The claim: Lia Thomas banned from participating in women’s sports
A Sept. 10 Facebook post (direct link, archive link) features two photos of transgender swimmer Lia Thomas.
“Breaking: Lia Thomas Banned from Participating In Woman (sic) Sports,” the post reads. “CHECK FIRST COMMENT!!”
The first comment links to a blog post about the purported banning of Thomas.
The Facebook post was shared more than 3,000 times in three days.
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Our rating: False
The claim comes from a website that publishes satire, and the organization it references as banning Thomas hasn’t existed since 1934.
Federation alleged to have banned Thomas hasn’t existed since the 1930s
There are no credible news reports about Thomas being banned from women’s sports.
The Aug. 23 blog post comes from a website called USA Community, which identifies some of its stories as satire – although the one about Thomas is not labeled as such. It claims that a group called the International Women’s Sports Federation announced a ban against Thomas.
However, that federation couldn’t have done so – because it hasn’t operated in roughly a century.
In 1921, French athlete Alice Milliat founded the Fédération Sportive Féminine Internationale (or the IWSF in English) in response to women being barred from competing in the Olympics in sports like track and field. The federation put on the Women’s World Games every four years…
