Paula Scanlan shares experiences swimming alongside trans athlete Lia Thomas in Iowa City visit

Editor's Note: There are several instances in the following story where Paula Scanlan refers to a transgender woman as a man.

A former University of Penn teammate of transgender swimmer Lia Thomas spoke at the Iowa Memorial Union on Monday, March 25, sharing her experience and incorrectly identifying the champion swimmer during a “Men Don’t Belong in Women’s Sports" lecture.

Scanlan was the latest guest of the University of Iowa chapter of Young Americans for Freedom. The group also has welcomed conservatives Matt Walsh, Chloe Cole and Vince Everett Ellison to campus.

Paula Scanlan shared some of the "negative experiences" she and her teammates had with a room of around 70 people in a lecture and question-and-answer session where she repeatedly emphasized that her stance is “pro-women.”

Small protest gathered despite rain

A small group of 15 to 20 people endured the evening rain to gather before, during, and after Scanlan’s lecture outside the Iowa Memorial Union, chanting, “Trans rights are human rights,” “Hey, hey, ho, ho, transphobia has got to go,” and using other pro-trans language.

They held signs, some dampened by around two hours of constant, if light, rain. Barricades were set up around the union's entrance, preventing protestors on the sidewalk from entering Madison Street.

Inside, one attendee who opposed Scanlan wore a phrase on their head like a hat that read, “Trans rights are human rights,” skirting rules about signage.

“It's great to be on campuses, even when there are some people who don't want me here,” Scanlan said near the beginning of the lecture in response to an outburst from the crowd. “That's okay. You don't have to like everyone that you see. You don't have to like everything that I say. But I do have a right to say it.”

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Scanlan details college athletic experience

Scanlan said one of her coaches first informed the Penn swim team in the fall of 2019 that Thomas would join the squad. She said there was “no discussion,” and despite her teammates' "objections," Thomas joined the team. Scanlan said Thomas changed in the same locker room as the other Penn teammates.

Scanlan said the experience made her and her teammates "uncomfortable," calling Thomas, who is a transgender woman, a "man" on several occasions.

“It's very uncomfortable for female athletes, especially swimmers to be changing in locker rooms with men,” Scanlan said. “If you guys don't know anything about swimming, racing suits in swimming take 20 to 30 minutes to get on. …And it is a very long, prolonged, vulnerable experience where you are completely naked and to introduce men into that situation is unacceptable.”

Scanlan said one of her teammates chose to change in a single-user restroom because Thomas was changing in the women’s locker room. At the NCAA championships, Scanlan said one of her friends chose to change in a janitor’s closet instead of near Thomas.

Thomas became the first transgender athlete to win a Division I championship in 2022 when she prevailed in the 500-yard freestyle.

Scanlan said that she and some of her teammates felt "completely silenced" during the season. She said her coaches addressed the concerns "less and less."

Scanlan claims she wrote an opinion piece for Penn's student newspaper in opposition of Thomas, which she said was retracted within a few hours of publication.

“At every single stage, somebody did something to make us quiet,” Scanlan said. “Whether it was sending in administrators, whether it was pulling my op-ed, it was clear that there was no room for discussion.”

Scanlan argued that the physical differences that set men and women apart — height differences, bone density disparities, lung size, hip-width — "don’t make men better people than women," but the physical differences "do make them physically different than women," emphasizing the title of her lecture − "Men Don’t Belong in Women’s Sports."

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Opposition peppered Scanlan with questions, accusations

Multiple crowd members pressed Scanlan Monday night on her views of trans people and wondered why she had "become such a proponent" of what they each called "anti-trans” legislation.

Scanlan repeatedly denied the claims, saying instead that she supported "separate spaces"—including bathrooms, locker rooms, and sports teams—for women and that her activism was staunchly “pro-women.”

A small group in the crowd also repeatedly shouted out to challenge Scanlan’s points, first correcting her when she referred to Thomas as “he” or “him” and on multiple occasions later in the Q&A when she discussed genetics and redirected a question on suicide rates in the trans community.

Ryan Hansen covers local government and crime for the Press-Citizen. He can be reached at rhansen@press-citizen.com or on X, formerly known as Twitter, @ryanhansen01.

This article originally appeared on Iowa City Press-Citizen: Paula Scanlan shares 'pro-women' activism in Iowa City visit