RILEY GAINES PODCAST： A Brave Mom Speaks Out
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Summary
Kim Jones is a former All-American tennis player at Stanford and the founder of the International Council on Women s Sports (ICSN), a group dedicated to fighting for equal pay for women in sports. In this episode, you ll get to hear from Kim's perspective, from the perspective of a mother who has a daughter who competed against her son at Yale and a son who now has a woman in his locker room.
Transcript
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Today we're having on Kim Jones, who is an incredible athlete herself.
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She's an All-American tennis player at Stanford.
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But she's coming from this with a different perspective.
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She has a daughter who swam at Yale and who competed against Thomas.
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She has a son who swam at Yale and who now has a woman in his locker room.
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Um, which shows you how uncommon this really is.
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She has started a new organization called ICONS,
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which is the International Council on Women's Sports,
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where she's doing everything in her power to combat this at every level.
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State level, federal level, within the specific sport governing bodies.
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I can't believe it's been like a year and a half now, probably more than.
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Um, of course we knew there were a lot of kind of ticked off parents
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Um, but talk about what that looked like from your perspective
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So, yeah, Riley, it's been good to know you this long.
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Um, I think I had my oldest daughter competing against Thomas
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and then they swim the same events at the Ivy League championship.
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And, um, I started trying to reach out to anyone that I knew
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We were trying to figure out how we could make an impression
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when everything, um, kind of blew up in our faces
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what we were going to be faced with for the duration of the year.
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I started speaking to, uh, folks like Kara Dansky
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and Nancy Hanshead and, um, any political leaders
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And then come NCAAs, and I heard about you through a mutual friend
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and you were going to be brave enough to talk on air
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and voice your frustration, not just frustration,
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we've been a great person in support ever since.
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I'm so proud of everything that you've been doing.
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Um, so you had a daughter who competed against Thomas,
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um, which I, of course, know your daughter and she's amazing.
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looking at Thomas, who is six foot four versus a six foot,
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But girl, who's, of course, an incredibly tall girl,
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And the, the, just seeing them up on the blocks next to each other,
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And I know you've spoken so eloquently about how much time and energy goes into,
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um, having a passion for sports, chasing a dream and reaching an elite level.
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And even those that don't reach the pinnacle of success,
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really dedicate decades of their lives to just being the best they can be.
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So to see all of that hard work and effort just turned into a mockery of,
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um, you know, of female athleticism was, it was devastating.
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I, the first time I watched my daughter race, uh, Thomas was at the Penn Dartmouth
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tri meet and, um, knew it was coming down the pipe for a while.
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There was plenty of discussion about would the rules change?
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Would they finally wake up to the insanity that was going on in front of our eyes?
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There had already been complaints, um, about, you know, the girls on the pen team crying.
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I had been in touch with parents from a few other schools,
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but then having to go witness it in person was surreal.
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And I mean, I, I kept myself together while I was watching it,
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but the second I left the, uh, stands, I just broke down in tears.
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The only reason I went was because, um, my daughter wasn't sure she could face it
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And she didn't know what she could do on the pool deck
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because the schools had been censoring them and, um, you know, threatening them with retaliation.
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So it's how you felt kind of the general consensus,
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or at least, you know, you can, you can get a read from other parents in the pool deck.
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So even maybe if you didn't have those conversations with other parents,
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is that kind of the consensus that, that you gathered from how other parents, other moms,
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I mean, so I, by, before I even watched that race, I think a lot of us parents had been on
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the phone with each other, especially, I mean, and you've talked about this before you grown up
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Um, we didn't always talk on the phone, but we certainly socialized at swim meets and something
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and the, your closer friends you were in touch with.
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So we were all, all the mothers were on the phone with each other saying, how are you going
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Because the girls were, and some of the girls, especially after the Ivy League had pulled everyone
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into those meetings to say, you don't have a voice.
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You know, your chance to speak up on this has long passed when you signed the dotted line
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It was, um, some of the girls had gotten so quiet.
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They wouldn't even talk to their families about it anymore.
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So it just would run away and just, I can't discuss this.
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And even my own daughter, when I would try to bring it up with her, like, how are you preparing?
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And I don't think people understand how deeply it cuts women to say, um, you need to figure
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out how to stand up and fight for your rights along with competing at the highest level, training
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to the point of exhaustion every day, trying to keep up with your studies, managing your
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It was way too much to ask of the girls that were competing.
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And one of the reasons it's so impressive that you have done what you did is to take
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on that mantle as a young woman, I think, or just even a young person to recognize abuse
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I mean, it takes a different mindset and a support structure around you to allow someone
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But I think there's a reason why we see, you know, children who are in abused homes and
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It takes them years and sometimes even decades of reflection to realize how awful the situation
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And I've said this many times to the parents and people who've asked about the situation
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It's like, I don't think these girls are going to realize what they were put through and the
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I think it's just going to take that long to process how bad it was.
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And I think, you know, once they start having daughters of their own, like coming from it
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from your perspective, I think it will shift a lot of things.
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Um, but you don't just have one swimmer child, uh, multiple.
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So my understanding is that this hasn't only just affected your, your daughter who swam
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Um, would you be willing to touch on how this is kind of impacted far beyond that really showing
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And by this, you mean, you don't just mean men and women's sports.
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You mean the idea of, um, just that we are whatever we think we are.
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Um, yes, I think we have a huge wake up call that needs to happen in society.
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There are a lot of people even still, and you and I have spoken about this, or we were just
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And then until you're hit over the head with the two by four of the impacts of denying the
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reality of sex in the world, you don't understand the implications.
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Fortunately, now I think there's enough media traction that people are, you know, opening
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their eyes to the world that we're creating for women, especially.
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But ultimately men as well, I mean, we can't, um, we can't ignore the harm when we give our
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daughters and our young women, our wives, our sisters, um, the message that they just
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don't matter and that women, that men have priority in all of their spaces.
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But I likewise had my, so my daughter dealt with the threat of a man in her locker room
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for that entire year that Thomas was swimming in the Ivy League.
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The stories from the young women that had to experience it, the idea that she would have
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to disrobe in front of a man or that a man could walk in on her with full rights to the
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territory, um, while she's changing the lack of dignity and privacy that left someone with,
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She worried about it for days before going to that first meet.
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And then also again, during the Ivy League championships.
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And, um, I think that, and I know that this was felt around the Ivy League, because again,
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I was speaking with parents from Harvard and Cornell, Princeton, everyone was panicked about
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And some of the girls had gone so far as to complain to their university leadership, and
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they had been shut down at every turn, not just at Penn, but also at other schools and
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been even disciplined being kicked out of eating clubs just for complaining and voicing their
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So the atmosphere was very, I call it North Korea-esque, like, we will control what you
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You will like what's being done to you or else.
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But then on the flip side, you know, the men on the pool deck or on the swim team, when
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my daughter was competing, would try to congratulate the girls that, you know, you actually got first
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So people knew, um, the crowd definitely responded enthusiastically when the women would touch
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So the atmosphere was very much, we all know what's going on.
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We're just unwilling to stand up and say anything.
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And I think that takes a toll on men and women because it takes a toll on women thinking that
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No one's going to back them, even if they do have the courage to complain.
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It takes a toll on men because men believe that their voices don't matter as well.
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And then the following year, my son had a woman in his locker room on our same team.
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Now, the young woman that was, um, deciding that she wanted to compete on the men's team
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and that she believed she was a man is a friend of our families or was a friend of our families.
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Um, just the problem comes when we insist that someone has their way for what they want.
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And it doesn't matter how uncomfortable anyone else is.
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So I can compare and contrast the two experiences of having a man threatened to be in my daughter's
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locker room and a woman in my son's locker room.
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And the terror that the women experience is not, um, it's not similar to what the women go through,
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But they are not, um, so it removes, it removes privacy and dignity from the men.
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It removes the atmosphere that they're comfortable in, but it is not a source of terror.
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So they're kind of just, oh, this'll be over in a year.
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But for the girls, it's scarring in a longer and not in a more immediate sense.
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I think it's something people need to hear because it really isn't just, as you said,
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Uh, and that's made very evident by you and your family.
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And I think it's an important point too, because as I said, introducing this is that
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Well, you had it happen to two of your children.
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I think there are just a lot of people out there that believe this, they can avoid this
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if they just educate their kids well, they teach them to speak up for themselves or they're
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willing to go, or they can let other people handle this.
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And in the last two years, I realized this is going to hit everyone.
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If it hasn't hit you already, you're probably not aware, but it has.
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So, um, my daughter with the, having to raise a man in her sport, having her, um, accomplishments
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taken her first place stripped from her, her opportunity to swim in a finals event stripped
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And then my son with a woman in his locker room.
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And the, I think the prior year of watching all the women silenced also silenced the men.
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There were plenty of the men that would have said, no, come on, get this woman out of here.
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But watching people concede their rights, watching people not stand up for themselves,
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watching the silence of parents and those in authority has a devastating impact on, I
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We take the backbone out of the next generation.
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And then my younger daughter, who's now a freshman in college, I did not realize this, and it's
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probably true in many schools around the country, but she does not have a sex separated space
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to shower or to use a restroom in on her campus for the freshmen.
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So I'm in the process of getting responses, but the idea that we are sending young women,
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18 and 19, 20 years old off to school where they're supposed to learn to become strong and
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independent, take care of themselves, you know, find their voice and their passions in the
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But we are stripping them off the bat of privacy and dignity and an ability to take care of
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their bodies in a way that they don't have to, you know, so that they're not in the presence
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How are we going to give them the courage to find their voices in the classroom if we don't
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even let them say, no, I don't want men in my space while I'm taking care of my physical
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I mean, it's an incredible burden hearing my daughter talk about the discussions with
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The young girls are like, oh, I haven't seen a guy in my bathroom yet.
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I'm so lucky I have a sink in my room or they don't even have, like, they're utilizing
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every option they can to find a way to keep themselves out of the space of men.
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And this is on top of managing just being off on their own for the first time, trying
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And I bet you, I would bet a lot of money that the majority of parents who have sent their
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kids, both boys and girls, off to school as freshmen are unaware of how many situations
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And we need to be looking into it and speaking up about it.
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So do you feel differently about the Ivy League now?
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Because about you too, you were an All-American tennis player at Stanford.
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So do you have a different understanding or this idea about what it means to have a degree
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I feel like it's a degree of conformity right now.
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And I am really disappointed in people who, I guess the word is to say, I think there are
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too many people in the world right now that are like, oh, I have too much to lose.
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I have too much of a position of power to put it at risk.
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And I want to know, like, when did we become a culture like this?
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I remember when I was being brought up and it was par for the course and well understood
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that if you saw an injustice, you stepped in and stopped it or did your best to.
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And then if you were in a job that was asking you to do something unethical, whatever it was,
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you would rather keep your integrity and stand up and speak up and even leave the job if it was going
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How do we value our silence and compliance so much more than we value our self-respect
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We have lost our way and I think we've become too big in our own heads, for the lack of a better word.
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And if we can't stick up for people and we can't stick up for what's right, what good are we?
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And I'm really disappointed in the Ivy League as far as not recognizing the harms of what they're
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I'm incredibly disappointed in their censorship of speech, in their treatment of women.
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I've told you a hundred times before I would rather have my daughter at any other school.
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My son is about to finish up his degree at Yale as well and we have talked about having our kids
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leave and we've talked about pulling them multiple times.
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It's a much more difficult conversation than you think because we talked about pulling our
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But again, ripping her away from friendships that were keeping her upright as she was facing
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this. It was a really difficult family conversation and ultimately we decided that we would just try
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to weather the storm. I think a lot of us, including yourselves, like the other girls that were
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swimming, we all thought that eventually the ship would write and there were people trying to fight
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for this. The new USA swimming policy came out in mid-season. So I had more faith. I had a lot of
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faith in people doing the right thing at the start of that experience. I had less as it went on,
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but I still thought that we would get to the right answer. And now I'm realizing we will get to the
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right answer. We will win this, but it's going to take longer and more vocal effort than I anticipated.
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This ideology is rooted in deeply. So I have my youngest daughter now also at an Ivy League.
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And the reason for that is that we had a year off from injury. We have definitely explored pulling
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her and putting her in other places as well. But it's harder than you. I don't know where we go to
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get away from this. I know. Well, it seems like there's nowhere. And as you mentioned, no one is
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immune to this, to this impacting them, which is why it's important. If we all waited until we were
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directly impacted, or if we waited for this monumental Leah Thomas moment before we stood up
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to this, it's too late. It would be way too late. And I want to go back to and put emphasis on what
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you were saying. It is not hard to say what you and I have been saying. It's not difficult. It does
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not require any amount of knowledge over common sense. Let me reiterate what you and I have been
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advocating for, which it seems like when you say it out loud, it's the bare minimum.
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I mean, come on, is it really hard to say those things, regardless of your background, regardless
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of your political affiliation, regardless of your sexual orientation? Something I find interesting
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about this topic is there's a lot of people within the LGB community, especially, who recognize
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this for what it is, and how this really even sets them back. So will you speak to how it's not hard
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No. I mean, I've been saying from the very beginning that it just, they're kidding me. You can't have any
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shame in standing up for the equal and fair treatment of women. If you're embarrassed to stand up
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for women's rights and for women to be respected in a society you're on, I mean, you're just asking for
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a detriment. There is no successful civilization that is able to stand on that ground. We don't
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look kindly back on any culture that degrades and treats their women poorly or unjustly.
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This is not a difficult thing, as you said, for us to do. It should be so easy to stand up for our
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daughters and our sisters and our wives and any female member of society. We should feel
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compelled to do the right thing. And it is not the right thing to ask a woman to be a tool of
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affirmation or to give up her hard work or to be used as an individual to make a man feel better.
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This is not an acceptable use of women in our culture. It's not an acceptable view. And it
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should be really self-evident. Like you said, I mean, there's tons of science out there. There's
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tons of literature. There's amazing thinkers and writers who've now delved into this subject.
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So there's plenty of information with great arguments and discussion about the impacts
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to culture and society and women. But it is self-evident that no man, no male-born person,
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man or boy, can know what life is like to live in a female body and can understand what it means to
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be a girl or what it means to be a woman. That is self-evident. We do not need any extra
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understanding of life. No. For reason we exist. Absolutely. So after all of this,
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what I think is so amazing about you is you took action. You haven't just been talking about it.
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You've been doing something about it. So talk about ICONS and what the mission is, what ICONS stands for,
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and what you guys have planned moving forward. Sure. That's awesome. So ICONS is the Independent
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Council on Women's Sports. And basically by the end of the year of Thomas swimming in at Penn and then
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at the NCAAs, through that experience, we realized that there just is not a voice for women in sports.
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There was not a collective voice speaking up on behalf of women in sports. And so what we decided
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was a network, we needed to form a network of female athletes, both collegiate and professional,
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and then including their supporters and families to be that voice so that a woman didn't have to stick
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her neck out by herself singularly, which isn't as effective as an entire organization anyhow.
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And when we realized that the Women's Sports Foundation and the ACLU, the National Women's Law
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Center had all abandoned women in order to support men when it came to men's preferences for women's
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rights, spaces, and language, it was just time for a group to step forward and say, no, we are here
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solely to defend our female athletes and their rights in sports. So that's how ICONS was formed. We
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kicked it off with your great help in Las Vegas. It's a little over a year ago. And it's been a
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fantastically rapidly growing organization. We've had a lot of great impact and pulled athletes around
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the world together also to form the ICFS, which is the International Consortium on Female Sport. There
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are women's organizations popping up all over the world right now, trying to fight for sex-based rights
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for women and girls. And it's really kind of a wonderful thing to see women banding together
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like this. So our goals in the immediate future, we are working with several international federations,
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national governing bodies of sport. We're working with lawyers. We're looking at legal opportunities
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to sue where we can. We are supporting court cases that are already in effect. We are organizing
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protests and visibility, just public campaigns for awareness, releasing stories to the news. We are
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advocating with politicians and educating as many people as we can on the issues that women are facing.
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So I feel we're really proud of everything we've been able to do in the last year. This is an
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Olympic year and an election year in the United States. So our goals this year are really just to
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raise awareness and make sure that every single politician makes a public stand to say, hey, we are,
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I'm backing women. I understand that women deserve equal rights and fair treatment in society,
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or they don't. So I think that the focus on the Olympics and the celebration of the human spirit
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and with the limits of the human body are capable of, this is a unique opportunity. So we'll be pushing
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hard this year. Amazing. Do you think it's moving forward? Do you think it will take litigation? Do you
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think it will take hitting them where it hurts to make impact? I do. Yes, of course. I think that
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we're ultimately, we've got to have a ruling from the Supreme Court that says sex has to be a
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recognized characteristic in society. So this whole notion that we can just ignore what sex someone is
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what is so preposterous. I mean, we can't ignore sex or we cease to exist just from a basic
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reproductive standpoint. But ignoring sex ignores where physical and social power come from. It
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ignores the different ways that men and women are, what's the right thing to say, like how we're
00:29:12.160
collaborative. I mean, we have different strengths and physical power is definitely in sports and so
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forth. That's definitely a male strength that should not in any way reflect poorly. You and I've talked
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about this a bunch that should not in any way reflect poorly on what women are capable of and how amazing
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it is to see what women's sports can do, not just for women, but for society, for culture, to uphold
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women as strong and worthy of celebration and to see what their, we're built so differently. There's
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just no point in comparing them. We should be excited to see what the potential of both male and female
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are capable of. You've heard it from Kim. The time is now. We cannot continue to wait because silence is
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complicity. Thanks for listening. You can like, subscribe, anywhere where you get your podcasts,
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Apple, Spotify, Outkick.com. Make sure you check out the Riley Gaines Center. That's www.reilygainescenter.org.
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What this center is, is a training program to really equip and provide resources to leaders. I think we can
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all agree we need some more of those. Thank you guys. And I will see you next week.