On Oct. 28, I protested alongside many students, professors and community members against the imposition of professional transphobic grifter Riley Gaines on our campus. In doing so, we found that Trinity University was not looking out for our interests.
Luckily for Trinity, discriminatory rhetoric against minorities is mainstream now, with the Republicans’ electoral sweep this year paving the way for four years of suffering and beyond. As with any political movement, the Republicans have many foot soldiers pushing niche conservative talking points into the mainstream.
In that role, Gaines is as good as they come. She has been a prolific part of the Trump campaign this year and has been a particularly useful asset in pushing the Republicans’ strange obsession with transgender people and their bodily functions.
Republicans spent $215 million on ads attacking transgender people this election cycle, and Gaines contributed to this messaging.
Gaines clearly showed her belief early on that transgender identities are not valid and should not be respected. Her trademark, as with many transphobes, is invoking crude and gross imagery when referring to transgender people, which she resorted to early and often the night I saw her.
I would describe the first part of Gaines’ talk as bad stand-up. She almost immediately referenced transgender people “cutting their weiners off,” and in my estimation she was doing her best to prime her audience to view transgender people as punchlines and others.
After that, Gaines attempted to garner sympathy from the crowd by telling an annoyingly long story about tying with Lia Thomas at a swimming event. She neglected to mention that they tied for fifth place, painting Thomas as an unstoppable force dominating women’s swimming that she managed to almost defeat. Gaines also made a big deal about Thomas being in the locker room after the meet, making fun of her voice and body.
The tone of Gaines’ talk was aggressive and hateful the entire way through. Her vitriol towards the very idea of transgender people existing was not particularly subtle, and her supposed humanitarian angle of protecting women’s sports was not a major focus.
The extent to which Gaines focuses on spreading hateful rhetoric when she speaks undermines any claim she makes about wanting more safety in women’s sports or restrooms. Her only interest is using transgender people as a pawn to further the conservative agenda to use culture wars to justify the right-wing extremist state that Republicans are trying to create.
Trinity, despite Gaines’ very public history of violently hateful rhetoric, gave no objection to the Young Conservative of Texas (YCT) hosting her. In fact, Jessica Edonick, dean of students and assistant vice president for Student Affairs, went around the room to confiscate protest signs and demand that we tuck any pride flags into our clothing. Student Inclusion and Belonging sent an email to Catherine Zarr, president of PRIDE and Editor-in-Chief of the Trinitonian, only hours before the event about the ban on signs, which were initially allowed.
I reached out to Edonick earlier this week, who directed me to Trinity’s PR department. From there, I received an email from Andrew Wells, vice president for Student Affairs.
“The YCT and the speaker requested that bags not be allowed in the event, which activated the University’s Bag and Article Inspection Policy,” Wells wrote. “Because of this, signs and posters were not allowed by anyone at the event, including the Gaines team. They, too, were required to remove signs they brought to the venue.”
Wells’ assertion that signs are not allowed due to this policy is true, as signs are explicitly prohibited. With that said, we knew well in advance that bags would not be allowed in the event, meaning that we should have known about this ahead of time. Instead, we were told exactly the opposite in advance of the event. Additionally, Edonick attempted to get a student to remove a transgender flag that was literally a part of their clothing. Meanwhile, conservative attendees wearing MAGA hats were not accosted.
I posit an alternative theory about what happened here: Gaines’ team pushed at the last minute for Trinity to prohibit signs, and Trinity obliged out of convenience. Regardless, Wells had more to say about free speech on campus.
“In protecting free speech, we support registered student organizations as they engage speakers and express ideas and speech that is protected,” Wells wrote. “We encourage students who disagree with such views or find them offensive to bring their voice to the conversation. The best remedy to any speech is expressing ideas of your own.”
I find it interesting that a speaker whose entire gimmick is attacking transgender people falls under a protected category of speech while protestors against her do not, and it strikes me as harmful that Trinity allowed this event to take place while directly suppressing those who challenged her rhetoric.
Furthermore, “free speech” is no solution to transphobia. Transgender people have been fighting and dying to “bring their voice to the conversation” for centuries, but the $215 million battle Gaines is fighting threatens our very existence. Listening to Gaines speak is more than enough to realize her qualms with transgender people run deeper than participation in sports. She finds us repulsive and wants us gone.
Given the results of the election, I think things are about to get poisonous as it pertains to transgender people. Donald Trump campaigned on restricting access to gender-affirming care, and he and his party just won the power to make that happen.
The presence of Trinity staff at Gaines’ event and the suppression of our efforts to protest gives me a feeling of dread. Will Trinity stand by transgender people when the going gets tough? Or will Trinity abandon us as mainstream political rhetoric pushes us further and further into the margins of society? To any faculty reading this, those questions are for you.
