Blaire White, Lia Thomas

Here we go again...

Once again, Blaire White has decided to make transgender people competing in sports a topic of her most recent video. Rather, I should say trans women as Blaire does not once mention trans men, who I will add, are also being targeted by anti-trans legislation across the country. Just take a look at the infamous Iowa bill, which adds that if there is any dispute between the sex of an athlete, they would be required to provide proof with either their birth certificate or genetic makeup screening.

“If the biological sex of a student is disputed, the student may establish the student’s sex by presenting a signed statement by licensed physician that indicates the student’s sex based solely upon all of the following factors:

1. The student’s internal and external reproductive anatomy

2. The student’s normal, endogenously produced levels of testosterone.

3. An analysis of the student’s genetic makeup.”

If you cannot understand how intrusive this is, that is a problem. Anyway, getting back to the video. I will be discussing points made by Blaire throughout the video and fact checking them, and presenting why the information she is giving out and the way she presents it is factually incorrect. You would think Blaire would have learned by now not to discuss trans sports without doing her research but I suppose that is asking too much. I will also share some of my own feelings about why this type of misinformation is harmful to the community.

Comment 1:

Lia ranks #462 in a male competition and #1 in the female. It’s just comical, it’s a mess

So, if you haven’t seen this image yet, though I am sure you have, it has been floating around quite a bit and being used primarily by right-leaning people to make this sound worse than it actually is. What Blaire says here is without any context whatsoever. She says Lia is ranked the #1 female, but doesn’t specify whether that is worldwide, nationally, or locally. Blaire doesn’t mention any of this, because if she did she would have to actually say that Lia came in first place for one event, just one. That event being the 500-yard freestyle event. If you want to talk specifics, her time for the event was 4:33.24, which was actually worse than a cisgender swimmer named Katie Ledecky who’s best time was 4:24.06 in the same event. Though Katie Ledecky was not involved with this competition, this already shows that Lia is not the fastest in that event overall, nor is she the fastest in the other events. Let’s take a look at those next.

“In the preliminaries for the 200 freestyle, Thomas finished second. In the final for the 200 freestyle, Thomas placed fifth with a time of 1:43.50. In the preliminaries for the 100 freestyle, Thomas finished tenth. In the finals for the 100 freestyle, Thomas placed eighth out of eight competitors in 48.18 seconds, finishing last.”

If we also take a look at national and college numbers, Lia Thomas ranks 46th nationally and 36th in college swimming. Now, I am not saying Lia Thomas has not done well, as her rankings leading up to the NCAA Championship where she competed against other women from November 2021-2022, were pretty good, but they were in no way “breaking records” as Blaire and other conservative commentators like to say. Let’s look at the overall times and how Thomas compares to other women in different events.

Top Times, Women, College Swimming 2021-2022:

100 Y Free

1st: Gretchen Walsh-46.05

13th: Lia Thomas-47.37

200 Y Free

1st: Taylor Ruck-1:41.12

3rd: Lia Thomas-1:41.93

1000 Y Free

1st: Paige McKenna-9:25.61

10th: Lia Thomas-9:35.96

Now, let’s compare Lia Thomas’s 500 event time of 4:33.24 and compare it to previous years. During the 2020-2021 academic year, Paige Madden had a time of 4:33.09. In 2018-2019, Brooke Forde had a time of 4:31.34. Before them was Katie Ledecky from 2016-2018 having two times of 4:24.06 and 4:26.09. I don’t think I need to go further back than this to show that Lia Thomas is not breaking records in any of these categories. This narrative of Lia breaking records is just incorrect, and this lie about her numbers compared to other women is harmful, because it is only fueling the trans and cisgender community to butt heads and ultimately is causing the rights of trans people to be targeted.

Comment 2:

The thing that really set Twitter off were the pictures of the finalists which, a picture speaks a thousand words

In this comment, Blaire is referencing this photo. Now, if you would look closely at the photo, you can clearly see that Thomas is standing on a higher podium than the other girls, however Blaire does not show the podiums in her photo, artificially inflating Thomas’s height. The other disingenuous characterization of the award ceremony is when Blaire insinuates that the other finalists are excluding Thomas when celebrating amongst themselves.

One of the finalists featured in this photo took to Instagram to write their own account of the events.

“Well… first NCAAs is over and boy was it interesting. Being subjected to false claims on Right Wing media due to this photo with my close Tokyo homies isn’t something that happens every day.”

It would seem that Blaire is either unaware that this photo was not meant as a means to show “trans vs. cis”, or she is just using said photo like every other right-wing media outlet in trying to portray that the swimmers were in some way “protesting” Lia’s win. Blaire… it was just a photo of three friends who had raced together in Tokyo.

Comment 3:

The gag of it all is that Lia was only on hormones despite going through the entirety of male puberty, and then transitioning in her 20’s, only on testosterone blockers for one year

Blaire then goes to show a video of Lia during her interview with Sports Illustrated, where Lia says that after she completed one year of testosterone suppression, she was clear to compete on the women’s team. What Blaire gets wrong is that Lia began HRT in May of 2019, per that interview, but did not compete in 2020 due to Covid-19. She did not actually compete against other women until November of 2021, meaning that Lia would have actually been on HRT for roughly two and a half years prior to competing against other women.

Comment 4:

I can tell you the first year, about all they do is make you cry a lot. They don’t really do jack shit. Anyone who thinks one year on hormones, and you start in your 20’s, after developing as a male for your entire life, up until that point. If you think it’s doing anything to your body in that short amount of time, then I’m sorry but you’re just mistaken.

In this comment Blaire is referring back to Lia being on HRT for only a year, but as we just covered she was actually on HRT for more than twice as long, so it’s reasonable to assume that her body had changed quite drastically.

As far as her point that HRT does nothing but “make you cry a lot.” Here are some other articles regarding changes in the body within one year.

https://www.gendergp.com/hrt-timelines-hormones-effects/

https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/33648944/

Everyone’s body is different; meaning everyone’s reaction to a certain medication is going to be different. Maybe Blaire didn’t notice many changes in her first year, but to use that as a guideline for everyone, and to claim the medical community is mistaken with their guidelines regarding transgender health, is absurd.

Comment 5:

I think Lia is a bad person. I think there is something to be said about honor, sportsmanship, integrity, and wanting to represent your community in a positive way

When I watched this video for the first time, this was my final straw before I decided to write this piece. For Blaire White to call Lia Thomas a bad person is laughable to me considering the blatant lies that Blaire tells her audience, all in order to gain a following with conservatives who for the most part want to remove hers and all trans peoples rights. Blaire has purposefully lied about other trans women in sports, i.e. misleading accusations which resulted in Janae Kroc receiving online harassment. This person has done nothing to Blaire, yet she has the audacity to say that she is a bad person for competing in a sport that she loves.

My biggest issue with this comment is that it is based on lies. Throughout this entire article I have shared inaccuracy after inaccuracy that Blaire and conservatives use to portray trans people as a dire problem for our society. Blaire and those like her regurgitate headlines they have heard and think that somehow proves them to be correct, without doing their due diligence of research or fact checking. Joe Rogan is another prime example of how someone is using this narrative to condemn trans athletes. Blaire then goes on to use the same argument regarding sportsmanship that she did in her video regarding Alana Mclaughlin, where Blaire cries poor sportsmanship despite Alana’s opponent agreeing to fight her. Lia Thomas is openly doing what she loves and not allowing these preposterous criticisms to interfere with her athletic career and her sense of self. How is this not a positive inspiration for young girls, transgender or not.

Comment 6:

I can’t think of anything than going into a space, being so selfish and narcissistic, that you completely throw out the concept of making other people feel uncomfortable, in that way specifically, and just do it. That would make me a shit person

Prior to this comment she says that despite her gym not having a rule against pre-op transwomen using the women’s locker rooms, she wouldn’t do it because it would make her a “shit person” to make anyone else uncomfortable. This comment really makes me think Blaire has a lot of internalized transphobia and self-esteem issues. In this case would Blaire rather use the men’s locker room or would she rather be ostracized altogether from using either because others might be uncomfortable? Why does she not have this same opinion on restrooms? How are the gaps in a bathroom stall any different from the shower curtains in a locker room? It is still a space where you, in some way, are exposed to other women. If she feels her body is that offensive why couldn’t she simply cover herself to the best of her abilities? It just seems like Blaire would rather sacrifice everything she has gone through to make complete strangers comfortable, when it’s very possible they have an issue with her existence entirely. Honestly, it’s very sad.

Comment 7:

Lia Thomas apparently doesn’t care. It has been alleged that Lia goes fully exposed in the locker rooms, at her university, without a care in the world. Apparently there have been complaints about it, and these complaints have been completely ignored

This is another claim that, as of now, is completely unfounded. Out of all of the articles referencing any sight of indecent exposure, none of them name the swimmers nor do any of them go into specifics of what kind of indecent exposure Lia is committing. Is she flashing herself in front of them as a means to intimidate or harass them? Is she being fully naked and close to the other girls when she has been asked not to? There are more questions than answers with this, and even with this letter from Women’s Declaration International, there are not any actual quotes from anyone specific, or even quotes at all. It only mentions a swimmer having a “glimpse” of Lia’s body, oh the horror!

To put it a little more succinctly; just because she continues to use the space does not mean that she doesn’t care about anyone else’s feelings, so what would you have her do? Ostracize herself like you do Blaire? Have feelings of shame about her body and resentment like you so clearly do Blaire? Since the NCAA Championships nothing has come out about this supposed indecent exposure, which makes me think these claims were fabricated. Fabrication being something Blaire White is not entirely unfamiliar with.

I hope this gives some insight into why this oft repeated narrative is incorrect, and why people like Blaire can easily sway information to portray something happening when it isn’t. Just like this video; the majority of Blaire White’s videos are harmful to the trans community because of this inaccuracy and lack of research. Blaire commonly says that people do not have common sense when it comes to transgender issues, but common sense would be knowing that it isn’t right to segregate people or to ostracize them. The evidence I have provided proves that Lia Thomas is in no way “breaking records”, but is simply trying her best like we all are.