Paula Scanlan joined the swim team at UPenn as a way of getting over a nightmare from her past. Instead, it brought it up all over again.
The 23-year-old Connecticut native began swimming at age 8, and she credits the sport for helping her recover after surviving a sexual assault in a bathroom at age 16.
“To be honest, swimming was the only thing that kept me going,” she told The Post.
But after earning her spot on the University of Pennsylvania’s swim team, Scanlan was troubled by the school’s decision to allow transgender athlete Lia Thomas to switch from the male to the female team — and from the male to female locker room.
Thomas, who had previously competed on the men’s swimming team, began swimming on the women’s team in the fall of 2021. She also began changing in the women’s locker room, which Scanlan said was traumatic for her as a sexual assault survivor.
“In general, bathrooms were a place I felt really uncomfortable,” she said. “I would just kind of relive the situation that I went through when I was 16.”
Scanlan described Thomas’s presence as “so incredibly uncomfortable” — and not just for her. Her fellow biologically female swimmers resorted to changing in bathroom stalls and family bathrooms for the sake of their privacy, she said.
“I would be at my locker and then all of a sudden hear a masculine voice, and I would just jump,” Scanlan recalled. “I was like, ‘Oh my gosh, somebody got in here.’”
“It’s incredibly vulnerable,” she added. “I had nightmares for weeks about men being there while we were dressing.”
Now Scanlan fears biological males in women’s leagues will deter the next generation of female athletes. On July 27, she testified before the House Judiciary Subcommittee on the Constitution and Limited Government in defense of women’s sports.
“If there had been a man on my team in high school, I would have quit, and I would literally have nothing,” she told The Post. “I would never have gotten into a good college. My entire life would have been derailed.
“If even one girl is discouraged from competing in sports over this, we’ve failed,” Scanlan added. “It’s so important to give girls these same opportunities.”
In retrospect, Scanlan said the decision to allow Thomas to change in the main locker room rather than an individual family bathroom was made without any meaningful solicitation of input from her teammates, most of whom she believes shared her reservations.
“If we had had more open conversations and more discussions, so much of this could have been avoided,” she said.
But, rather than engage in meaningful dialogue, those who disagree with her have pummeled her with insults and accusations of transphobia.
“Telling me I’m transphobic doesn’t change my beliefs. It doesn’t change how I felt. It doesn’t change the nightmares I was having,” she said. “It’s just an excuse.”
“Most people on the other side of this issue have never come up with a single constructive thing to say to me. They just name call.”
Since graduating last year, Scanlan, who majored in Computer Science and is pursuing a career in product management in New York City, has partnered with the Independent Women’s Forum to advocate for women’s sports.
She says her primary animating concern is the precedent that Thomas’s presence in her locker room set.
“We didn’t end up being in any real true danger in that locker room,” she said. “But what’s scarier for me is what we’re inviting as a society by allowing this. We’re inviting any man that might have bad intentions to come in.
“Just because Lia didn’t have bad intentions doesn’t mean that someone else doesn’t.”