Penn finally accepts that Lia Thomas is a biological man

The University of Pennsylvania just reversed course on one of the most controversial sports decisions in recent memory. After a federal investigation, the university agreed to restore titles and records to biological female swimmers who were forced to compete against Lia Thomas – a transgender-identifying male athlete. In addition, Penn will send apology letters to the affected athletes and adopt sex-based definitions going forward, limiting women’s sports and facilities to biological females.

It’s being hailed in some circles as a win for common sense and women’s rights. And it is. But let’s be clear: this was not a moral epiphany. It was a forced retreat.

Penn, like many elite institutions, didn’t arrive at this outcome willingly. It had to be compelled – by a Title IX investigation, by public outrage, and by the undeniable weight of biological facts. Left to its own devices, the university chose politics over fairness, ideology over evidence and symbolism over the safety and dignity of its own female athletes.

That’s the real scandal here.

The problem was never Lia Thomas as a person. It was the institutions – universities, media outlets and athletic associations – that bent reality to accommodate a worldview where biological sex was considered an outdated concept. In that worldview, a male who identifies as a woman can enter female competitions, dominate the podium and share locker rooms with young women without question or consequence. Dissenters? Labeled bigots and told to shut up.

What Penn and others failed to understand – or refused to admit – is that even with hormone therapy, the biological advantages that male athletes develop through puberty don’t vanish. Taller stature, broader shoulders, larger hearts and lungs, faster-twitch muscle fibers – these aren’t erased by testosterone suppression. They matter in sports. They impact results. That’s why sex segregation in athletics exists in the first place.

And yet, for over a year, Penn actively celebrated Lia Thomas’s victories while its own female swimmers were silenced and sidelined. Some were pushed off the podium. Others were forced to share changing areas with a fully intact male-bodied athlete. Reports emerged of women feeling deeply uncomfortable – some even traumatized. But they were expected to sacrifice their comfort, their records and their privacy at the altar of progress.

This wasn’t inclusion. It was coercion.

Let’s dispense with the fantasy that biology is somehow an outdated or oppressive concept. Men and women are different. That’s not an attack on anyone’s identity. It’s a simple truth. And despite what your favorite activist-academic might claim, recognizing sex-based reality isn’t a regression into the dark ages. It’s the foundation for fairness. In sports. In medicine. In law.

What Penn did was try to erase that foundation. And in doing so, it betrayed the very women Title IX was designed to protect.

Now, after public pressure and a federal probe, the school has backtracked. But the damage has been done. The women who spoke up were smeared. The ones who stayed silent had to endure conditions they never agreed to. And all because the institution tasked with defending them was more concerned with appearing “inclusive” than actually being just.

This is a recurring theme across elite America. Colleges, corporations, and governing bodies are trying to rewrite the rules of sex-based protections without input from the very people those rules were made for – especially women. The assumption seems to be that if you say “inclusion” enough times, no one will notice the female athletes crying in the background.

But people are noticing. This issue is not just about fairness in swimming. It’s about whether truth still matters in a culture increasingly governed by feelings. It’s about whether self-expression trumps every other concern – including biology, safety and objective reality. And it’s about whether institutions still have the courage to say “no” to popular delusions when those delusions start hurting real people.

Most Americans don’t want to discriminate against transgender individuals. They also don’t want women losing out on championships – or being forced to undress next to someone with male anatomy – in the name of social justice. You can believe in basic human dignity for all while still maintaining that sports and sex-segregated spaces should reflect biological differences. That’s not hate. That’s common sense.

Penn’s reversal shows that common sense can still win – but only after it’s been dragged, kicking and screaming, through the mud of ideology. The real question now is whether other institutions will learn from this and stop sacrificing women on the altar of progressive purity.

Because if defending female athletes makes you a bigot, then maybe the problem isn’t with the defenders. It’s with the definition of “progress” itself.