The Patriot Post® · Riley Gaines Swims Against the Current
In the world of competitive sports, there are few endeavors more challenging than high-level collegiate swimming. The grueling pre-dawn practices, the six hours in the water every day, and the endless laps in the pool all take their toll.
But in the case of Riley Gaines, all this has prepared her for battle against the most vicious of foes in a cause of surpassing consequence. The foe is the cult of transgenderism, and the cause is that of women’s athletics.
Gaines, a 12-time all-American and former swimmer at the University of Kentucky, was recently set upon by transgender cultists at San Francisco State University, where she’d gone to speak on behalf of women’s sports.
Talk about going into the belly of the beast.
As Gaines finished her speech, the mob surged into the classroom, turned off the lights, and attacked her, shouting a stream of obscenities and eventually chasing her into a room where she was barricaded for three hours.
The prisoners are running the asylum at SFSU…I was ambushed and physically hit twice by a man. This is proof that women need sex-protected spaces.
— Riley Gaines (@RileyGaines) April 7, 2023
Still only further assures me I’m doing something right. When they want you silent, speak louder. 🗣️ pic.twitter.com/uJW3x9RERf
“The prisoners are running the asylum at SFSU,” she said. “I was ambushed and physically hit twice by a man. This is proof that women need sex-protected spaces. Still only further assures me I’m doing something right. When they want you silent, speak louder.”
Indeed, Gaines isn’t backing down. “The campus police did nothing,” she later recounted. “The dean of students was there and did nothing. There will be no repercussions unless I have something to do with it. I will be pursuing legal action. These people need to face repercussions.”
An email sent afterward by an SFSU administrator praised the student thugs for their behavior. Signed by the school’s vice president for student affairs and enrollment management, Jamillah Moore, it was downright Orwellian in its effort to paper over what had happened.
“Thank you to our students who participated peacefully in Thursday evening’s event,” Moore wrote. “It took tremendous bravery to stand in a challenging space. I am proud of the moments where we listened and asked insightful questions. I am also proud of the moments when our students demonstrated the value of free speech and the right to protest peacefully.”
Gaines put it far more accurately. “Truthfully,” she said, “I think these people resort to anger, both verbally and physically, and violence because they know they don’t have reason on their side. They can’t debate me with logic or science or any kind of data that supports their argument, so they resort to personal attacks.”
When it comes to logic and science, Gaines knows of what she speaks. She made news a couple of weeks ago when she spoke at the University of Pittsburgh about her experience swimming against Lia Thomas, the biological male who went from a middling career as a swimmer on the University of Pennsylvania’s men’s team to a dominant career competing against women.
“Lia Thomas is not a brave, courageous woman who EARNED a national title,” reads the pinned tweet on Gaines’s Twitter page. “He is an arrogant cheat who STOLE a national title from a hardworking, deserving woman.”
As Gaines spoke at Pitt, she asked an anthropologist in attendance, “If you were to dig up a human, two humans, in 100 years from now, both man and woman, could you tell the difference, strictly off of bones?”
The anthropologist replied, “No,” and those in attendance burst out in spontaneous laughter.
“I’m not sure why I’m being laughed at if I’m the expert in the room,” he protested. “Have any of you been to archaeological sites? Have any of you studied biological anthropology? I’m just saying, I’ve got over 150 years of data. I’m just curious as to why I’m being laughed at.”
That guy’s failure to figure out why he was being laughed at tells us all we need to know about the state of higher education in America.
This week, Gaines has taken on yet another enemy of women’s sports: U.S. women’s soccer star Megan Rapinoe. Rapinoe, basketballer Sue Bird, and 38 other enablers of the transgender cult signed a letter to House lawmakers opposing the Protection of Women and Girls in Sports Act, which seeks to protect women’s sports against infiltration by biological men. “Today,” the letter read, “politicians in DC are claiming to ‘protect women’s sports’ by pushing a trans & intersex sports ban. Call your Congressional rep today to say women’s sports need protection from unequal pay, sexual abuse & lack of resources, NOT from trans kids.”
In response, Gaines noted that Rapinoe, a lesbian, is at the end of her competitive career and has no daughters — and therefore no skin in the game.
It’s interesting, too, that Rapinoe would mention unequal pay for women’s sports, which is a cause she has ardently taken up. It’s a phony argument, that pay gap, but she’s all about promoting women — except when it comes to their right to compete only against other women.
Let’s hope that in the weeks and months ahead we see and hear more from the likes of Riley Gaines and less from the likes of Megan Rapinoe. The very future of women’s sports is at stake.