.”

It's not just swimming. Biological males have taken honors and opportunities away from actual women and girls in track and field, rugby, football, weight-lifting, ice hockey, soccer, cycling, golf and the Boston Marathon. Some call these breakthroughs for transpeople. Dansky’s group calls it the transjacking of women’s sports.

Male advantage in sports isn’t automatic, but the increasingly obvious disparities on the medal podium are impossible to ignore for ordinary people across the political spectrum. Commentators trying to straddle the issue have suggested creating a transgender division instead of ignoring the meaning and purpose of Title IX.  

Or if the NCAA has trouble figuring out how to recognize sex-based biological differences without offending anyone who buys into today’s cultural fluidity, then change the language. Instead of the NCAA Womens Swimming and Diving competition, re-christen it the Double XX Swimming and Diving competition. Double XXers deserve a league of their own.