Savannah Hulsey Pointer, FISM News
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A former official at USA Swimming tendered her resignation earlier this month in protest of transgender swimmer Lia Thomas competing in female competitions, according to The Washington Examiner.
Cynthia Millen has resigned after 30 years working in the industry as the University of Pennsylvania continues to allow Lia Thomas, a biological male who has transitioned and is living and competing as a woman, to not only compete but smash women’s swim records.
“I can’t do this, I can’t support this,” Millen wrote in her resignation letter to the officials in her sport. “I told my fellow officials that I can no longer participate in a sport which allows biological men to compete against women. Everything fair about swimming is being destroyed.”
She went on to say that if more officials stood up to the changing policies, they might be able to save the sport:
This is not right because by doing this, we’re supporting this. There are no swim meets if there are no officials.
Thomas has been blowing away record after record, jumping into the sport after competing extensively in the men’s category in previous seasons. According to a NY Times report Thomas spent the first three years of his college career on the university’s men’s team and is now looking to break NCAA records set by Olympians such as Missy Franklin and Katie Ledecky. According to Millen, if she were to officiate for one of Thomas’s meets, she would have to rule the University of Pennsylvania senior ineligible to compete against female swimmers.
“If Lia came on my deck as a referee, I would pull the coach aside and say, ‘Lia can swim, but Lia can swim exhibition or a time trial. Lia cannot compete against those women because that’s not fair,’” Millen told The Washington Times.
Millen called out the “adults” who are putting the burden on the athletes to make the change when it should be the officials who are standing up for them and the sport.
“People are saying, ‘Why don’t the swimmers just leave?’ Well, those are 19-, 20-year-old kids,” said Millen in her letter. “It’s up to us. We’re the ones who are supposed to be providing this fair competition. We should be the ones who should be saying, wait a minute.”
Millen’s resistance has not gone unnoticed by LGBTQ advocacy groups who are up-in-arms about the stance she is taking. Two such groups are Outsports and Athlete Ally, who blamed “anti-trans panic” for Millen’s stance:
“Trans athletes — Lia, in particular — deserve love, support, care, access to be able to swim. And Lia, like any other athlete, should be able to win and lose,” said Athlete Ally’s director of policy and programs Anne Lieberman in a statement.
However, during Millen’s appearance on Wednesday’s edition of Fox News’s “The Ingraham Angle,” her opinion is because “bodies compete against bodies. Gender identities don’t swim.”
“I don’t mean to be critical of Lia — whatever’s going on, Lia’s a child of God, a precious person — but bodies swim against bodies,” she said. “That’s a male body swimming against females. And that male body can never change. That male body will always be a male body.
“Yes, a Katie Ledecky can beat a lot of guys, but in the end, the [best] guys are going to beat Katie Ledecky. Absolutely. The differential is 8-12% faster. Equally trained, they will always win,” said Ms. Millen.
“Boys are built differently than girls. I mean, we know that: Boys have the T-shape, the broad shoulders, the narrow hips,” said Ms. Millen. “Girls have the hips, they’ve got more drag, they’ve got boobs, they’ve got body fat.”
According to The Washington Times, USA Swimming has yet to respond to Millen’s letter.
“I haven’t heard anything. I think they are so worried themselves,” said Millen. “They get a lot of sponsorship money from a lot of big companies, and I think they’re worried. They don’t want to appear that they’re not being inclusive, but this is not being inclusive. This is being deceitful.”