Riley Gaines recounts her 2019 NCAA gold medal loss to a male athlete, accusing officials of prioritizing optics over Title IX protections. She critiques Billie Jean King and Megan Rapinoe for allegedly undermining sex-based categories without daughters to protect, while detailing hostile reactions from the National Organization of Women labeling her a "white supremacist." Gaines argues that conflating gender with biological sex endangers women's sports and prison safety, citing California's trans male inmate transfers. Ultimately, she asserts that maintaining separate biological categories is essential for fairness, framing the debate as a critical culture war issue. [Automatically generated summary]
Just this past, I mean, a week, two weeks ago, the National Organization of Women, right now, the leading feminist organization for the past, I mean, 60, actually probably longer than that, yeah, 60, 70 years, I mean, they were the ones who fought for Title IX.
You think of sexual liberation and reproductive rights and the pink hats.
Okay, that's this group.
They released an article that called me a white supremacist patriarchist.
I don't even know what that means.
I don't even know where the patriarch is from when here I am.
Fighting for the rights of women.
It's so silly, but that's the response I've been met with by most feminist groups.
That's not to say there aren't some who have been steadfast in their original, I guess, movement, their original mission of fighting for sex-based protections.
There are some, but it's very few and far between.
It's the feminists who are leading the charge In dismantling our sex-based rights.
You think of someone like Billie Jean King.
I mean, this is who we have to accredit Title IX to.
She played in the Battle of the Sexes and she won, and it was this huge feat that propagated women forward, not just in sports, but really as a whole, in the workplace, in our personal relationships.
We have her to thank for that.
She's now actively campaigning and fighting for men to infiltrate into women's sports and women's spaces.
We're doing this a little bit backwards because I had you on a couple of weeks ago with Sage Steel doing a panel show, and now you're getting the proper interview after you've done the panel show.
If you don't mind, I am going to ask you to do the thing that you've done a million times before, and you kind of did with us a couple of weeks ago for those who didn't see the show.
But if you could just give us the kind of brief bio that made you a public person so that when I read your intro there, it has like 87,000 things for me to say.
Yeah, what a whirlwind it has been these past two years or so.
I was an athlete.
I grew up an athlete.
Started competing, practicing when I was four years old.
Graduated when I was 22, so I mean, dedicated really 18 years of my life to my sport.
You know, the time, the hours, the dedication, the sacrifices that you have to make to compete at and ultimately be successful at the highest level.
I was no different.
I ended up going to the University of Kentucky, which I'm biased.
The SEC is, in fact, the best conference.
It was never a question for me to go anywhere outside of the SEC.
I actually thought I was going to be a Florida Gator, though, for the longest time.
I took my trip there, my official visit, didn't feel like home, kept going on my trips.
Never even crossed my mind that I would go to Kentucky because I thought the only things that came from Kentucky were like meth and Mountain Dew, which neither of which I was interested in.
The resources that they poured into us, outside of even just athletics, our academics, and our service, all things that really matter to me.
And so, on a whim, committed there, very proudly finished my career at Kentucky as a 12-time NCAA All-American, a five-time SEC champion, actually the SEC record holder in the 200 butterfly, making me one of the fastest Americans of all time, SEC Scholar Athlete of the Year, SEC Community Service Leader of the Year, two-time Olympic trial qualifier, But again, just to reiterate, lifelong journey to get to that point.
Despite what that senile old man Keith Olbermann says.
This is a public call, Keith Olbermann.
I will race you.
Except I don't think anyone wants to see you in a Speedo.
But anyways, flash forward here to my senior year.
My junior year, I actually ended up placing seventh in the country.
I wanted to win a national title, so I set that goal for my senior year.
That did not happen, because the NCAA, I mean, they failed at their most basic duties of ensuring equal opportunity and privacy and safety by allowing a man to compete with the women.
This is a very mediocre man.
Actually, that's generous.
This is a less-than-average man who Sucked, quite frankly.
Competing against the men.
Decided he would switch to the women's category.
Became a record smasher.
It's virtually the same story every time as we continue to see these occurrences happen across the country.
He was 504th in the nation in the event we competed against each other in the year prior, when competing against the men.
To the next year, 12, not even a full 12 months, dominating the entire country.
I mean, every single girl or woman in the entire nation.
And not just number one, I mean, utter domination.
And multiple events.
I saw this as wrong.
My teammates saw this as wrong.
My coaches, my family, anyone with any amount of brain activity saw this as wrong.
But Dean Sibley did not.
And so I got to watch as Thomas swam to a national title in the 500 freestyle.
I mean, again, beating Olympians, beating American record holders.
These aren't scrubs.
They're the most impressive and accomplished female swimmers this world has ever seen.
But he and I raced in the 200 free the next day, which ultimately resulted in a tie,
meaning we went the exact same time, down to the hundredth of a second.
But despite tying, we get out of the water, go behind the awards podium.
NCAA official looks at both Thomas and myself.
Thomas towering over me at six foot four.
And the official says, great job.
Uh, but you tied.
We only have one trophy.
We're going to give this trophy to Leah.
Riley, you don't get one.
You have to go home empty handed.
And when I asked the dreaded question.
That no one dared ask all season of why, you know, why are you adamant on giving this trophy to the man in the women's 200 free?
I actually appreciate his honesty.
And he looked at me and he said, Riley, I'm so sorry, but we have been advised as an organization that when photos are being taken, it's crucial that the trophies in Leah's hands.
That was it for me.
I mean, really, I felt guilty is how I felt.
I felt like I had just participated in the farce.
I felt like I was just as bad as the people who created and implemented these policies by going even along with this.
Again, I knew it was wrong.
We all did.
But for even participating, I felt responsible.
And that's when I decided that I could no longer stay quiet.
I could no longer lie to myself and to everyone else around me.
I guess that was a condensed version of how I became a public person, in your words.
So it was really sort of doubly crazy because not only in essence did you actually win, by tying him you won in reality, but then being told you didn't win.
So it's like they're hitting you twice there, which is sort of amazing.
You did the thing you didn't even think you could do and then you're being punished for it, which is rather extraordinary.
Had you ever come across a trans swimmer before that?
Or was this sort of the first instance of all of that?
So this was the first time for me seeing it happen in this way, where a male was allowed
to compete with the women.
But a few years prior, a swimmer at Harvard, a female, she was able to compete with the
men.
I knew this was wrong, I saw this was wrong, but I didn't really see the harm in it because
again she was jumping down in the rankings majorly.
And so I thought to myself, I mean, it actually never occurred to me it could happen the other way.
I thought there were policies and provisions in place that would prevent that from happening again.
Not what happened.
Um, and now we've seen this, this social contagion take over every state, every level, every division, every sport, this is happening.
Um, but I hadn't seen it happen the other way.
And I'll say one other thing at this meet, which was unique, which naturally the media has done a terrible job of covering was we had another athlete who was transitioning there, but this was an athlete from Yale.
Of course, of course she was from Yale.
Yeah.
What else would you expect from the Ivy Leagues?
But by the name of Izzy, who began to identify as Isaac.
So again, keep up if you can, a female identifying as a man who we were told we fully had to treat as a man.
I mean, we had to go to sensitivity training to learn how to use he, him pronouns and she, her pronouns so we could accommodate both of these individuals who identified as trans.
And so Dave, Just for optics purposes here, okay?
It's the finals of the 100 Freestyle.
Top 8 women in the entire country.
And you've got a 6'4 man in a women's swimsuit with a bulge next to a woman wearing only a Speedo.
And we, we mentioned this on the panel with Sage Shield, but, but really again, the reality of the situation, I'm looking at this and I'm like, no, this is a South Park episode.
This is like a Babylon B headline or like an SNL skit.
Um, I thought I was the crazy one.
It must be.
I'm the problem.
Uh, but no, they both wrote in their arms on with big black Sharpie, let trans kids play as if they both weren't playing in the category that best suited their chances for success.
Right, you just needed macho man Randy Savage to show up in a bikini and the episode would have been complete.
I actually, we made a couple jokes about this last time so we don't have to belabor the point too long, but you did just mention the bulge and I do think there's an interesting piece related to that because in essence he, William Thomas, At that time still had male genitalia that you can visually see you're in the same locker room.
I think we clarified it on the last show.
He doesn't anymore as he's now or he does, but his girlfriend doesn't.
And he's now a lesbian or it doesn't even matter other than just the absurdity around all of this.
OK, so you get it's after the race.
You're told the tie, but he's going to get the gold medal.
Who did they say was instructing all of this when they said, Oh, well, we're told that, you know, he has to get the gold or he has to get the first place ribbon.
Um, every single person said, they say, our hands are tied.
We know this is wrong, but our hands are tied.
And so I followed it all the way up through the president of the Institut Blais, at the time, was Mark Emmert.
Now, of course, it's Charlie Baker.
Uh, don't even get me started there.
It was Mark Emmert at the time, who publicly, in the days following this national championships and, and the public outrage that this meet received, Uh, he released a statement saying he unequivocally stood in his decision to allow Leah Thomas to swim with the women because it's based in evolving science is what he said.
And so I see him.
I see Mark Emmer at this conference where they're announcing the NCAA Woman of the Year,
which is the most prestigious honor for collegiate female athletes.
It's something that encompasses not just your athletic success, but your academics and your
service and your leadership skills.
Basically a very well-rounded person.
And so each school gets one nominee across all of their female athletes.
And so I was chosen as University of Kentucky's nominee, which was like the most humbling
We had the number one WNBA draft pick in Abby Steiner, who's breaking world records in track and field and a national championship volleyball team, but they chose me.
And so...
Very honored by this until a full list of nominees for NCAA Woman of the Year came out.
And of course, it was not exclusive to just women because Leah Thomas was the University of Pennsylvania's nominee.
But nonetheless, I go to this conference, I see Mark Emmert.
I'm like, there's no way he's escaping.
And so I approach him and to which he says to me, you keep going, you keep fighting, keep pushing.
But the audacity for him to tell me to keep fighting as if he's not the one that I am fighting.
Again, don't forget, he released that public statement saying he fully supported this and asking him, you know, why do you say that but act this way?
Whether it's corporate America, academia, what have you, they don't follow red or blue, they follow green.
That's been very obvious, right?
You look at Bud Light, you look at Target, look at Planet Fitness, whatever these companies are that are tanking because of how they have embraced this DEI nonsense, they end up in some way, shape, or form reversing course.
But when I told my dad about Specifically the locker room.
We didn't know he was going to be in our locker room until we quite literally were undressing next to this naked man.
Until we were non-consensually exploited in the way that the NCAA had allowed for.
And so I called my dad immediately.
The meet was at Georgia Tech.
My parents, of course, were there watching.
And so I call him and I say, Dad, he's in our locker room.
To which my dad said, Riley, come open this little side door.
I'm coming down there and I'm going to handle this myself.
To which I had to say, Dad, We already have one man in the locker room.
We don't need to.
And you'll go to jail.
And that is where he would be right now, in an orange jumpsuit.
But honestly, that was a large part in me speaking out, is because I didn't want my dad to go to jail.
But I'm so fortunate to have such amazing parents, parents who raised me to think for myself, to call out an injustice when I see it.
They gave me a strong and firm faith foundation, which is a large part in Being able to do what I do with a smile on my face because the battle has already been won and that's the most beautiful thing about all of this.
He tells us in Acts and Romans and different places that these spiritual battles will intensify and we will reach a point where dark is seen as light and bitter is seen as sweet and evil is seen as moral.
And it's undeniable that that's not where we're at right now.
And look, that's not me saying that I think people who identify as trans are evil.
No, I don't think that.
But deceit is evil.
Manipulation is evil.
Lying and affirming delusions is evil.
And who's the father of lies?
Who moves through deceit and darkness?
Satan does.
But in spending time in scripture and in the word, It's very clear the outcome of this from an eternal perspective.
Yeah, we see the battles that we face from a worldly perspective on a day-to-day basis, but when you know the outcome, when you know what you're fighting for, yes, I'm fighting for objective truth.
Everyone can see that.
Anyone with a brother knows the differences between men and women.
I don't have to sit here and say that men are taller, faster, stronger.
I don't have to do all that.
So yes, I'm fighting for objective truth, but more importantly, far more importantly, fighting for biblical truth.
So this all happens, you start getting in the news, and talk a little bit about how the feminists and the feminist organizations treated you, because anyone listening to this right now is going, oh, this is the ultimate feminist story, a woman fighting for herself, a woman, like that's the great heroine story, except I'm fairly certain that's not exactly how you've been treated by these people.
No, it's not how I continue to be treated by these people.
Just this past, I mean, a week, two weeks ago, the National Organization of Women, right now, the leading feminist organization for the past, I mean, 60, actually probably longer than that, yeah, 60, 70 years, I mean, they were the ones who fought for Title IX.
You think of sexual liberation and reproductive rights and the pink hats.
Okay, that's this group.
They released an article that called me a white supremacist patriarchist.
I don't even know what that means.
I don't even know where they- Congrats, sister.
Patriarch is from when here I am fighting for the rights of women.
It's so silly, but that's the response I've been met with by most feminist groups.
That's not to say there aren't some who have been steadfast in their original, I guess, movement, their original mission of fighting for sex-based protections.
There are some, but it's very few and far between.
It's the feminists who are leading the charge In dismantling our sex-based rights.
You think of someone like Billie Jean King.
I mean, this is who we have to accredit Title IX to.
She played in the Battle of the Sexes and she won and it was this huge feat that propagated women forward, not just in sports, but really as a whole and in the workplace, in our personal relationships.
We have her to thank for that.
She's now actively campaigning and fighting for men to infiltrate into women's sports and women's spaces.
Even most recently, when I testified before Congress, I sat next to a Democrat witness.
She's the president of the National Women's Law Center.
And in her opening testimony, she said that women should just learn how to lose more gracefully to men.
And I'm sitting there listening to this, and I'm like, How can she call herself a feminist?
The president of the National Women's Law Center.
And she just said we should learn how to lose more gracefully.
And it's hilarious because they do this under the guise of progress.
It's deemed progressive as if we're moving in the positive forward direction.
But let's be very clear.
This is not progress.
This is regressive.
It's taking us back in time at least half a century, really even further than that.
And that's obvious again to anyone with a brain or really a heart for that matter.
Megan Rapinoe is the female soccer player who also has come out basically saying that men should be playing female soccer and that women should sort of back up behind them.
Do you think in a weird way it's so that they can protect their own prestige and their own records?
It's also interesting because they both both happen to be lesbians, and I don't care about their sexuality, but if they were young girls right now, the entire system would be pushing them to become young boys.
The gender ideology movement in its true nature is homophobic.
Lesbians have seeming, really the LGB part of this community has been used as political pawns throughout, I mean, by politicians, by the media.
That's very obvious.
But I think more and more people are seeing that.
More people who are a part of this movement, they say, hey, wait, I don't think the T portion really represents what We represent how we fought for our rights.
It seems like they're just taking other people's rights away from them.
Do you see a connection to everything that you've been through and what's going on in the culture wars and what's happening with Caitlin Clark now in the WNBA?
I have never in my life, all of this WNBA stuff, I, like, am so perplexed.
Like, I am just perplexed.
I am in this state of really confusion.
I have never seen an organization self-implode on itself the way the WNBA did.
It's extraordinary, yeah.
It's extraordinary.
You have people like Jemele Hill or Sonny Hauston.
Sonny Hauston, who said that Caitlin Clarke has straight privilege, white privilege, pretty privilege, which I've never even really heard Caitlin Clarke and Pretty used in the same sentence.
And tall privilege?
Is every WNBA player not tall?
Like, what is this?
It's, it's, yeah, no, there's definitely a parallel between, I think, what Caitlin Clarke, I mean, really, it's just sports have become hyper politicized, whether it's the BLM movement or the kneeling for the anthem, which sports are supposed to be the one place you can go To not look at identity factors, to not look at race or religion or sexual orientation or gender identity or anything for that matter.
It's the one place you go to escape politics, but as we have seen by ESPN, I mean the list goes on, they have hyper-politicized sports.
Has that been the saddest part of all of this to you?
Because obviously there's great upside now because you're out there and you're fighting for young girls and for yourself and everything else, which is wonderful.
And this is an important piece of the culture war.
But I would imagine you don't think of swimming the way you used to.
And I keep thinking that with Caitlyn Clark.
They are so destroying the Michael Jordan of female basketball that I just know she cannot enjoy it as much as she should right now.
And it's probably going to shorten her career and she will probably Walk away at some point when she still should be the best player on the court and what a what a damn shame It is it's a shame.
She could use it as motivation Which I was pretty encouraged after obviously should not make the the u.s.
Women's Olympic basketball team, which is a travesty, but when reporters asked her about it and she said hey I Look, let's keep the focus around the 12 girls.
Look, she doesn't want this.
Just like I didn't want to be in this position.
She didn't want to ask for this national attention outside of merely celebrating her for her success.
And so she said, you know, I'll just use this for the next four years.
And so I hope that's the mindset that she continues to have, because she really has.
I mean, not just for basketball, she's put a lot of eyes on women's sports.
And that's cool.
She set viewership records and all kinds of crazy stuff.
Again, Sunny Hostin, Yes!
says she's problematic.
Kaitlin Clark is the solution to the problem, which the WNBA clearly wasn't prepared for,
You know, I've mentioned this a couple other times on the show, but I went to the same high school
I'm probably like eight or nine years older than her but I did play basketball with her a couple times at our local park and she was pretty damn good but she wasn't better than most of the guys and I was barely playing with guys that could make the high school team and the fact that this has just become so Broken in everybody's brains, my god.
What about how this is, sort of, you mentioned the culture war part of this and all of that.
What about the part that's just become so political now?
That, you know, you're thought of as political while you're talking about these things and obviously you're invited to certain political events on a certain side of the aisle and all that.
Yeah, no, that's been the biggest... I guess the most demoralizing thing for me, the most disheartening thing, as a younger person, just turned 24 years old, a recent college graduate, to see just how divisive Everything is.
Every issue that has been deemed political, even the protection of women and girls.
I mean, in the U.S.
House, the Protection of Women and Girls in Sports Act was introduced by Representative Greg Stubbe.
It fell entirely on party lines, meaning 219 Republicans voted in favor of protecting women and girls in sports and all 203, every single last one of them, mothers and fathers of their own young daughters, all 203 Democrats voted in opposition of protecting women and girls in sports.
I've been able to go to the State of the Union the past two years.
Of course, the address where Biden sits up there and mumbles and screams and my ears were ringing.
At least he didn't read the word pause off the teleprompter in this one.
But really, it broke my heart.
I left there feeling so sad because this wasn't an address that was supposed to be political.
It was literally supposed to just be addressing the state of our nation.
But watching, of course, the members of Congress and the Senate on the floor, one side would stand up, they would sit down, one side would stand up, they would sit down.
There was nothing cohesive about it.
There was not a single issue that both parties stood up and cheered for, which I was, to be kind of honest, the only time I've ever been glad that Biden was president because I didn't have to stand up one single time.
Yeah, well, you've spent a lot of time conditioning your body, so it's nice to have like a two-hour window where you can just kind of sit back and enjoy all that.
Where do you sense, well, what would you want the outcome to be?
Meaning, okay, so if we are to have, if Title IX is just, and we're to have men's sports and women's sports, what do you do with the Will Thomases of the world?
Okay, then do you even further separate a category from men who began taking puberty blockers before puberty and men who began taking puberty blockers after puberty?
And like I said, we don't look at identity factors in sports.
We shouldn't have a category based on identity factors.
Every category that we have, like age or like weight classes in boxing or fighting sport, right?
We have heavyweights and we have featherweights.
We don't have the heavyweight category because we're fat shaming people who weigh more.
No, we have that category because we know the outcome if we did it.
A 280-pound person would beat someone who weighs 180 pounds 10 out of 10 times.
And it's not bigoted to say that, or it's not to say that the 180-pound guy is inferior.
No, but we just know what the outcome would be.
So all that to say, the solution is what has been in front of us the past 52 years.
Has Serena Williams ever reached out to you, because we mentioned it on the show with Sage a couple weeks ago, but she went on Late Night with David Letterman about 10 years ago, maybe 12 years ago, and basically said that men's tennis and women's tennis are completely different things.
She said that if she was to play Andy Roddick, who was not even the best men's tennis player in the world at the time, that he would basically beat her 6-0, 6-0, 6-0.
And she's kind of gone silent on this as far as I know.
Abigail Schreier, I'm sure you know the book Irreversible Damage, wrote an incredible book about the social contagion, particularly as it pertains to young girls transitioning to boys, not the other way around.
I'm wondering, are you hearing from young girls who are in high school now, or maybe
even younger, I have no idea, who are saying that actually these are not trans, like if
we're to accept that, okay, fine, 0.01% or whatever it is, that people are genuinely
have this condition, that the social element, that there's just this huge other group of
people that are just like, oh, I just want to win matches.
AIDS is running rampant in California prisons because they're transferring these men over.
I've talked to correctional officers.
I've talked to people who have quit their jobs.
Because they can't allow themselves to be, in good faith, be a part of this.
California has condom dispensers in their women's prisons.
New York has posted placards in their all-female facilities talking about pregnancy prevention.
We've seen people get pregnant in New Jersey, Ohio, Kansas, California, New York, the list goes on.
And it's only happening one way.
Even in terms of how our language is being impacted.
You've got bills on house floors where It would take female or mother or woman out of state statute.
We're not seeing this to replace it with like cervix haver, uterus owner, menstruator, bleeder, chest feeder, birthing person, birth giver, egg producer, the list goes on, whatever other derogatory term they can come up with.
But we're not seeing this happen to the word father or to the word man or to the word male.
Then I think for a couple of different reasons, one of which men would not put up with that for one second.
Could you imagine a man being called a sperm producer?
Oh my gosh, they would laugh in your face.
Men wouldn't put up with it for one second, as we saw with Bud Light.
They boycotted it immediately.
But women, we're sitting by and we're cheering and we're clapping and we're, I mean, at our own demolition, at our own erasure.
And I think it speaks to the personality differences between, we talk a lot about the physical differences between men and women, but the same men who have always been men are the same, I mean, assertive and demanding.
It's the same men who are demanding what we call them.
The same docile, empathetic, apologetic women are entering into men's space and demanding that they do anything.
I got one more for you and then we're going to play a little game that my guys have handed me that I have not seen any of it either, just to put it out there.
Do you now view this in a weird way as a gift has been given to you?
Because I mentioned when I had you on with Sage a couple weeks ago, the people that I'm interested in these days are the people like you.
Step into something accidentally.
You were doing something that you loved and then something happened to you.
It's the exact same story with Sage.
She did not intend to become so outspoken on COVID or on the gender stuff.
She just wanted to be an ESPN anchor, but now has been brought into a much broader world, wider world.
Do you view this as a gift and an opportunity now?
And I guess what do you really want to do with it?
Then you know more than me because I don't even know that.
So I've just learned so much and I've adapted and I've become so secure and confident with, of course, my argument and my stance, but with myself.
And so all of that to say, Never something I wanted.
Definitely not.
Still not something I want because it's a tragic fight to be fighting.
But nonetheless, I've gotten to meet some amazing people.
I get to talk to amazing people like you.
I get to go to amazing places and have real impact.
And that's fulfilling.
You know, talking to parents and to coaches and to young girls themselves who just reach
out and say, thank you.
You know, you've given me the courage or something along those lines.
There's nothing better than that.
That makes all of the backlash, all of the hate worth it 10 times out of 10.
And so I guess in a weird way, I do have Leah Thomas to thank.
I will thank him right now.
Thank you, Leah Thomas.
It sparked a conversation that I think without him highlighting so perfectly all of the insanity,
the locker room, the silencing, the trophy incident.
I mean, the fact that he's literally six foot four and sucked competing against a man, yet they vowed to give him the trophy because they were advised to.
I don't remember if I fully got the answer from you on this one last time, but my director Connor here has a theory that Leah Thomas is using the penis as a propeller.