--- /dev/null
+Title: Link: "'I Am Lia': The Trans Swimmer Dividing America Tells Her Story"
+Date: 2022-03-04 22:00
+Category: other
+Tags: linkpost, news, sports, Sports Illustrated
+Status: draft
+
+([Previously](/2020/Oct/link-can-wnba-players-take-down-a-us-senator/), [previously](/2017/Jun/questions-such-as-wtf-is-wrong-with-you-people/).)
+
+From Robert Sanchez for _Sports Illustrated_, a story on Lia Thomas,
+
+[(Archived.)](https://archive.ph/auvDU)
+
+> a living, breathing, real-time Rorschach test for how society views those who challenge conventions
+
+> Conservative opinion sites have called her a man and deadnamed her, purposely using the name she went by before transitioning.
+
+> Her moves have been minutely tracked by the U.K.’s Daily Mail, including once with cruel detail about her habits in the women’s locker room provided by an anonymous teammate.
+
+https://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-10445679/Lia-Thomas-UPenn-teammate-says-trans-swimmer-doesnt-cover-genitals-locker-room.html
+https://archive.ph/fPq42
+
+> Every day this season felt like a challenge to her humanity.
+
+> a mutual love of niche anime and video games and through the closeness that can be achieved only through taxing swim practices
+
+> Thomas says she began questioning her identity near the end of her time at Austin’s Westlake High School.
+
+> Thomas desperately wanted to swim with the women’s team. With COVID-19 threatening to interrupt the 2020–21 college season, Thomas took what would have been her senior season off as a hedge to keep her final year of eligibility.
+
+> come close to hitting NCAA championship–qualifying times in men’s distance races.
+
+> At a November 2021 meet against Princeton and Cornell, Thomas posted the NCAA season-best times in the 200-yard freestyle and the 500-yard freestyle, set Penn records in those events and won three individual races. In the blowout 500 free, she beat the second-place finisher by nearly 13 seconds.
+
+> Her puberty gave her an advantage over other female competitors. Science allegedly showed trans women had larger hands and feet, bigger hearts and greater bone density and lung capacity.
+
+> It’s telling that the parents issued the letter anonymously. More than a half dozen people affiliated with the Penn program spoke to SI under the condition that their names not be used in this story. “I’m not about to be labeled as transphobic,” says one swimmer on the team.
+
+> That argument is disingenuous to Thomas. There is no such thing as half-support: Either you back her fully as a woman or you don’t. “The very simple answer is that I’m not a man,” she says. “I’m a woman, so I belong on the women’s team. Trans people deserve that same respect every other athlete gets.”
+
+> Swimming at the 2024 Olympic trials is still a goal. If she meets the criteria to continue swimming in the women’s category, USA Swimming officials tell SI, they’ll have no issue with Thomas representing the United States in Paris.
+
+> And for one moment, Lia Thomas’s story is just about swimming.
+++ /dev/null
-Title: Link: "'I Am Lia': The Trans Swimmer Dividing America Tells Her Story"
-Date: 2022-03-04 22:00
-Category: other
-Tags: linkpost, news, sports, Sports Illustrated
-Status: draft
-
-([Previously](/2020/Oct/link-can-wnba-players-take-down-a-us-senator/), [previously](/2017/Jun/questions-such-as-wtf-is-wrong-with-you-people/).)
-
-From Robert Sanchez for _Sports Illustrated_, a story on Lia Thomas,
-
-[(Archived.)](https://archive.ph/auvDU)
-
-> a living, breathing, real-time Rorschach test for how society views those who challenge conventions
-
-> Conservative opinion sites have called her a man and deadnamed her, purposely using the name she went by before transitioning.
-
-> Her moves have been minutely tracked by the U.K.’s Daily Mail, including once with cruel detail about her habits in the women’s locker room provided by an anonymous teammate.
-
-https://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-10445679/Lia-Thomas-UPenn-teammate-says-trans-swimmer-doesnt-cover-genitals-locker-room.html
-https://archive.ph/fPq42
-
-> Every day this season felt like a challenge to her humanity.
-
-> a mutual love of niche anime and video games and through the closeness that can be achieved only through taxing swim practices
-
-> Thomas says she began questioning her identity near the end of her time at Austin’s Westlake High School.