Former UPenn Swimmer Testifies About Trauma of Sharing Locker Room With Biological Male

The female athlete was a teammate of transgender swimmer William 'Lia' Thomas

Former University of Pennsylvania swimmer Paula Scanlan testifies before the House Judiciary Subcommittee on the Constitution and Limited Government in Washington on July 27, 2023. House Committee on the Judiciary

Former University of Pennsylvania swimmer Paula Scanlan testified on Thursday before Congress about the traumatizing experience of having to undress in the same locker room with transgender teammate William “Lia” Thomas.

“My teammates and I were forced to undress in the presence of Lia, a 6-feet, 4-inch tall biological man fully intact with male genitalia, 18 times per week,” the former Division I athlete told members of the House Judiciary Subcommittee on the Constitution and Limited Government.

The congressional hearing, titled “The Dangers and Due Process Violations of ‘Gender-Affirming Care’ for Children,” aimed to examine and expose how children, despite not having the capacity to fully comprehend the impact of gender transition, are coerced by adults to undergo life-altering and medically questionable procedures.

According to Ms. Scanlan, some of the women on her team opted to change in bathroom stalls and others used the family bathroom to avoid changing in front of Mr. Thomas. When female student athletes tried to voice the concern to university administrators, they were told that Mr. Thomas competing with women and using the women’s locker room was “non-negotiable.”

“To sum up the university’s response: we, the women, were the problem, not the victims. We were expected to conform—to move over and shut up,” Ms. Scanlan said.

Ms. Scanlan then spoke of her personal experiences as a survivor of sexual assault, at times appearing to fight back tears.

“I know of women with sexual trauma who are adversely impacted by having biological males in their locker room without their consent. And I am one of these women,” she told the members of Congress. “I was sexually assaulted on June 3, 2016, in a bathroom.”

“I was able to forgive my attacker, but violence against women still exists,” she continued. “As a sexual assault survivor, many policies pushed today completely ignore my experiences, and many women like me.”

Flawed NCAA Policies

In an earlier interview for EpochTV’s “American Thought Leaders,” Ms. Scanlan said Mr. Thomas’ swimming actually complied with the rules of the NCAA, the governing body of competitive college-level sports. The rules at that time required male athletes to have undergone one year of testosterone suppression treatment in order to compete on a women’s team in any sport.

“The NCAA had these policies that were deeply flawed,” she said. “It didn’t take into account skeletal structure, muscle, muscle mass, lung capacity, heart size, and other factors that differentiate men and women.”

As Ms. Scanlan and other critics pointed out, those factors do appear to have helped Mr. Thomas succeed extraordinarily in competing against women. In March 2022, he won the NCAA championships in the 500-yard freestyle race with a time of 4:48.25, beating out the second-place finisher, Olympic silver-medalist Emma Weyant, by more than a second.

Ms. Weyant won second place in the delayed 2020 Tokyo Olympics for the 400-meter medley.

World Aquatics, the international governing body of competitive swimming, has announced that it is moving forward with plans to implement a separate competition category for athletes identifying as transgender.

The World Aquatics Congress held its annual summit in Fukuoka, Japan, on July 25, where the World Aquatics Championships were also taking place.

In a speech, World Aquatics President Husain Al-Musallam said the new plan will protect “fair competition for our female athletes” while still making sure the sport is “open to everybody.”

“Nobody should be excluded from our competitions. This is why I announced last year that I would set up a committee to look at the best way to implement an open category,” he said.

“The committee work is not finished,” Mr. Al-Musallam added. “This is a very complex topic. But I am delighted to tell you today that we are now making ... plans for the first trial of an open category and we hope to be able to confirm all the details soon. Our sport must be for everybody.”

The announcement comes a year after World Aquatics, formerly known as the International Swimming Federation or FINA, revised its “gender inclusion” policy to ban male-born athletes who began medical transition after the age of 12 from competing in women’s swimming events.

Other Sports Follow Suit

Several other international sports organizations, including the World Boxing Council (WBC), are seeking to implement similar policies. In December 2022, months after the WBC banned transgender-identified men from competing against women, the organization said it will introduce a program for “transgender people who want to box.”

While the WBC is still working out the detailed rules for the new category, it has confirmed that there will be an “at birth” rule, meaning that a transgender fighter who was born male will never be allowed to box against another transgender fighter who was born female.

“It can be argued that by the time a transgender woman combatant launches her professional career she has already gone through male puberty thus conferring her with the musculature and bony structure of a male,” a WBC guideline for transgender boxers states. “So, a transgender woman combatant may have an unfair advantage over her [biological] woman combatant.”