Who will insist on fairness and equity for female swimmers?

OPINION:

As a member of the women’s swim team at the University of Pennsylvania, Lia Thomas has been racking up an impressive number of wins and records this season.

Lia won the 200-yard freestyle at the Zippy Invitational in Akron, Ohio, breaking Penn’s record and establishing the best time in the nation this season, according to the university. Lia also won the 1650-yard freestyle by more than 38 seconds over the nearest competitor (another Penn swimmer) to set university, meet and pool records.

In a meet against Princeton and Cornell, Thomas won the 500 free by 12 seconds, which was good enough to be the fastest time in the NCAA this year. Thomas also won the 100 free, the 200 free and was the anchor on the winning 400 free relay team.

The only thing that gives one pause is that for three years, and as recently as November 2019, Lia Thomas, who is a transgender woman previously known as Will Thomas, competed for the men’s swim team at Penn.

There is, of course, a good deal of concern about the idea that a biological male, with all the advantages of having gone through puberty as a male — including more upper-body strength, greater cardiovascular capacity, etc. — is competing against biological females. It is not accidental that women typically are faster in the pool until about 13 or 14 years of age. Then, when puberty arrives, the times of men get appreciably faster than women on average.

If there is concern at Penn, in the Ivy League or at the NCAA, no one is ready to go public. One member of the women’s swim team at Penn said (without attribution) that the team is uniformly opposed to Ms. Thomas’ presence and places the blame squarely on the coach. She told the New York Post, “Pretty much everyone individually has spoken to our coaches about not liking this. Our coach [Mike Schnur] just really likes winning. … I think secretly everyone just knows it’s the wrong thing to do.”

Nor do competitors seem particularly concerned about the presence of a biological male in a swim lane. They have not boycotted the meets nor complained to the Ivy League or anyone else. Nor has the Ivy League given any hints about what it intends to do to protect the integrity and fundamental fairness in women’s sports.

The Ivy League and its member schools have all sorts of restrictions — ranging from academic eligibility to substance abuse to getting paid to play — on who can participate in sports. Why are there no meaningful restrictions on biological males competing in women’s sports?

That is likely to become a live question shortly. The NCAA swim finals are in March. It probably won’t be a good look to have a biological male crushing biological females in a national competition.

For some perspective, Ms. Thomas’ best times as a woman at Penn are about two seconds behind Olympian Missy Franklin’s record in the 200 (about 13 seconds off the men’s record), 10 seconds behind Olympian Katie Ledecky in the 500 (about 26 seconds off of the men’s record, held by Townley Haas), and 56 seconds behind Ms. Ledecky’s time in the 1,650. Those are pretty quick times for the Ivies, which are not typically a launching pad for Olympic swimmers.

Let’s be clear. It appears that Ms. Thomas has broken no rules. The question at hand is why have the NCAA and the Ivy League constructed a regime that allows biological males, who completed puberty as males, to compete against women?

Additionally, why is there no concerted effort among those who populate women’s sports teams in the NCAA to prevent this sort of unfair competition?

We can guess the answer to that question. There is a fundamental mismatch between the power of administrators and activists and female student-athletes who may be inclined to oppose competition between biological males and biological females. Many students, especially those most directly affected, attend college on athletic or needs-based scholarships. This limits their ability to fight the entire architecture of progressivism on its home turf of academia.

Eventually, however, there will be pushback. Parents will object. Coaches and fans will make noise. Indeed, Swimming World magazine has already noted the unfairness. At some level of competition (perhaps the nationals in March, perhaps the Olympics), resistance from others will become systemic enough that the charade will stop, and the NCAA will be compelled to take meaningful action.

But that won’t change the damage done to women in the meantime. Nor will it help Ms. Thomas, who is simply following the rules, however nonsensical they are. Nor will it give those student-athletes who are biological females and who have to compete against biological males any consolation or any sense that the institutions designed to ensure fairness and equity actually care about either.

• Michael McKenna, a columnist for The Washington Times, is the president of MWR Strategies. He was most recently a deputy assistant to the president and deputy director of the Office of Legislative Affairs at the White House.