Her only public comments this season have been on video with the swimming-news website SwimSwam and in extensive January sit-downs with Sports Illustrated. While she hopes her presence on the starting block helps other young trans athletes realize their possibilities, Thomas has walled herself off. This season left Thomas feeling both liberated and besieged. Even USA Swimming has fielded calls from parents of youth swimmers, worried the next Lia Thomas might take over their pool. The university’s social media handlers have turned off comments on some posts that mention their star. During a training trip early this year in Florida, the school’s swimmers were asked by coaches not to wear their school gear lest they make themselves targets. Mike Schnur, Penn’s men’s and women’s coach, has received a litany of hateful emails. The attention directed at Thomas has widened to the rest of her team, which has become bitterly divided. The New York Times, The Washington Post and The Wall Street Journal have also written about her.
Her moves have been minutely tracked by the U.K.’s Daily Mail, including once with cruel detail about her habits in the women’s locker room provided by an anonymous teammate.
Conservative opinion sites have called her a man and deadnamed her, purposely using the name she went by before transitioning. Thomas’s story has also become a right-wing obsession, a regular topic of discussion on Fox News. The editor of Swimming World likened Thomas to “the doping-fueled athletes of East Germany and China” from past Olympic Games. In January, Michael Phelps said there needs to be an “even playing field” within the sport. However, when I see a nice heartwarming ted video like this being chased out because the speaker is flamboyant is just sad.A vocal faction wonders, though, whether her participation in women’s swimming is fair. It's not constantly talking about gay rights. I enjoy this sub because I've found that it is less intense than r/ainbow, and more lifestyle orientated. We're already seeing a change with all the sportsmen coming out of the closet, and I highly doubt that those people could have done it without the work that the more flamboyant gay men hadn't done the groundwork for them.
If more "gaybros" became the face of gay rights movements, we wouldn't have this problem. The other majority of gay people who are less flamboyant float along unnoticed, and enjoy not getting bullied and targeted all the time. I want to say to those people if you think you're being so misrepresented, why don't you go step out and make yourself an example? These flamboyant people can't help but being noticed because they stick out. Lots of people argue that the flamboyant gays "misrepresent them", and make the world think that all gay people flip their hands, speak with lisps, and spend too much time caring about clothes/hair/whatever. I think that instead of spending our energy chasing away gems like this, we should be respectful for these more flamboyant gay men, because they appear to be the ones usually at the forefront of the fight for gay rights (e.g. However, I think everyone in this sub fem-hating or fem-whatevers agree upon having more gay rights. I have been following this sub for quite awhile, and I know it carries a lot of hate toward flamboyant, overtly feminine gay men.Įvery time someone from this sub makes a hateful comment against one of them, or "this post does not belong in gaybros", they make the excuse that this sub just "has different hobbies/interests", or just a short "check the sidebar". However I think his message, that people shouldn't waste so much energy hiding themselves and instead use it to do constructive things with their lives, is great. I must admit, I'm not a perfect human being myself and when I saw the rapidly moving hands, the twist in his walk, and of course his drag photos, I cringed.