Trans Activists Threw Everything They Had at Riley Gaines, But She Has One Brutal Message for the 'Men in Dresses'
It’s never easy fighting against societal tides.
Whether you want to talk about women’s suffrage, ending segregation, or abolishing slavery, fighting the good fight is exhausting and draining.
And it can require immense sacrifice. Look no further than the struggles of Susan B. Anthony, Martin Luther King Jr. and Abraham Lincoln in their respective quests to “do the right thing.”
And while Anthony, King and Lincoln are fondly remembered by history books now, at the time of their deaths they could not have known how their efforts would be seen in the future. King and Lincoln lost their lives for their beliefs. Anthony died in 1906, more than a decade before the 19th Amendment guaranteed women the right to vote.
Those sorts of doubts would cripple lesser people, but those three are clearly cut from a different historical cloth.
Women’s activist Riley Gaines appears to be made of similar stuff.
Gaines, for the unfamiliar, was a decorated University of Kentucky swimmer whose post-athletic career has found her fighting ferociously for women’s rights — namely their right to compete against other, actual women on a competitive athletic field.
She gained particular fame — notoriety, for progressives — for speaking up against transgender swimmer Lia Thomas, who was showered with all manner of undeserved praise.
Why is it undeserved? Because Thomas was a positively unremarkable swimmer when he was known as “Will Thomas,” only to turn into one of the most dominant swimmers in women’s history as “Lia” (by the numbers, at least).
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But while the typical leftist shills lauded Thomas for his “bravery” or whatever, Gaines rightfully blasted Thomas.
Gaines’ determination to not acquiesce to leftist lunacy made her a very public enemy, however, as she quickly became a target for all manner of crazed leftists.
Accusations of “transphobia” and bigotry were swiftly hurled at Gaines as she refused to acknowledge Thomas, as were a number of far more deplorable insults — but the former Kentucky Wildcat appears unbothered by it all.
On Friday, Gaines spoke to OutKick’s Charly Arnolt for the “OutKick The Morning with Charly Arnolt” podcast, and opened up a bit about her life behind the scenes of activism and attacks from her critics.
You can watch the illuminating segment below:
OutKick The Morning w/ @CharlyOnTV starts RIGHT NOW!
-Up Close and Personal with Riley Gaines. Beyond the Trans Debate https://t.co/IJ2xqenjCM
— OutKick (@Outkick) October 13, 2023
The most fascinating part of the interview came about the 12:30 mark, when Arnolt, a former WWE personality, asked Gaines about the cascade of derogatory remarks and insults Gaines has to endure for the simple crime of believing men are men and women are women.
Arnolt pointed out the idiocy of Gaines’ critics who claim that her complaints about men in women’s sports are because she “can’t swim” by noting that Gaines won at the highest level of swimming short of the Olympics.
“Do they hear themselves and how dumb they sound?” Arnolt asked.
“A stupid insult,” Gaines said with a chuckle. “And that’s why I say it doesn’t bother me.”
Gaines then opened up that when she first started becoming an activist, those types of snide remarks actually did start weighing on her.
But she swiftly realized that those insults were little more than childish “name-calling,” and she has since grown a new layer of thick skin to deal with her more deranged critics.
“It’s people calling you… They’ll say my hair is extensions,” Gaines said, as an example of some of the more nonsensical insults she has to deal with. “OK, this is my real hair. That’s stupid.
“They’ll say I’m ugly. They’ll say, ‘Maybe you should’ve just trained harder.’ They’ll say, ‘you’re transphobic.’ All these names.
“And like I said, at first, it sucked. But once you can notice the theme, they can’t dissuade from your argument using facts, using common sense, logic, reasoning, science… What happened to ‘follow the science’…
“And when they can’t dissuade from your argument using those things, they resort to name-calling, which, again, is what we do in fourth grade. It just doesn’t hurt my feelings.”
Gaines and Arnolt then discussed one particularly harrowing incident where pro-transgender activists stopped trying to hurt her feelings — and just tried to hurt her.
When Gaines spoke at San Francisco State University in April, an angry mob actually forced the athlete to barricade herself in a room as they genuinely seemed to be out for blood. Gaines was actually struck by one of the attackers, whom she described to her husband at the time as a “guy in a dress.”
Gaines had a simple response to those activists who so clearly crossed a line into physical violence: Bring it on.
“In those hours [while being barricaded in], listening to what they were chanting, what they wanted to do to me, how they were going to injure me, and kill me, and hurt me, and all those different things … I did fear for my life,” Gaines said about the 15:45 mark.
But she quickly added: “But, truthfully, their punches don’t hurt that bad, which is pretty telling. Men in dresses, I’m sorry, your punches just don’t hurt.”
There’s no telling what’s next in Gaines’ crusade to protect women’s sports from creepy men, but two things are crystal clear:
- Like all of those who stand for something they genuinely believe in, Gaines is likely gaining as many critics and haters as she is fans.
- She’s not afraid of that.
Good for Riley Gaines.
Conservatism could use more thick-skinned leaders with strong moral compasses.
This article appeared originally on The Western Journal.
