National Women's Law Center claims it's 'misogyny' to oppose Lia Thomas' inclusion in female sport

The National Women's Law Center claimed on Twitter that the backlash against Lia Thomas to compete—and win—against women is simply misogyny. The claim is that those who oppose Thomas being in pool swimming against women are misogynistic against women.

There's only one problem with this, which is that the word misogyny has a definition, and that definition is "a person who dislikes, despises, or is strongly prejudiced against women."

The thesaurus goes on to provide more clues on what a misogynist is, too. It states that other words one could use instead of misogynist are "woman-hater, anti-feminist, male chauvinist, male supremacist, chauvinist, sexist; informal male chauvinist pig, MCP."

So how could opposing Thomas, who is entirely, fully, and biologically male, be anti-woman? The only way this is possible, the only way that the National Women's Law Center can say that being opposed to Thomas out of a hatred for women is possible, is if the orgniazation believes, and thinks the rest of us believe, that Thomas is female, is a woman, was born and raised a girl, and stands a fully formed adult human female.

NBC claims that Thomas is being "gender policed."

Thomas does not stand as a fully formed adult human female. No one truly believes that Thomas is female. NBC doesn't believe it—despite their article full of flaming hoops that writer Julie Compton deftly jumps through as though she were perhaps trained in the use of the English language—NBC knows fully well that Thomas is not female.

Thomas claims to be a woman. The college athlete claims that Thomas would like to compete in the US Olympics, to represent women for that body, at the highest level of sport. In so doing, in the swimmer's own statement that Thomas is a woman, the athlete is lying. Thomas knows fully well that Thomas is not female.

Everyone knows it. To say that Thomas, with male body, male stride, male mannerisms, male voice, male everything, is a female is a lie. Yet NBC compares Thomas to athletes who competed on women's teams over the years despite having odd sexual characteristics. Compton writes that "suspicion surrounding [female athletes] gender and sexuality—from remarks to sex verification tests—remains."

Compton notes that many historians, arm-chair gender theorists who make suppositions about reality instead of partaking in it, "argue that the heated debate surrounding transgender college swimmer Lia Thomas, whose record-breaking seasons has thrust her unwillingly into the national spotlight, is a continuation of that century old-legacy."

Couple things, just to start: Thomas has not been "thrust unwillingly into the national spotlight," Thomas has coveted it. The swimmer knew fully that by trouncing women in swimming competitions, Thomas would be nationally spotlighted, both by the liars who proclaim the athlete to be female and by detractors who are determined to tell the truth.

And the "century old legacy" of slamming women for not being "woman enough" has only to do with male expectations of how women should perform femininity. Thomas, in donning "woman," is contributing to those male-bred expectations and understandings of what women are, and has nothing at all to do with what women actually are: adult human females.

Compton tracks through sad stories of women who were held to unrealistic and manufactured standards of femininity, whose bodies were unfairly scrutinized until their sex, their gonad placement, could be determined, and compares these athletes to Thomas. But Thomas needs no medical scrutiny for it to be determined that Thomas is not female. Any random person on the street can, at a glance, determined easily that Thomas is a biological male.

Men can dress up like women. They can wear womanhood like a second skin; they can giggle, demur, wear heals, steal championships, cry, and demand acceptance for the feminine gender they are costumed in, but they are not women.

"I'm a woman, just like anybody else on the team," Thomas told Sports Illustrated for their cover story on Thomas, a college swimmer and fifth-year senior. "I've always viewed myself as just a swimmer. It's what I've done for so long; it's what I love." But Thomas isn't "just a swimmer," or Thomas would have been content to place in the 400s in the men's pool instead of first in the women's.

Thomas will not win all the events the athlete competes in, but Thomas will win enough. And it is not the wins, or the losses, that determine what Thomas is, or which pool or locker room Thomas should swim or change clothes in. It it Thomas' sex that matters, and more importantly, it is the sex of the athlete's teammates that needs to be considered.

The women who don't want to compete against males are not misogynists. It is yet another bastardization of language to claim that they are. Instead, the women who wish to compete on a fair playing field are women who know fully that unfairness follows the female sex around, and that there is no well in hell they should give back the equality that mothers and aunts so valiantly fought to achieve.