"Everyone is just faking everything!"

Suzy Weiss writes about Lia Thomas, the transexual swimmer from the University of Pennsylvania.

As much as wingspan, heart size, lung capacity, bone density, or nanomoles of testosterone per liter of blood, the story of Lia Thomas is a story about the Ivy League and the class of people that tends to populate it. These kids and their parents are ultra-competitive—in swimming, in schooling, and socially. In some cases, these families passed up scholarships to D1 schools so that the kids could swim for Columbia, or Dartmouth or Cornell or Yale and pick up a more elite diploma along with a varsity letter. Getting here meant a decade or so of early practices, endless carpools, faraway meets, college visits, charity projects, SAT prep and AP classes.

But getting in doesn’t mean an end to the prep and the striving. There are still job prospects, summer internships, and graduate school admissions to worry about. They love prestige, and they love rules. Rules got them and their kids where they are; these are the highest-scoring rule-followers in the country. But now the rules—Thomas has followed all of the Ivy League and NCAA ones—have turned on them. “Whether you think it or not, you can’t go against her,” says the Brown dad. “No one wants to take the hard stance because they don’t want to be demonized.”

One of the Penn moms says her own daughter warned her against speaking out. “She’s worried about getting into grad school, and she doesnt want my name or hers to come up on Google attached to this.” (Her daughter is hoping to get a graduate degree in biology.)

The parents say their daughters know it’s wrong that Thomas is swimming against them but that they will not risk getting smeared with the label transphobe.

What about Mike Schnur, the Penn coach, who is wearing a mask with a trans flag on Saturday night, where Thomas swims in the 100 yard freestyle? “Politically, he’s as conservative as they come,” says a Penn dad. “He just loves winning and loves his job.” A Penn mom stares at me. “Everyone’s just faking everything.”

Read more here: https://bariweiss.substack.com/p/watching-lia-thomas-win?s=w