MAUREEN CALLAHAN: How hateful, smug and sanctimonious! Trans swimmer Lia Thomas is now telling women what feminism is – and if we protest then we're bigots. But we will NOT be brainwashed

MAUREEN CALLAHAN: How hateful, smug and sanctimonious! Trans swimmer Lia Thomas is now telling women what feminism is – and if we protest then we’re bigots. But we will NOT be brainwashed

So now transgender women are telling biological women what feminism is.

How wrong-headed we are. How bigoted. How any of us who stand up for the rights of biological girls and women are actually transphobic — and what’s more, we may be too dumb to know it!

Guess who’s on the frontlines, spewing this hateful, divisive rhetoric?

None other than Lia Thomas, the smug, sanctimonious transgender swimmer who nonetheless reportedly had no problem swinging her male member around a collegiate women’s locker room. Thomas, who broke NCAA records swimming against biological female athletes but who couldn’t reach such heights swimming against biological males.

Who was the subject of a remarkably sympathetic New Yorker profile that dismissed the concerns raised by elite female athletes such as Martina Navratilova, Nancy Hogshead-Makar and Renée Richards, the first transgender tennis pro.

Yet here was Thomas earlier this week speaking to podcaster Schuyler Bailar, the first NCAA Division 1 trans swimmer, about all the failings and feints of modern feminists. You know, those of us who think it unfair that athletes who were born male should compete against those born female.

‘They’re like, ‘Oh, we respect Lia as a woman, as a trans woman, whatever, we respect her identity, we just don’t think it’s fair,’ Thomas said.

To which I and countless others would counter: Damn right it’s not fair.

Here was Navratilova in a 2019 op-ed for London’s Sunday Times: ‘I am happy to address a transgender woman in whatever form she prefers,’ the tennis great wrote, ‘but I would not be happy to compete against her. It would not be fair . . . it’s insane and it’s cheating.’

Guess who’s on the frontlines, spewing this hateful, divisive rhetoric? None other than Lia Thomas, the smug, sanctimonious transgender swimmer who nonetheless reportedly had no problem swinging her male member around a collegiate women’s locker room.

‘They’re like, ‘Oh, we respect Lia as a woman, as a trans woman, whatever, we respect her identity, we just don’t think it’s fair,’ Thomas said. To which I and countless others would counter: Damn right it’s not fair.

Navratilova would know a thing or two about elite athleticism, about discrimination based on s*xuality — she was a rarity, a pro at the height of her fame who dared to come out — and transgenderism, having been coached by none other than Renée Richards.

Yet the pitchforks went alight for Navratilova, who in years since has refused to back down.

Thomas has no use nor respect for the likes of Navratilova or we women who agree with her. Such as Riley Gaines, who tells DailyMail.com that Thomas easily beat her and every other female swimmer by sheer ‘body length.’

Thomas is 6’4′. As of 2016, the average height for female Olympic swimmers was 5’9′. Gaines is 5’6′.

Thomas and Bailar blithely dismiss such disparity. There’s diversity even within the genders, they argue, pointing to Olympic superstar Michael Phelps — also 6’4′ tall, who also enjoys physical advantages (namely, a huge wingspan and size 14 feet) over many of his competitors.

But that argument is thoroughly disingenuous.

Phelps beat his U.S. rival Ian Crocker in the 2004 Olympics by fractions of a second. But Gaines says that Thomas intentionally slowed down during collegiate competitions against biological women to make her domination less obvious.

Yet they have the nerve to accuse women of hypocrisy? Of using feminism as a fig leaf for bigotry?

‘They’re using the guise of feminism to sort of push transphobic beliefs,’ Thomas continued. ‘I think a lot of people in that camp’ — ‘that camp,’ how dismissive — ‘sort of carry an implicit bias against trans people, but don’t want to, I guess, fully manifest or speak that out. And so they try to play it off as this sort of half-support.’

This nonsense, and the sureness of its speaker, is the direct result of a culture that not only refuses to engage in adult discussions but continues to marginalize women. A culture whose self-identified progressive politicians refuse to stand up for us. Look at what happened in Congress this week: Presented with a bill that would ban transgender women and girls from competing with biological women and girls, not one Democrat voted for it.

Not one. Remember that when they tell you the right-wing is the enemy.

At a time when women are still fighting for pay equity and reproductive rights and our own spaces safe from biological males — prisons, shelters, and yes, locker rooms — we have the likes of Lia Thomas telling feminists how to be feminists and what we are and aren’t allowed to be upset by.

Why wouldn’t she feel so emboldened? Lia Thomas has been anointed as the greatest activist-slash-athlete since Muhammad Ali — and what an insult to Ali, a man who truly fought for civil rights and against the Vietnam War, all at great personal cost.

Our culture continues to embarrass itself.

By contrast, Lia Thomas, in her brief time on the national stage, has been named NCAA Woman of the Year by the University of Pennsylvania, honored by ESPN as part of Women’s History Month, and defended by the National Women’s Law Center, which claimed that any questions about Thomas competing against biological female athletes were down to ‘misogyny and transphobia’ — yet has the gall to gripe that she doesn’t get enough support!

Gaines tells the DailyMail.com that when she and other female athletes expressed extreme discomfort with having to share the same locker room, to endure Thomas allegedly watching them as they changed, they were all told, ‘Oh no. You have to be kind. You have to be inclusive. If you feel that way, it’s because you’re oppressive.’

This is the line we’re constantly fed, and it’s total bull.

To all the women who are as alarmed and outraged as I am: It’s past time to speak up. The call is coming from inside the house. Women ourselves are being brainwashed into thinking we should happily cede the ground for which we’ve fought so long and so hard. That it’s not a big deal, that womanhood is a big tent, merely personhood.

That we’re being that most s*xist of claims: Hysterical, Latin root meaning ‘of the womb.’

How ironic.

And that has led, of course, to an orthodoxy of thought regarding our most vulnerable, our children. We are told that to deny a child medication or surgery, to allow any youthful questioning of gender to play itself out rather than treat it as a fixed idea that must be addressed immediately and medically, is a form of abuse.

America, young country that we are, often looks to Europe as the wiser and saner older sibling. The one more comfortable with nuance. Would it surprise any of these orthodox activists to know that Europe is rethinking its treatment of gender-questioning children and teens?

To all the women who are as alarmed and outraged as I am: It’s past time to speak up. The call is coming from inside the house. Women ourselves are being brainwashed into thinking we should happily cede the ground for which we’ve fought so long and so hard. (Above center, Lia Thomas swims in the 100 freestyle)

England, Finland, Sweden and France have all recently pulled back on medical interventions for young people, recognizing that comorbidities often exist and that the irreversible risks, including everything from bone loss to the inability to ever experience orgasm, are simply too grave.

Why can’t we have this discussion in the US? Why can’t two cohorts that are historically vulnerable, women and children, raise some legitimate concerns without being dismissed as bigots?

Again, ask yourself: Have biological men been asked to make any similar concessions? Accept gender-erasing nomenclature? We don’t see female-to-male athletes en masse demanding to be pro quarterbacks or to get in the ring and box against biological males. We don’t see them pushing to be sent to male-only shelters or prisons.

Wonder why.

There is nothing remotely transphobic about stating the obvious: Biological females simply cannot compete against those born biologically male, especially at elite levels.

There’s absolutely a way to ensure they compete, but not at our expense. The same holds true for guarding the very things that are specific and necessary to women. No other historically marginalized group would ever be expected to stand aside and minimize their rights — it would be unthinkable.

Perhaps Lia Thomas can ruminate on that before subjecting we women to another lecture.