‘Don’t Speak Out, You’ll Regret It’: UPenn Swimmer Breaks Silence 

Earlier this week, Paula Scanlan, a former University of Pennsylvania swimmer and teammate of transgender swimmer Will “Lia” Thomas, shared her story for the first time. Scanlan had previously participated in the Daily Wire’s What is a Woman documentary, appearing in shadows with a computer-edited voice for anonymity.

“There were a lot of things we couldn’t talk about that were very concerning, like our locker room situation. If you even brought up concerns about it, you were transphobic,” she said. Concerned about the almost-inevitable backlash, she asked to remain anonymous. “[Penn] made it pretty clear that if you speak up about it and you say anything negative that your life will be over,” she said in the documentary.

But since last year, Scanlan has changed her tune, and she’s set to make a splash by setting the record straight: UPenn manipulated female swimmers, and Scanlan won’t stand for it. 

Thomas Joins the Team

It all started in the fall of 2019, at the beginning of Scanlan’s sophomore year. She and her fellow teammates were called into a special meeting and were informed that Will Thomas, who had previously swum on the men’s team, would be transitioning to the women’s team the following season. The meeting was led by none other than Thomas himself. 

It was a brief announcement, Scanlan said, and there was no opportunity for discussion, with or without Thomas present. 

A teammate of Lia Thomas appeared in What Is A Woman anonymously. A few days ago she came to us and said she is ready to come out publicly and tell her story. I had a longer conversation with Paula where she revealed a number of details that weren’t covered in the film. Watch: pic.twitter.com/wlknGmslJC

— Matt Walsh (@MattWalshBlog) June 5, 2023

No clear arrangements were made for the locker-room situation during the runup to Thomas’ transition. Scanlan said that there had been some discussion of Thomas changing in a separate locker room or remaining in the men’s room. Then, without warning or explanation, Thomas was given a locker in the women’s room. 

Girls began changing in the bathroom stalls for practice, which had never happened before, Scanlan said. “When you’re changing and you hear all these women’s voices in the background, and then all of a sudden you hear a man’s voice, I’d always kind of jump a little bit,” she told Walsh. 

UPenn Gaslights the Women’s Team

Scanlan didn’t swim in the same events as Thomas, so she never directly competed against him, but she saw her friends lose out to him on opportunities. Since swimming is a sport with a limited roster, swimmers compete with each other to represent the team at meets. 

“There were girls who were left off the bus who would have been there if Lia hadn’t been on the team,” she said. 

Scanlan said that one teammate who found herself in that situation set up a meeting with the athletic department to express her frustration. 

“I don’t know what they said to her, but [after that conversation] she thought Lia swimming was this magical, beautiful thing,” Scanlan said. “There was something going on in that athletic department that wanted to keep us quiet.” 

Two days later, the athletic department scheduled a meeting with the women’s team — this time without Thomas. “Don’t talk to the media,” the team was told. “You will regret it.”

The athletic department told the female swimmers that “Lia swimming is a non-negotiable” and provided LGBTQ advocates and counselors to help swimmers accept his presence on the team. 

Prior to that meeting, Scanlan said that she had spoken to most of her fellow swimmers. Like her, most swimmers also felt uncomfortable about the situation. But the university quashed any dissent. 

“They really scared us,” Scanlan said. “The university wanted us to be quiet, and they did it in a very effective way. They continued to just tell us that our opinions were wrong, and if we had an issue with it, we were the problem…. They effectively silenced us, even in talking to each other.”

Scanlan Speaks Out for Women’s Sports

Scanlan, who is Catholic, said that she struggled to understand how she should respond to the situation that Thomas had put her in. She said that she recognized that he must be in pain and that she wanted to have empathy, but she couldn’t accept the injustice of the situation. 

She turned to faith leaders in her community, but “even the Catholic leaders weren’t really equipped to entertain these conversations because they had never seen anything like it either,” she said. Her Catholic mentors encouraged her to continue to pray. As the controversy unfolded, Scanlan said that the Catholic community on campus became more outspoken about the injustice of the situation.

At every step, Scanlan said that she kept hoping that someone would step in and restore normalcy. But the university, the NCAA, and the media took Thomas’ side. 

Scanlan argued that the NCAA’s policy on transgender athletes is deeply flawed and lacks many of the elements necessary to grant it scientific credibility. The policy only mentions one hormone: testosterone. Scanlan took issue with this singular focus, which doesn’t take into account the various other hormones at play in the human body. 

“These institutions failed us, and I think somebody needs to do something about it,” she said. “It’s unfair for men to compete as women, but it’s also even scarier that we can’t even have a discussion about it.” 

Thank you Matt for letting me tell my story. https://t.co/uj6A3zlSMn

— Paula Scanlan (@PaulaYScanlan) June 5, 2023

Now, Scanlan is joining the fight that Riley Gaines has been waging for months. She is particularly concerned about fighting for younger female athletes who don’t have a voice but who are facing — or will soon face — the same insanity: “It’s our space, it’s our sport.” 

Scanlan shared her story in a 30-minute interview with the Daily Wire’s Matt Walsh, who she had spoken to the year prior for the documentary. Released on the evening of June 5, the video had 10 million views on Twitter by the end of the week.

Mary Frances Myler is a postgraduate fellow with the Center for Citizenship and Constitutional Government. 

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