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Monika Burzynska knew Will Thomas. He was a member of the men’s swimming team at the University of Pennsylvania, although she found that “he wasn’t very social.” Nonetheless, as he was a member of the men’s swimming team, she had every reason to believe that he was a male. Her certainties, however, would soon face a strong challenge from university officials, and, indeed, from the entire leftist political and cultural establishment.

Imagine Burzynska’s surprise the following year, when she was a member of the UPenn women’s swim team and discovered the identity of her teammate who had been given the locker next to hers: it was none other than “Lia” Thomas, that is, Will Thomas pretending to be a woman. And he had the full weight of UPenn authorities backing him up every inch of the way.

Fox News reported Sunday that Burzynska “thought Thomas had already graduated when her team was dealt the news that the athlete would be transitioning to join the women’s team starting in the 2021-22 season.” This was a “transition” that UPenn officials clearly wanted, for the immediately inflicted Thomas upon the unwilling female swimmers, forcing them to share their locker room with an individual who, despite his claims to the contrary, was quite clearly and unmistakably a male.

Once Thomas “became a fixture in the women’s locker room,” a deeply uncomfortable Burzynska “often retreated to the corner of the room to change. Other times, Burzynska timed exactly when she changed to coincide with when Thomas showered. Eventually, Burzynska opted to only change in the stalls or in the family locker across the hall.” Comments Burzynska: “Around Lia, I wasn’t going to risk anything.”

It’s easy to see why. Riley Gaines, who, like Monika Burzynska, is an actual woman and became an activist for women’s sports, explained that “a 6-foot-4 man was allowed in to undress, fully expose himself. He was full naked and, of course, full intact inches away from where we, 18-, 19-, 20-year-old girls, were fully undressed.”

And so now that UPenn has reversed course and dropped its insane push to force its real female athletes — and the world — to accept men pretending to be women as actual female athletes, Burzynska is relieved. She says that UPenn’s announcement that it was no longer going to boost the likes of Lia Thomas gave her “a deep sense of peace and validation. Not only for me, but for all the girls on the team, for all the girls in the swim world and in the sport world. And I think this decision, it brought back – at least for me – a sense of fairness that had been lost. Women’s records belong to women and that protecting the integrity of women’s sports still matters.” Yes.

If leftists paid attention to this sort of thing, they would see Monika Burzynska’s experience as an object lesson in the dangers of overreach. She was initially on their side, saying: “I thought it must be terrible to feel like you’re trapped in the wrong body. Just be so out of touch with who you really are.”

Then, however, she had to share a locker room with Lia Thomas, and says: “You have these issues that are from afar and you never really quite think they’re going to touch you personally until you’re on a team with Lia Thomas and your locker is directly next to this biological male. And you would have never believed that you’d be facing this issue directly. And then when that happens, your views change where you still feel sorry for this person because they’re clearly so deeply lost. But then it turns into more, ‘OK, this is not fair.’”

Indeed it isn’t. It is one of the foremost manifestations of the insanity of our age, as well as being toweringly unfair, that men are not only competing in women’s sports, but also receiving the full and self-righteous backing of the left. For years now, leftists have insisted, in the fullest Orwellian 2+2=5 fashion, that we all must pretend that these stubble-faced, musclebound poseurs are women, and shout “You go, girl!” as they collect their gold medals. Yet the tide of this craziness appears to be receding. We can all hope that it doesn’t come in again.