Paula Scanlan Has a New Take on the Old Song About ‘Boys and Girls Together’

WASHINGTON DC, July 28 — For the most part in the United States it is against the law for a man to expose himself in front of a woman. But what about male-at-birth transgender athletes who sign up to join the girls’ teams at their schools; are they allowed to go naked among their female teammates? Paula Scanlan made headlines when she told the Daily Mail that when she was on the University of Pennsylvania women’s track team, she and her teammates would hide in bathroom stalls to avoid changing in front of a six foot transgender swimmer who joined the team. His name was Will Thomas at birth but he changed it to Lia Thomas when “she” transitioned. Paula joined Association of Mature American Citizens CEO, Rebecca Weber, recently on AMAC’s Better For America podcast.

“It was a very challenging situation for everyone involved, and the university did not do a very good job of preempting the situation,” according to Paula. She pointed out that at first the women’s swim team was told that they might provide Lia with a separate locker room or that he/she might even continue to change in the men’s locker room. But in the end they allowed Lia to use the women’s locker room.

“They should have had the discretion to understand that it was going to be a controversial experience for everyone on the team. But it wasn’t until media stories started coming in that the athletic department came and spoke to us, and in those meetings they advised us not to talk to the press. They told us that Lia being on the team was non-negotiable and that they would provide counseling services for anyone that objected to Lia being on the team. So it was a very scary situation because they were telling us, essentially, that if we thought a man being on our team was wrong, we needed psychological help.”

Paula is a Taiwanese American and, as she noted, America “was built on the idea of free speech. My grandfather loved America and he saw that there were issues in Taiwan where there wasn’t freedom of the press, there wasn’t freedom of speech, and he wanted to mimic what we had in America. And if we are doing this here, we set the tone for every other country to also do the same. And it’s kind of an American centric view, but it really is true. So many countries in the world look to America for policy, for rules, for amendments in their constitutions as well. And so that’s why this is very important. If we don’t have free speech here in America, we can’t guarantee that other countries will have free speech.”

Paula concluded that it took her “a lot of time and reflection and prayer to get to the point where I was open to speaking out and understanding that this is what God wants me to do and where God wants me to be. Every single time I do an interview I remind myself of who this is for. It’s for the greater good. It’s for the young girls that don’t have voices. It’s for the women that we don’t know who are going to be affected by this yet. And it’s really staying grounded and that this is not one individual person being upset about losing out on opportunities or losing in a race or whatever it might be. This is a thing that we have to stand up for everyone. And it’s not about one individual person’s experience. It’s for the greater good of women in society.”

John Grimaldi served on the first non-partisan communications department in the New York State Assembly and is a founding member of the Board of Directors of Priva Technologies, Inc. He has served for more than thirty years as a Trustee of Daytop Village Foundation, which oversees a worldwide drug rehabilitation network.