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Lies, Damn Lies and Lia Thomas

Dawn Ennis
6 min readFeb 5, 2022

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Lia Thomas swims in an Ivy League meet for the Penn Quakers.
Getty Images

If you’ve read anything about out transgender college swimmer Lia Thomas published by Swimming World, The Federalist, The New York Post, NewsMax, Breitbart, The Daily Caller or Fox News, especially if it’s quoting an anonymous source, fuggedaboudit. Almost all of it is bullshit.

Oh, they got her name right, and sometimes, they even use her pronouns, which are she/her/hers, by the way. They name her school, the University of Pennsylvania (not Penn State, mind you) and her times, which are all a matter of public record.

You might think, based on their coverage, Thomas has permanently eliminated all women and girls from every swimming competition on earth, and destroyed women’s sports forever. It’s a lie. There are girls and women swimming in pools across the country right at this very moment. And they’ll be swimming tomorrow and the next day. And in all but ten states, a handful of trans girls and women will be swimming with them.

Lia Thomas has not set any national records, despite what lies are told. Yet her future is in limbo because of hasty changes in NCAA and USA Swimming participation rules since her success in Ivy League competitions in December and last month. The truth is, Thomas does hold two conference records in the 200- and 500-freestyle, making her the woman with the fastest time in those events right now, and is in the top 10…

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Dawn Ennis
Dawn Ennis

Written by Dawn Ennis

Host “RiseUP With Dawn Ennis,” Blogger at http://lifeafterdawn.com, award-winning broadcast & online journalist, widow and single mom whose kids call me “Dad.”

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