Riley Gaines’ presentation was not only transphobic, but also ultimately ineffective.
Former collegiate swimmer turned public speaker, Gaines spoke at Trinity University on Oct. 8 as part of her “Take Back Title IX: Tour,” a nationwide campaign to keep transgender women out of women’s sports.
Gaines started the campaign after competing against Lia Thomas, a transgender swimmer, in her senior year of college.
As a collegiate swimmer who identifies as non-binary, I had no interest in attending the event. But, a week before the presentation, Gaines’ friend Kaitlynn Wheeler reached out to me on Instagram encouraging me and my fellow teammates to attend. Wheeler claimed that Gaines’ message was not anti-trans, simply pro-women. While keeping transgender women out of women’s sports is inherently anti-trans, our discussion did spark my curiosity. How transphobic would Gaines’ speech be?
Unfortunately, it was far more transphobic than I expected it to be, and not to mention, poorly executed.
It is first important to understand the difference between transphobia and anti-transness. Transphobia is the “discrimination against, aversion to, or fear of transgender people,” while the term “anti-trans” is used to refer to coordinated efforts or movements against transgender people. This is why Gaines’ message is anti-trans at its core.
Gaines’ attitude was identifiable as transphobic as soon as she said that “men who chop their dicks off are still men.” Every time she referred to Lia Thomas, Gaines misgendered her. She claimed that Thomas posed a threat to the other women in the locker room, portraying Thomas as a predator — an all-too familiar false narrative used to villainize transgender people throughout the United States.
Thomas was not the sole target of Gaines’ transphobia. In fact, Gaines spent several minutes invalidating transgender identities. She declared that those who identify outside of the gender binary are living under a “facade” and that we are evil. She insisted that transgender women claim to be women in order to invade women’s spaces and rape them. She ridiculed gender-inclusive language and denounced diversity, equity and inclusion programming. It soon became evident that Gaines’ goal was not to protect women but to preach blatant transphobic ideologies under the guise of being pro-women.
When the time came for questions, I asked Gaines how (or if) she would defend Kaitlynn Wheeler’s claim that her message was not transphobic. She said, “Being pro-women is the same as being anti-trans.”
Even if an audience member was unbothered by Gaines’ transphobia, the presentation itself was simply not effective. She undermined her credibility at every turn.
To begin her presentation, Gaines stormed onto the stage complaining about a pamphlet that Trinity’s PRIDE club had created. It included an interview with a biology professor debunking various transphobic claims. Gaines promptly lambasted Trinity’s biology department and the institution as a whole, stating “if I were a student here, I would ask for a refund on my tuition.”
Trinity has incredibly prestigious STEM programs, and she immediately made an enemy of the audience and Trinity’s faculty.
Gaines proceeded to talk about herself for a long time with the intention of resonating with the audience, especially athletes. She really, really, really, wanted us to care that she had dedicated her life to swimming, but I stopped caring really, really, really quickly. As a swimmer, I know what type of commitment it takes to reach the collegiate level — yes, even Division III. I have lived through the early mornings and 11 workouts a week that she so frequently referenced. But after several minutes of talking about her talent and dedication, I started to wonder when she was going to move on. Her pompous speech about her success as a Division I athlete rapidly lost my attention, alienated the Division III athletes in the room and conveyed the self-importance that proved to be integral to her presentation.
Throughout the presentation, Gaines dug herself an even deeper hole. She consistently whined and victimized herself, pointing to previous crowds she had spoken for as examples of the discrimination she had faced as an affluent white woman. She lacked a basic level of maturity; I was astonished that as a public speaker, Gaines didn’t have enough self-control to stop herself from demeaning the audience members wearing pride flags, referring to them as “the kids in the back draped in your little flags.”
Furthermore, Gaines did not provide any factual information. By factual, I don’t mean what she claimed to be factual. I mean that she didn’t include any scientific evidence, statistics or quotes from scholarship. Her informative speech was nothing more than an angry rant.
To conclude her presentation, Gaines promoted Donald Trump. Trump has been accused of sexually assaulting over 20 women, and in 2023 was found liable for sexual abuse. He also stripped back Title IX protections for women during his first administration. At this moment, Riley Gaines showed that she is not “pro-women.”
In the end, Gaines did not only show herself to be an enemy of the transgender community, but a hateful woman pretending to be advocating for other women.
