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Shumita Basu, Narrating: This is "In Conversation" from Apple News. I'm Shumita Basu.
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Basu, Narrating: UPenn swimmer Lia Thomas was having a pretty good season. But it wasn't until a competition in December that she suddenly blew up in national headlines.
Louisa Thomas: There were videos of her racing far ahead. It went viral. And she posted the top times in the year in two events, and suddenly everybody was paying attention.
Basu, Narrating: That's Louisa Thomas, a staff writer at "The New Yorker." No relation to Lia Thomas, by the way. Louisa covers sports, and she recently wrote about Lia Thomas' college swimming career and the larger debate over transgender athletes participating in elite sports.
See, Lia Thomas is a trans woman. When she first got to Penn, she hadn't yet transitioned. She was competing with the men's swimming team and was, by all accounts, very accomplished.
Thomas: She finished second in three events at the Ivy championships, broke a pool record. I mean, she was a very, very good swimmer.
Basu, Narrating: But mentally, she was struggling.
Thomas: Her sense of herself and her body really didn't align.
Basu, Narrating: Lia ultimately came out to her coaches and her teammates as trans, and she underwent hormone replacement therapy. Two years later, she returned to the pool with the women's team.
Louisa told us, there have been a lot of misconceptions about Lia. Sure, she is fast. But she's not the fastest there ever was.
Thomas: There was this kind of immediate desire to leap to the conclusion that Lia had already won everything. They were talking about how inevitable it was that she was going to be breaking Katie Ledecky's records and Missy Franklin's records. And she never did.
Basu, Narrating: Even without breaking records, to her critics, who I should say span the political spectrum, Lia Thomas is still winning too much. Their argument is the fact that she's winning is a sign that something about her competing is inherently unfair. So, that's where I started in my conversation with Louisa. I asked her, how do we create fairness in sports, when no two bodies are ever going to be perfectly, athletically matched?
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Thomas: Sports are predicated on the idea of an even playing field. That's a phrase that comes right out of sport, right? You know, "even playing field." We have traditionally segregated men and women because those who are assigned male at birth have an overwhelming physiological and metabolic advantage when it comes to sport. And this undisputed. Even if you were taking into account things like height and wingspan and weight and things like that, the top male athletes do much better than the top female athletes. Allyson Felix's lifetime best in the 400 meters is 49.26 seconds. And in 2017 alone, that time was bested by men and even high school boys 15,000 times. And we have this kind of idea that Serena Williams would beat whoever she plays. But she herself would tell you that she is no match for the top men or even probably the top hundred men. But again, the reason we have these two different silos is that that should take nothing away from Serena Williams' abilities or achievements, similarly Allyson Felix. I mean, this is what lets us have these extraordinary examples of female athletes. So …
Basu: It's not an anti-feminist argument to be making that scientifically there is a difference in performance, is what you're saying.
Thomas: Yes, exactly. But this is complicated by the fact that there are, there are women who have gone through testosterone-driven puberty. And so, the question is, how do we account for that?
Basu: Yeah, let's start there. Let's start with testosterone because a lot of the rules around whether trans athletes can compete at the elite level have been tied to testosterone. So, what do we know about the relationship between testosterone levels and athletic performance, and what don't we understand about that relationship?
Thomas: Testosterone is one in which there is, one researcher called it, "a chasm." Men tend to have about 15 times higher level testosterone than women do. And it can make quite a difference. Generally speaking, they have on average more cardiovascular capacity. They have greater muscle mass. They have higher tendon mechanical strength, you know, their ligaments are stronger. They've denser are bones. They have different shaped hips. However, that said, if you were to measure the testosterone levels of all the competitors in the 100-meter sprint on the morning of the Olympic final, you would not be able to tell who would win on the basis of their testosterone. And there can actually be quite a lot of variation. So, that suggests that testosterone isn't everything.
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Basu, Narrating: Right, testosterone isn't everything. But up until recently, many governing bodies in sports like the International Olympic Committee and the NCAA made one year of testosterone suppression a requirement for transgender women to compete. When a person who's experienced testosterone-driven puberty later transitions and takes hormone suppressants, they'll notice changes in their body. Less muscle mass, redistribution of fat, decreased aerobic capacity.
Louisa told me about Joanna Harper; she's a nationally ranked master's runner and trans woman. After she transitioned and started competing against women instead of men, she said the changes were noticeable. Here is she speaking on the "StarTalk" podcast.
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Joanna Harper: And so, what I found in my particular case is that after nine months of hormone therapy, I was running 12 percent slower, and that's the difference between male distance runners and female distance runners.
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Basu, Narrating: Harper went looking for research on trans athletes and testosterone suppression. And when she couldn't find any, she decided to write the study herself, based on eight subjects. She learned other transgender distance runners had experienced a similar drop in times after hormone therapy.
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Joanna Harper: The most important question is, can transgender women and cisgender women compete against one another in an equitable and meaningful fashion. If they can, they belong in the same category. If they can't, they don't belong in the same category.
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Basu, Narrating: Louisa spoke with Harper for her piece in "The New Yorker."
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Thomas: And she said to me, I'm not saying that testosterone is the only thing that matters, but if you're differentiating between male athletes and female athletes, you should use some factor that's sexually dimorphic and is important for athletic performance. Testosterone is the best one that fits both of those.
Basu: So, she agrees that testosterone seems to be a good marker to use.
Thomas: That's her view. But not everyone agrees. I mean, there are good scientists writing peer-reviewed articles that are arguing that no amount of testosterone suppression can overcome what's known as these quote "legacy advantages." That, for swimming let's say, the shape of your pelvis matters, and undergoing testosterone suppression is not going to really change that. Lia Thomas, who we were talking about, did say she's shrunk an inch, but she's still around six feet. You know, she's not suddenly 5'7". And that's actually one of the reasons why a lot of governing bodies recently - first the IOC, more recently the NCAA - have decided to say, look, one rule is not the answer here. Different sports call upon different skills and have different sort of body manipulations. And so, what is the right answer for marathon running might not be the right answer for boxing or wrestling or whatever else. And that generally seems both intuitively true and is a sensible rule to a lot of people. However, the question is, well, what do you do then? Like, what kind of guidance are you going to give or not give? What kind of requirements are you going to make or not make? A lot of people have been unhappy about how different governing bodies have then used that as a jumping off point to make their rules, or not rules.
Basu: It's very open ended.
Thomas: Yeah. It's very open ended.
Basu: So, what kinds of changes are being proposed to create fairness across different sports? Are there ideas about creating weight classes, sort of like they do for wrestling or mixed martial arts?
Thomas: What is being done runs the gamut. So, the rugby, the federation that organizes rugby has come up with a complete ban on trans women competing in certain tournaments. Not like your local rugby club can't include it, but in certain level of tournaments. And they have decided it's a safety issue. Whereas there's the premier hockey league, which has put inclusion kind of at the center of its identity. And their rules are incredibly inclusive. You just have to live in your identity for two years. You don't have to undergo hormone therapy in order to compete. You know, it sort of runs the full gamut between none are allowed and not requiring any sort of medical intervention.
Basu: Well, let's talk about the political issues around this. Fourteen states have enacted legislation barring transgender girls from competing in girls' sports in school. And the argument that you hear often from some Republican lawmakers and even from conservative media is that it's just not fair to women and girls, that it defeats the purpose of women's athletics being a protected, separate space. So, what do you make of those concerns that this is somehow a threat to women's athletics?
Thomas: I think there are a number of ways to address that question. You know, are we talking about protecting women? Are we talking about … Now, you're suddenly implying that trans … I'm not saying you are, but someone who's making that argument is implying that those are not actually women. When in fact, trans women, trans people in general are … it's a really vulnerable population. I mean, in a lot of ways, you can make the argument that they're the ones who should be protected and considered because it's really not easy to be a trans person in the United States of America or anywhere else these days. So, that's one argument. Another point you can make is that that's a valid point. [LAUGHS] You know, that we have this kind of distinction for a reason. And it's a good reason. We want to be able to celebrate Allison Felix. We want to be able to celebrate Serena Williams. We want to be able to celebrate the extraordinary U.S. women's soccer team. We want to be able to sort of say, these are these are the best in the world at what they do. And it's true that if Lia Thomas had not undergone any medical transition, her best times would've shattered the records. And there are people who argue that there should be no requirement for a medical transition. So, it's not a straw man argument. So, you know, at the same time, here is an argument where I do think that the numbers do matter at the same time because Lia Thomas did not and is not going to be the end of women's sports and there are not hordes of trans women, as the sort of public imagination might say. There are actually a lot of other threats to women's sports that we're not talking about that certainly Republican legislatures have not talked about at all. You know, they have to do with funding and access and rules, like in the NCAA name, image and likeness rules and transfer portals and things that have not crossed the lips of 90% of the people who are kind of pulling their hair out about women's sports and women's college sports in particular. So yeah, I mean, it's a little bit of an issue that's generating a lot of light, but no heat. But at the same time, I was actually struck, very recently the Utah governor actually vetoed a bill that was passed to ban trans girls from competing according to their gender identity. And he wrote in his letter that he sent to the leaders of the state house and senate, he wrote, "I struggle to understand so much of it and the science is conflicting. When in doubt, however, I always try to err on the side of kindness, mercy and compassion." So, I mean, there are lots of different questions here.
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Basu, Narrating: Clearly, this is an issue that isn't split neatly across partisan lines. In a recent article for "Sports Illustrated" about Lia Thomas, one parent at Penn told the magazine, listen, I'm a progressive. I believe that Lia should be treated with dignity and respect. But, this parent said, I just don't agree with where she's swimming. Lia Thomas responded to that by saying, there's no such thing as half-support. You either respect her as a woman or you don't.
Thomas: There are a lot of people who identify as liberals or democrats or even progressives who are uncomfortable with the idea of a trans woman competing against … and I should say really, they're uncomfortable with the idea of them winning. I think that what was so interesting to me is that you saw immediately this idea, there was this kind of immediate desire to leap to the conclusion that Lia had already won everything. You know, when there were … a lot of the quotes when people were talking about her, it was like they were talking about how inevitable it was that she was going to be breaking Katie Ledecky's records and Missy Franklin's records. And she never did.
Basu, Narrating: At the NCAA championship in March, Lia Thomas did win the 500-yard freestyle, becoming the first known transgender athlete to win a Division I national championship. But Katie Ledecky swam that same event when she was in college in 2017, and her time was nearly 10 seconds faster than Lia's. It's also worth noting that Lia didn't win any of the other NCAA championship events that she competed in. In the 200-yard final, she tied for fifth. And in the 100-yard freestyle final, she came in 8th.
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Thomas: But certainly, there was a sort of jump to conclude that she was somehow outside of the bounds of what was normal for a woman. And I'm including, you know, I'm including my dad, when I talk to him. I had really interesting conversations because he's, not to throw him under the bus here, but he's one of these people sort of struggling with his traditional mindset. And he sort of imagined that she was somehow better than every female swimmer who had ever competed. And I sort of had to say like, Dad, her time is 10 seconds slower than Katie Ledecky's time. Like, there's a little bit of an accident, a quirk of timing here because a few years ago, Katie Ledecky was competing in the NCAA, and what we would've seen then, the videos wouldn't have been of Lia Thomas out in front by a lap. It would've been Katie Ledecky way in front of her, and it wouldn't have had quite the same visual power.
Basu: I mean, the title of your piece, I should say, is "The trans swimmer who won too much." And at some point in this piece, you speak with a trans doctor of adolescent medicine who told you that often the only evidence that's considered legitimate that trans women have lost a competitive advantage in sports is that they are no longer competitive. Can you talk a bit about that?
Thomas: And I think that's true. I mean, and I think actually a lot of the people who are arguing for that would agree. I mean, I think that there are people who say the only fair way to gauge a transition is that they're exactly where they were in the lineup on the leader board as they were when they were competing as men. So, if someone is the 30th best in the country as a man, you can know that it's been a proper, quote-unquote, "successful transition" if they're 30th as a woman or lower. You know? It's a logical argument in some sense, but I talked to one of Lia's friends who is himself a trans swimmer, and he made the point that she wasn't going to practice, she wasn't happy, you know, that mental health matters.
Basu: Before she transitioned, you're saying, in her early college career.
Thomas: Yeah, exactly. And that might explain some of the leap in performance, might not explain it all. Her top times were about 5% slower than her top times competing for the men's team. And that is a smaller gap than studies that they had originally made these kind of testosterone suppression the basis of. So, probably it seems like that's a big mental health cushion, you know? But at the same time, certainly plausible. I mean, this is a swimmer who was dropping a lot of seconds off her times, even when she was competing as a man. So, you could say she hadn't reached her potential and now she has, or you could say there's something that wasn't completely mitigated. But maybe that doesn't matter. You know, a lot of people having a lot of arguments here.
Basu, Narrating: The last thing I asked Louisa was, what's your advice for people who are looking for a clear-cut answer on this issue, for anyone who says that they care about being inclusive, but they're also genuinely confused about what's fair?
Thomas: My own views are kind of irrelevant, but I do think that personally talking to my dad and things like that, you do have to give people space to be confused and also to sort of be able to say, "Wait a second, listen. What are you imagining here?" And what is the real situation? And not get mad when you realize what they're imagining is maybe not the true facts. And also to check yourself and realize that there are sort of complicated issues at play that are not easily answered.
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Basu: Yeah. Louisa Thomas, thank you so much for speaking with us.
Thomas: Thank you.
Basu, Narrating: You can read Louisa Thomas' article for "The New Yorker" on Apple News. You can find a link on our show notes page.
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