(LifeSiteNews) – Gender-confused University of Pennsylvania swimmer William “Lia” Thomas has been deeply immersed in bizarre and fetishtic sexual trends that further intensify questions about the propriety of forcing actual women to share showers and changing areas with him, according to a Daily Wire investigation spurred by comments from one of Thomas’s competitors, former University of Kentucky All-American collegiate swimmer Riley Gaines.
Thomas, who “transitioned” to identifying as a female yet retains male genitalia and reportedly remained heterosexual (despite self-identifying as lesbian), drew headlines last year for generating unease among his actual female teammates and opponents, partly due to having to share lockers and partly due to his domination of women’s swimming competitions since switching from the men’s team.
Former teammates have reportedly been intimidated into silence about their objections to Thomas by officials at Ivy League schools, though some have spoken out anonymously, describing Thomas as “mentally ill” and thoroughly dismissive of the feelings or interests of his teammates.
Some of his opponents have been more willing or able to go public, such as Gaines, who has previously discussed the experience of tying with Thomas for fifth place at the NCAA championships’ 200 freestyle competition. Despite both swimmers performing the same, Thomas was given a trophy to pose with for photos, and Gaines had to settle for one coming in the mail.
“I actually talked with a swimmer who is a survivor of sexual trauma, and being in the locker room with a male and seeing male parts has completely retriggered everything,” Gaines said during a panel at last year’s Conservative Political Action Conference (CPAC) in Dallas.
On Wednesday, Gaines joined the Daily Wire’s sports podcast Crain & Co. for an interview, during which she revealed, “I actually had someone send me [Thomas’] girlfriend’s Instagram page, too, which I obviously looked at. It is, in fact, a male who has transitioned, so the same type of transgender person as Lia.”
“What they engage in, the different things — I mean, it’s probably too explicit to even [discuss],” she said, “but it’s mind-blowing now, sitting back looking at this in front of my eyes and knowing we had to share a locker with this person.” Gaines added that this was common knowledge among swimmers who take an interest in their colleagues’ social media.
The interview prompted host Jack Crain to look into Thomas’s social media presence, and he relayed his findings in a “jarring” Twitter thread (WARNING: GRAPHIC AND DISTURBING CONTENT):
THREAD:
1. This is a 🧵 we never expected to write…We sat down with NCAA women’s swimmer @Riley_Gaines_ and she shared some info about Lia Thomas. So we did some digging & now we have a LOT of questions. Is THIS what the NCAA thinks a woman is? WARNING: What we found is jarring:— Jake Crain (@JakeCrain_) February 15, 2023
Among the revelations are Thomas’s interest in autogynephilia (AGP), which denotes “a male’s propensity to be sexually aroused by the thought of himself as a female,” that his “girlfriend” posts “posts dark & satanic artwork” (including an illustration depicting Thomas “as a demonic dominatrix character,” and that he is friends with someone who goes by the screen name “Crybaby hellbitch” and has “a hyper-sexual abuse fetish.”
“These disturbing images raise serious questions about how the [National Collegiate Athletic Association] defines what a woman is,” Crain says.
The new insights into Thomas’ psyche add a dark new context to the NCAA’s and the Ivy League’s support for forcing young women to share intimate facilities with Thomas.
“When you see a male with male parts watching you undress, it was like I thought I was missing something,” Gaines told Crain. “I thought, am I like not grasping something? Why is no one talking about this? Why is the coach not sticking up for us? We did not give our consent for this.”
Conservatives argue that forcing children and teens to share intimate facilities with members of the opposite sex violates their privacy, subjects them to needless emotional stress, and gives potential male predators a viable pretext to enter female bathrooms or lockers by simply claiming transgender status, regardless of whether they are sincerely dysphoric.
Mandatory inclusion of gender-confused individuals in opposite-sex sports, meanwhile, is billed as a matter of sensitivity and respect for perceived “gender identity.” But critics argue that indulging transgender athletes in this way undermines the original rational basis for having sex-specific athletics in the first place, thereby depriving female athletes of recognition and professional or academic opportunities. Scientific research affirms that physiology gives males distinct athletic advantages that cannot be fully negated by hormone suppression.
In a 2019 paper published by the Journal of Medical Ethics, New Zealand researchers found that “healthy young men [do] not lose significant muscle mass (or power) when their circulating testosterone levels were reduced to (below International Olympic Committee guidelines) for 20 weeks,” and “indirect effects of testosterone” on factors such as bone structure, lung volume, and heart size “will not be altered by hormone therapy”; therefore, “the advantage to transwomen [biological men] afforded by the [International Olympic Committee] guidelines is an intolerable unfairness.”
In recent years, numerous states have enacted policies banning public institutions from forcing women and girls to share intimate facilities or sex-specific athletic programs with males.