Transgender swimmer Lia Thomas' teammates 'uncomfortable' sharing locker room with her: Report

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Transgender University of Pennsylvania swimmer Lia Thomas’ teammates reportedly are uncomfortable changing in the locker room with her.

“It’s definitely awkward because Lia still has male body parts and is still attracted to women,” a teammate, who spoke anonymously, told the Daily Mail.

The amount of nudity in the locker room has prompted her peers to voice their concerns to coaches, suggesting that she be moved to another change room, the teammate said.

“Multiple swimmers have raised it, multiple different times,” the swimmer said. “But we were basically told that we could not ostracize Lia by not having her in the locker room and that there’s nothing we can do about it, that we basically have to roll over and accept it, or we cannot use our own locker room.”

She added that neither Thomas nor the university seem to care about how the rest of the team feels about the change room situation.

“The school was so focused on making sure Lia was OK, and doing everything they possibly could do for her, that they didn’t even think about the rest of us,” the teammate told the Daily Mail.

“It just seems like the women who built this program and the people who were here before Lia don’t matter. And it’s frustrating because Lia doesn’t really seem to be bothered by all the attention, not at all,” she said. “Actually she seems like she enjoys it. It’s affected all of us way more than it’s affected her.”

The swimmer told the Daily Mail that out of the 35 teammates, only two or three are fine with their current situation.

“If this gets a little bit bigger, I might go on the record, but I’m definitely a little afraid,” she said. “What I’m afraid of is that potential employers will Google my name and see commentary about things I said and think, oh, this person’s transphobic.”

Teammates had thought about staging a protest at a swim meet, she said, but they decided against the idea as they didn’t want to stop competing.

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Thomas started making waves in competitive swimming after breaking national records this year.

The 22-year-old was a member of UPenn men’s swim team for three years before her transition.

Last week, the NCAA introduced new rules that would require transgender athletes to “document sport-specific testosterone levels beginning four weeks before their sport’s championship selections.”