Hartzler launches ‘transphobic’ ad targeting transgender college swimmer
Missouri Rep. Vicky Hartzler’s U.S. Senate campaign has launched an anti-transgender television ad targeting a swimmer on the University of Pennsylvania swim team.
In a 30-second ad, Hartzler implies that the swimmer, Lia Thomas, who is transgender, changed her gender in order to get an competitive edge.
“Some people are afraid to talk about it — not me,” Hartzler says in the ad, which is running statewide in Missouri. “I ran and coached girl’s track, and I won’t look away while woke liberals destroy women’s sports. Women’s sports are for women, not men pretending to be women.”
Cathy Renna, the communications director for the National LGBTQ Task Force, called the ad a “cheap shot.”
She said the ad does a number of things that hurt transgender people, including using the name she used before transitioning and a photograph of her before transitioning.
“This ad is about as transphobic as you could possibly get,” Renna said. “This is this is right out of the playbook for folks who are trying to use this as a wedge issue. And it’s really unfortunate, because the reality is that real people’s lives are impacted by this.”
Thomas, a senior, attracted the attention of anti-transgender activists with her winning times at a swim meet in Ohio. This is her first season competing for the University of Pennsylvania’s women’s team after previously competing for the men’s team.
Thomas began medically transitioning in 2019, taking testosterone suppressants and estrogen supplements, according to the Philadelphia Inquirer. She has been on hormone therapy for 33 months and was approved by the NCAA to compete on the women’s team in 2020, but the season was canceled because of COVID-19.
While Thomas is competing at the Ivy League championship this week, 16 members of her swim team signed a letter saying she has an unfair advantage and USA Swimming unveiled a new policy that could prevent her from competing in the national championship if it is approved.
“This is an incredibly insulting, hurtful, public rebuke of someone who is a premiere athlete, and a good person and a good student,” Renna said. “I would compare it to a hate crime, frankly. Like any hate crime, it’s targeted at a whole community of people.”
While it would not apply to Thomas, who competes at the NCAA level, there has been a push in state legislatures across the country have moved to bar transgender athletes from participating in sports that match their gender identity at public K-12 schools. The bills are part of a larger movement targeting transgender people, including measures limiting which bathrooms they are allowed to use and medical procedures that could help them transition.
More than half of transgender and gender non-binary youth have seriously considered attempting suicide, according to the Trevor Project’s 2021 survey on LGBTQ youth mental health.
Shira Berkowitz, the senior policy director for PROMO Missouri, an LGBTQ advocacy group, said the Women’s Sports Foundation listed four major categories to address disparities in women’s sports: cost, gender stereotypes, limited exposure to female role models like coaches and parents not seeing sports as helpful to academics.
“Transgender athletes were not once mentioned as a barrier to sports participation,” Berkowitz said. “If Vicky Hartzler is serious about protecting women’s sports and college athletics, she can focus on the real issues.”
Hartzler has consistently campaigned and legislated as a conservative Christian. In 2017, she proposed an amendment to the National Defense Authorization Act that would have reinstated the ban on transgender people serving in the U.S. Military. In 2004 she led the push to ban same-sex marriage in Missouri.
She was endorsed by Missouri Sen. Josh Hawley at the state GOP’s Lincoln Days gathering this weekend, providing a potential boost to her campaign in the Republican primary for U.S. Senate, where she’s competing with former Gov. Eric Greitens, Attorney General Eric Schmitt, Rep. Billy Long, Missouri Senate President Dave Schatz and attorney Mark McCloskey.
This story was originally published February 14, 2022 at 3:27 PM with the headline "Hartzler launches ‘transphobic’ ad targeting transgender college swimmer."