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Sept. 20, 2022 - Epoch Times
16:44
Forced to Share Locker Room With Biological Male: Riley Gaines is Fighting Back
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Good evening, and boy, do we have a great episode for you today.
To start with, this right here is Ms.
Riley Gaines, a college student athlete who has been swimming competitively since the age of eight.
And her commitment to the sport is rather firm, evidenced by the fact that not only does she train somewhere between two to five hours every day, but that even during the COVID times, when the pools were closed, she would go down to her local lake in order to swim laps and improve her times.
However, earlier this year, Riley came across a fairly serious challenge that female swimmers in the past never had to deal with, which is that she was competing against Leah Thomas, a biological male who identifies as a female and therefore has been allowed to compete in women's swimming.
And throughout 2022, Leah Thomas has been dominating women's swimming, shattering many of the records, and even winning the Women's 500 Meter Freestyle NCAA National Championship.
But even with all the natural advantages that Leah Thomas possesses, Advantages that we're not allowed to discuss here on YouTube.
Regardless, earlier this year, Riley Gaines actually tied Leah Thomas in a swimming competition.
They finished the race at the exact same moment.
However, despite the tie, the NCAA officials decided to give the trophy to Leah Thomas.
And of course, this all comes at a time when the Biden administration is actively pushing to amend Title IX of the Civil Rights Act to ensure that transgender athletes can not only compete in women's sports, but also use the women's locker rooms as well.
And so, in order to figure out how this story really played out, while I was down in Texas, I took the opportunity to sit down and speak with Ms.
Riley Gaines.
And she explained to me the difficulties of competing against biological males, how it feels to share a locker room, as well as her journey of protecting the integrity of women's sports.
Take a listen.
I started swimming when I was about five years old.
I really started getting, you know, competitive and really embracing swimming when I was eight.
So that meant I was swimming about two hours every single day in second grade.
So this has been, you know, a lifelong commitment with tons of sacrifices.
In college, you swim five and a half hours every single day.
And two and a half of those hours are before 8 a.m.
So it's a lot that goes into it, a lot of sacrifices.
But up until, you know...
I would say 2021, completely normal.
I was, you know, developing as a swimmer, getting really competitive and really great at the national level and then COVID. So that took a full year.
We get back from COVID and then we're dealing with having males compete in our sport.
And so I really feel like the past two years we were, and when I say we, I mean female athletes, we were robbed of a lot of opportunities.
Maybe before the competing against males part, what was the COVID situation like with your sport?
It was terrible, especially in a sport like swimming where, you know, you get out of shape if you're not in the water every single day.
And I know a lot of sports, it's not necessarily that way, but all pools were closed.
So I actually was swimming in a lake in a wetsuit every day because that was my only option.
And so I really tried to use that time that we had off as, you know, to my advantage, where a lot of people were, you I really tried to stay on it and stay sharp, and I'm really thankful that I did because I was able to bounce back and accomplish some incredible things.
That just shows the dedication that you're going out to the lake.
I mean, even before COVID then, if you have to swim two hours before 8 a.m., before your 8 a.m.
classes, you're probably waking up, what, at like 4.35, right, getting to the pool?
Yeah.
No, you are.
You're waking up.
Around 4.45, you get to the pool, you're in the water by 5.30 and you swim until 8.
And then you're back again at 2 and you swim until 4.30.
So it's a time commitment.
So all that work, after COVID, kind of the lockdown pressures kind of lift a little bit.
How does it play out?
How does the first competition against biological males begin?
I didn't even really know who Leah Thomas was until November of 2022.
You know, this person, this senior, starts posting the fastest times in the nation.
And you look at this and you're like, wow, this is a person I've never heard of.
They're a senior, so they've been around.
And they're dominating.
But at the time, I had no inclination that Thomas was formerly Will Thomas, who swam three years on the men's side.
And like I said, this was November, which was the middle of our season.
And once I found out that Leah Thomas was formerly a male, I was kind of relieved because I thought, oh, it makes sense, you know?
It makes sense how these times that are so incredible are being swam.
And I thought, there's no way the NCAA will let this happen to where Females are competing against this person who's 6'4 and has male advantages, but I was clearly proven wrong.
About three weeks before our national championships, we were told that Thomas would compete with the females, and I was shocked.
I had no idea what to expect, what this would look like, and I think all of the girls were kind of in the same boat.
We just Really had no clue what this was going to be because it was something that happened so discreetly and so quick.
But then we get to the point where we're racing.
I saw Thomas win a national title that first day, which is just heartbreaking watching that happen.
The tears of the 9th and 17th place finishers who missed out on being named an All-American.
The extreme discomfort in the locker room.
There's just grumbles of anger and frustration.
But no one really...
We just weren't sure how to take action, and I feel like that's still something a lot of female athletes are facing.
I wanted to back up a little bit.
So when you started seeing those times and Leah at the top, what was the difference in times between number one, which is her, I guess, or him, and number two?
So in the 500-yard freestyle, Thomas posted a time of 4.34, which is 4 minutes and 34 seconds.
And I think the next person was about 4.37.
So that's 3 seconds.
And in swimming, 3 seconds is a lot.
At the Olympic level, people are separated by a hundredth of a second.
So to be sweeping the field by 2-3 seconds, that's a big amount.
We'll get to the locker room aspect of it in another moment, but when you went into that competition and you saw, how does it actually play out?
Do you see who you're racing against before the race, or did you just notice that Leah was right there?
Yeah, so you know who you're racing before.
It's called a heat sheet, and they post the prelim.
It's prelim final, so you have to qualify top 16 to make it back at night and swim again.
And so you have your heat sheet for the morning, you'll know who you're swimming against, and then top 16.
So once I realized Thomas and I both qualified for top 8 that night, which is your A final, that's your fastest final, I realized, you know, we would actually be racing.
Which, you just go into it with this defeated...
Feeling.
It feels like you're swimming with your hands behind your back because you know you're racing someone who has things that you will never have.
Even if, say, I wanted to start taking testosterone, there are certain factors that biological males have that I could never possess and female athletes in general could never possess.
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You actually tied that race, right?
Yes.
Can you sort of break down how that played out after the race?
So we tied, which in swimming is pretty rare.
They don't account for it in terms of trophies and places and things like that.
And so once we tied, we go behind the podium where they distribute the trophies.
And the NCAA official looked at me and said, Great swim.
We only have one trophy, so we're going to give it to Thomas.
Yours will come in the mail.
And so I'm understanding of the fact they only have one, but I asked him, I was like...
Okay, but can I ask you why you're adamant on giving that trophy to Thomas?
And he said, well, we're just doing it in chronological order.
And so I was like, it was at this point I realized that, you know, they're trying to save face here.
And so I asked him, you know, what are we being chronological about?
And he looked at me and said, for photo purposes, Thomas is going to hold the trophy.
Yours will come in the mail.
You can hold the sixth place trophy.
And so this is when I realized, you know, not only are we being forced to compete against men, females are being sidelined to men.
And I realized, you know, I kept waiting and waiting for someone to say something.
But once the circumstance happened, I realized, you know, like, it's got to be me.
Like, if no one's going to do it, I for sure am, because this is wrong.
When I was reading about that part of the story, I was thinking, even if you go alphabetically, Gaines should be before Thomas, right?
Yeah, clearly it was a situation they weren't prepared to handle, but when faced with it, they did an extremely poor job.
Before getting to your outspokenness, I wanted to circle back to the locker room.
How was that situation?
I can imagine that being really awkward.
Yeah, it's extremely uncomfortable.
As females, we should at least have a say in, you know, getting completely naked in front of a male and having to see male parts.
You know, those are things a couple years ago that would be sexual harassment.
And now it's, you know...
Happening where we weren't forewarned.
And how in the world have we gotten to a point where we're not even letting the females know there will be a naked male in the locker room.
A naked male who still has sexual attraction towards females.
It's incredibly uncomfortable.
It's disrespectful.
You know, there are certain girls I've talked with who have faced sexual trauma in the past.
And seeing this, it's triggered, you know...
A complete rehash of what they've had to go through.
Actual conversations I've had with people.
To be in that position, it's absolutely insane.
You would think that This is something that we wouldn't allow.
But now, rather than that being sexual harassment, this new Title IX, Biden administration's Title IX, it's sexual harassment to refer to a transgender as their wrong pronouns.
You're the sexual harasser right now.
Yeah, exactly.
And so we've gotten to the point where we're pushing that rather than protecting females.
From your discussions on the back end, you've been swimming since you were five, swimming more on the competitive track since you were eight, you said.
So I'm sure you know the community very well.
Very well.
What is the, not let's say consensus, but what's the general feeling here?
Yeah, it's how I'm speaking it.
I think a lot of people are threatened.
You know, they're told by their universities or their athletic department that they're not allowed to speak up or they'll lose their scholarship.
They'll never get a job if they speak up.
All these different things that are weighing on people and they're scared.
And I've been fortunate enough at the University of Kentucky that I've had tons of support.
Which I'm now realizing is a complete anomaly.
I think it speaks volumes on my school.
I think it speaks volumes on the Southeastern Conference, especially in comparison to the Ivy League, who actually has...
I have an email they sent that said, to their Ivy League swimmers, that said, if you feel uncomfortable seeing male genitalia in the locker room, they have counseling options you could seek.
And so...
You're making females feel crazy for not wanting to see male parts.
That's exactly what's happening, but majority of people feel exactly how I feel.
Obviously, I can't speak for absolutely everyone, but I can speak for 95% of us.
And you know, this is really, like you mentioned earlier, it's starting to expand to other sports, but also it's expanding just outside of the arena of sports.
There was a story that came out yesterday.
There was an 80-year-old woman at the YMCA in Washington State.
I saw this.
You saw this?
Yes.
And she was kicked out of the pool because she was complaining that there was a man in the locker room.
And there was also a few cases of prison inmates who decided to switch genders, and they went to the female prison, impregnated several inmates there.
Right.
And so there's clearly ulterior motives behind things like this.
I'm not saying people transition just to win sports or just to, you know, go into the prison and you're able to have interactions that you couldn't have in an all male prison.
But these are consequences of these things.
Let me ask, I don't know if you have a thought of this or have an opinion on this, but what do you think an actual solution would be?
Because you have the woman category, naturally, you have the male category, but there are certain students that transition, that become transgender, and they also might play sports.
So what do you think?
Should there be a third category, or would they just have to compete with whoever they were?
I think so.
I think an open category is a way to ensure fairness to everyone.
It's a way to provide athletic opportunity to everyone, which is something I think is so important.
I don't think anyone, regardless of who you are, should ever be denied of athletic opportunity because, you know, I've learned so much and developed so much because of my sport.
And so I think that's incredibly important, regardless of who you are.
And I feel like I should say that because a lot of times people think you're just saying transgender shouldn't compete.
It's not what I'm saying.
But I think an open category is a way to ensure athletic opportunity.
It's a way for everyone to have success in their sport.
And it's a way to have an even playing field across all three divisions.
People think of this as regressive, but...
What's happening now, having men in female sports, is regressive.
It's regressive towards Title IX. It's the 50th anniversary.
So it's taking us more than 50 years back.
This is progressive.
We're embracing transgenders.
We're doing this so that everyone can compete and everyone can be fair.
Let's say a young woman is watching this who might be in a similar spot to you, but she feels like, I kind of don't want to speak out.
Because you seem to embrace it.
You're out here really being vocal and being very forthright.
But let's say somebody is shy and they don't want to do that.
They don't want to have the spotlight shown on them and they feel like they will.
What would you tell them?
I will say that, you know, you're kind of thought to believe that you will be canceled.
We live in this cancel culture.
You'll be, you'll receive tons of backlash, death threats.
Since I have spoke out in March, I have received so, so much support.
I actually haven't hardly received any backlash.
And so I want to clarify that the fear of Receiving that negative input, it hypes up to be a lot, and it's really not, at least from my point of view.
And so that's number one.
But number two, this is a problem that has to be handled with volume.
The more voices, the more people will realize, you know, they're not alone in feeling like this.
And I think it's crucial for people to realize that regardless of if you're a female, if you're an athlete, whatever race you are, you know, it doesn't matter.
You could be a male non-athlete and speak out about this because it affects everyone.
And I think a lot of people also think you have to have this personal experience aspect to it.
But that's not the case.
Now, that was now the full interview.
If you'd like to watch that interview in its glorious entirety, including, unfortunately, parts that I think are important but that the YouTube algorithms just would not allow here on this platform, well, the entire link is down in the description box below because it's posted over on Epic TV, our awesome no-censorship video platform.
Again, that link is right there at the very top.
And besides the entirety of this interview, over on Epic TV, I published somewhere between two to three exclusive episodes of Facts Matter, which, again, due to the censorship regime here on YouTube, are just now welcome on this platform.
So if you want to check it out, the link to Epic TV will be right there at the very, very, very top of the description box.
I hope you check it out.
And until next time, I'm your host, Roman, from the Epic Times.
Stay informed.
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