RILEY GAINES PODCAST： Fighting Back Against the Mob with Paula Scanlan
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Summary
In this episode, Riley chats with her friend and former teammate, Paula Scanlon, who was at the Texas Women's Hall of Fame in Denton, Texas, for Governor Greg Abbott's ceremonial signing of the "Save Women's Sports Act" in support of former Penn State swimmer Leah Thomas and former University of Pennsylvania swimmer Will Thomas.
Transcript
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I am so excited because today we have a dear friend of mine,
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as well as a former collegiate swimmer at University of Pennsylvania.
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And if you can recall, this is where Leah Thomas, Will Thomas, swam as well.
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We could probably, actually, I know we could because we have,
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that I don't think the general public understands.
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In regards to the competition and the locker room and the silencing,
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especially Paula being on a team with Leah, Will, Thomas,
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But we're going to dive into what happened this week.
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In Texas, Denton, Texas, we were at the Texas Women's Hall of Fame,
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for Governor Abbott's ceremonial signing of the Save Women's Sports Act.
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Paula, tell us a little bit about what was going on,
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why this is important, and really why you were there,
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standing, actually sitting right beside Governor Abbott as he signed this bill.
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Yeah, so you were there, too, sitting on the other side of him.
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But we were there because he was ceremonially signing in this bill.
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And it ensured that public-funded Texas universities at the collegiate level,
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you have to compete with the sex you were assigned at birth.
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So essentially, if the University of Pennsylvania had been a public school in Texas,
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the Leah Thomas situation would never have happened to my team.
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Obviously, all of my family lives in Texas on my mom's side.
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So knowing that when they have children, because they still live in Texas,
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their kids will be protected, their girls will be encouraged to be athletes,
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They had already previously passed it at the high school and middle school level,
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but knowing college students are also protected is great.
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And we had a really, really wonderful day there.
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Yesterday, before all the crazy stuff happened, which we'll get into,
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There were even some Texas collegiate athletes who were there in support.
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And something that stuck out to me is there were three young girls who were there.
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I'm not sure the grade, but certainly elementary school.
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And these parents who had brought their daughters there,
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they were saying that they had already experienced this.
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In third grade, they had competed against boys who were cosplaying,
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pretending to be women, which blew my mind because people think,
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Why are we creating a solution to a problem that doesn't exist?
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they're the proof that it does happen in Texas.
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It does happen in places where you don't expect it to be happening.
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So that's something that really stuck out to me.
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There was a lot of questions being asked, you know, after the signing.
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I think they were essentially the same question,
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And what I think is really interesting is that Will Thomas is from Texas.
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So there is a Texas tie-in, which I think makes this especially special
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I mean, before even arriving, I had been alerted that protests were going to be had.
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Go through some of the crazy things they were yelling,
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to which we could hear while we were doing the signing.
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Yeah, so when you told me in the car on the way there that there was going to be protesters,
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So I mentioned this before we started filming is my uncle, who lives in Dallas,
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And so he got kind of locked outside of the event.
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And he had to hang out with these protesters for an hour.
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And he told me something that surprised him was actually how well organized they were.
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He said, the one thing I can do is I can give them credit.
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that the leader of the chant group would tell everyone to stop and take water breaks
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So he was very surprised how organized they were.
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Obviously, we didn't really see that part of it.
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But that is something interesting that we didn't really discuss on Twitter or anything yesterday.
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But when we showed up, there was a whole group of people.
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You could see the trans flags waving, rainbow umbrellas, things like that.
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Dedication in 105 degree weather to be wearing a face covering, a mask.
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But we were able to go around back and they figured out,
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like they didn't figure out where we were when we entered through the backside.
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But then when the event was over, they had migrated over to that area.
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People who had tried to leave were, you know, kind of walking through a wind tunnel,
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for a better explanation, of these people just screaming.
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And my uncle, the thing that really stood out to him is that when they attacked those three young girls
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And he said that was he thought that was so inappropriate.
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He says, you know, it's one thing to chant and to, you know, say whatever you want about about the situation,
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but to yell curse words and stick their middle fingers up at young children,
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which is what my uncle, my uncle told me there was a lot of people pointing their middle fingers at these kids,
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But eventually we were able to get out of there, obviously, and everything was fine.
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But there was an IW person who got spit on in the eye.
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I mean, to be, as I mentioned, as young as third grade, you're like eight years old in third grade,
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And people wonder, you know, why more women aren't speaking out.
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Conservatives always say, you know, why aren't more people taking a stand?
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And again, even in the state of Texas, that's what we're up against.
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I saw that when I went to San Francisco, and it's terrifying.
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I mean, you really, it makes you fear for your life, which sounds like you're over-exaggerating.
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But no, those protesters yesterday, they were telling, I mean, they were yelling, you know,
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I mean, they're threatening, threatening remarks.
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And I can't imagine those poor girls getting home.
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I mean, getting in their car, that's got to be just a terrifying realization for what
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I mean, I couldn't imagine being eight years old going through that.
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I kind of got in the car and I was like, fight or flight mode.
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My uncle and my aunt were like, are you all right?
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I don't think, and I'm sure those, those, the parents of those girls are probably feeling
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a little bit of guilt for even bringing their kids there.
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And there shouldn't even be one ounce of guilt there.
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But I can't imagine even as a parent feeling, wow, should I be subjecting my kid to this?
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It's definitely not acceptable that they kind of did a lot of that stuff.
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Just watch this video of, and these are legislators, these are the co-sponsors and the sponsors
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It was actually Representative Valerie Swanson who introduced this bill in Texas on the House
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I mean, just listen and watch what these protesters are doing, specifically the guy who dumps his
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entire bottle of water on these three legislators.
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Speaking of Texas, one thing I loved about your congressional testimony a few weeks ago
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was Representative West Hunt, who's from Texas.
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He had the most amazing, I don't even know the word for it, because again, it's common
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I watched that video like a hundred times of his response back to this.
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That my four-year-old and my two-year-old daughters will not change in front of biological
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Regardless, I don't care what party you are a part of.
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If you think that we're all equal and the same biologically, you've literally lost your
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And when my two daughters work hard in the sport, work hard in their craft to be the best
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that they can be amongst other women, they will compete against other women.
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I owe Victoria and Olivia and every other young lady in this country that.
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I can assure you, we have an opportunity in this country to get this right in 2024 so we
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Paula, what was your reaction to hearing this, being there when he said that?
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I mean, that's the leadership that every man especially needs to display.
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Definitely the room was full of a lot of people who were definitely not for me and him being
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He was kind of like comedic relief a little bit, but I was like, this is why you come
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He almost made my trip and my experience and everything that happened leading up to it
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There are a lot of people who are very unhappy with me after I testified.
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I was getting a lot of hate comments, but him doing that was just made it all worth
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it and also knowing his daughters, you know, I love that a father that can protect their
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You know, there's a lot of representatives on the other side that have daughters that
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are men, that are women, whatever, and they don't stand up for them.
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And that just breaks my heart knowing that they have daughters and they won't stand up
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So knowing that he is a father of two girls also is so wonderful and he's such a great
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One more legislative piece that was pretty monumental over the past week or so was Governor
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Stitt in Oklahoma signing in to effect the Women's Bill of Rights, which actually we had
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a meeting with Governor Abbott about after the signing about this, this needing to move
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forward in Texas, where you talk about the Women's Bill of Rights, very simply what it
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So the Women's Bill of Rights, you were just there in Oklahoma.
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It just goes a little bit further than what Abbott had already put into law with sports.
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So right now in the state of Texas, women's sports are protected.
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But something else that needs to be considered is bathrooms, prisons, women's shelters, other
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spaces that women in those spaces deserve the same dignity.
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So we were talking to Governor Abbott about putting that in and what that would look like
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So the government is always harder in larger states because there's more representatives
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But we had a great discussion with him about that.
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He's so supportive of the work that we've been doing with IW and other groups that have
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And I thought that we had a wonderful conversation.
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And I'm so hopeful that Texas will also take the Sports and Protecting Women Act even a
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step further and protect all other women's spaces into law.
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I cannot believe we have to have a law that defines what a woman is.
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In other sex-based terms, it defines woman, man, girl, boy, mother, father, male, female.
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I mean, these are terms you don't even learn in school.
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One more announcement that is super-duper exciting that I know we've been working pretty
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We have officially launched the Riley Gaines Center at the Leadership Institute.
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And really what the point of this is, it's to fight the movement to erase women and destroy
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We've been stripped of our opportunities to fairly compete in sport.
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We've been denied scholarships, put in physical danger, and exposed to humiliation in locker
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And I think these injustices will only accelerate if we don't speak up.
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And so what this Riley Gaines Center, what we plan on doing, is empowering students and
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athletes and community leaders and parents and coaches and teachers and other allies to
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advocate for women and girls by providing support and training and mentoring and resources for
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those who want to defend women's identity and our opportunities and to keep us safe through
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Another mission of the center will be to fund college campus speakers.
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Paula, I am so excited to say that you will be one of those speakers who will be going around
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to college campuses, sharing your story, sharing your experience.
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I know Olivia Krolczyk, who was on the podcast a few weeks ago.
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She was the young woman, a college student from University of Cincinnati, who received a zero
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on her assignment for using the term biological woman in an essay.
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Can you talk about the value in putting people like yourself on college campuses in front of
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people our age to share what's what's really happening as it pertains to these cultural
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We know that these universities have agendas that don't always align with what we both believe.
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And we need to kind of be a counterculture to what these universities are teaching and what
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And it's very easy to be a young teenager or a late teenager and a young 20-year-old and
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believe everything that you're being taught in the classroom.
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And you also, even if you hear something you don't agree with, you don't have the tools
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to properly fight it off because you don't know the language to use.
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So one of the importance of bringing us also young individuals onto these campuses is giving
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these young college students the language, the tools that they need to voice their opinions,
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to feel comfortable with their voice, to push back against the agenda of some of these
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universities and these professors and these institutions.
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And it's so important to get young people started early, right?
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It shouldn't be up to 50 and 60-year-old men and women to fix these issues.
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We need to start teaching the young generation how to do these things.
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And I know there's a lot of other people involved in it.
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And we've done a lot of great things already leading up to it.
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So it's going to be a really great school year for these college students.
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You already went through some of the media training and different things at the Leadership
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Did you find it resourceful and really help you learn how to be effective in what you
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I know they have some classes that are open to not just people who are speaking at high
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profile levels or in the Riley Gaines Center themselves.
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I've definitely learned a lot of media tips and tricks.
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I definitely was not expecting to ever have to do things like this.
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I have an engineering degree, which does nothing for public speaking.
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So it was definitely a way to get taught skills that I didn't learn in college and never would
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Those trained through the Riley Gaines Center will leave feeling equipped with the skills
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and the knowledge to effectively speak up and lead in defending female identity on their
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We'll also be doing some school board training, which is super exciting stuff.
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Because again, I've even had to and I know, Paula, you have as well.
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We've had to involve ourselves in conversations even with Republican lawmakers who are on our
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side and really teaching them, helping them understand the language that we need to use
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moving forward, even using the term biological woman.
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While that is true, and both you and myself are biological women, when we have to add that
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word biological, it's implying that there is another kind of woman.
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When we use the term biological woman, without even realizing it, we're compromising.
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And so just little pieces like that so we don't continue down this slippery slope.
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We're building a team and I invite everyone listening to this to join on to the team.
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You can invite us to speak on your campuses, send your story, make a donation.
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And we need all the help we can get in this important fight.
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But we, the silent majority, we must be louder.
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And so the center is the resource that I wish I had when I faced the humiliation of what
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And Paula, I'm so grateful that you're a part of it, as well as Olivia, some other people
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who I won't announce yet, but super duper exciting stuff.
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And everyone listening to this, you can expect another episode with Paula, because as I mentioned,
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we could talk for hours about the different pieces of really what we went through, Paula
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I was so grateful when she spoke up to have her voice, to have her stories, to have her
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Um, but final thoughts, this, these past few weeks, um, I don't think people realize the
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Uh, you've been outspoken, you're in what is a woman, you, you quit your, your job that
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actually, you know, I mean, it paid you really well to do what you were doing with your engineering
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And now you've kind of abandoned that to fight for this.
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And so talk about why talk about, I know, I know this is a generic question that you, you've
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probably answered several times, but I think people need to hear the magnitude of what's
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And so what really thrusted you over that edge?
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Um, you've talked a lot about your course of life changing.
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My mom is actually getting jaw surgery stuff right now.
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And I was just thinking about you this morning.
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So anyway, um, it's a quick aside, but things change, experiences happen.
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And when I first spoke out about this, I wasn't sure if it would, it would lead me to a different
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I just knew that I had to tell my story and I had to do it the most effective way that
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And that if I was going to take that step, I needed to do it the best way that I could.
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Um, and it would have been really easy for me to just speak out a few times and go back
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to my job and forget this ever happened or not ever speak about it at all.
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It's so important for us to be on the ground at these events.
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If I had a normal job, we couldn't have been in the middle of Texas at 2 PM on a, on a Monday.
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It's important to meet those three little girls that we met and see who we're fighting for.
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It's important to think about your family members that have, uh, might have kids yourself
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The two of us don't compete in the NCAA anymore.
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We don't compete in competitive sport anymore, but it's, it's about something so much bigger
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And yes, of course, we've made sacrifices in our personal lives and our journeys into
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what we thought we might've done with our lives.
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But it, this is just so much bigger and so much more important.
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And, you know, I really think, thank the Lord, honestly, for putting me in a position that
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empowered me to feel comfortable speaking and empowered me to continue to want to speak
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Um, and I also am grateful to the Lord for, for you being a part of this as well.
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Um, and so, yeah, that's, that's all I can say.
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And we're just, you know, taking this day by day and seeing what comes.
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Um, and if there's a point in my life where I can stop and go back and re continue my engineering
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I was working as a product manager and go back to that or something similar, maybe that's
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If that's what, you know, my life has in store for me, but for now, this is what we need to
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Um, you mentioned how, if you had a job, you couldn't have been there yesterday, but notice
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the protesters had no problem being there yesterday to Monday.
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Um, secondly, no, we don't compete anymore, but let, let's start our own league.
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Let's start like the retired old batter and slower swimmer league.
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Well, let's just maybe, I think we need to do a relay though.
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I don't know if I can make it down and back in the pool anymore.
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Um, as I mentioned, you've just become a great friend and ally in this fight.
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And I am certain that we will only continue doing phenomenal work and being a megaphone
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for so many who stand alongside us and behind us.
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Everyone make sure to like, subscribe, uh, check out where you get any of your podcasts,
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outkick.com, Apple, Spotify, whatever that looks like.
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And be on the lookout in the future for another episode with Paula, where we're actually able
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to dive more into her story and really what that looked like for her.