Riley Responds to Simone Biles
Episode Stats
Words per Minute
160.7341
Summary
Simone Biles is a GOAT in the gymnastics world, and one of the greatest gymnastics athletes of all time. And yet, she was also the first woman to ever tweet about a woman in the sport of gymnastics. What does that say about the current state of women s sports?
Transcript
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Let me tell you, it's Saturday at the time of me sitting in this chair filming this.
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I'm super annoyed, to be honest with you, to be filming on a Saturday.
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Number one, I spend so much of my time on the road, traveling.
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I'm gone, time away from my dogs, my home, my husband.
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But I was home this weekend, and I was looking forward.
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I was so desperately looking forward to a relaxing, calm weekend at home.
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I went to the gym this morning, got my coffee, came back home,
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as opposed to our normally scheduled shows that we release on Wednesdays?
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I wanted to film while my emotions and thoughts are pretty fresh,
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because just last night, we got into a Twitter or an ex-altercation, if you will,
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In just two tweets, Simone Biles basically tarnished her reputation
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to anyone with a shred of honesty, to anyone with a moral compass,
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and to anyone with an inherent, innate desire to protect women,
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to fight for equal opportunity for both men and women,
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She has what I would believe, what I have seen,
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this is the conclusion I'm drawing based on the response that we have seen
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over the past 12-ish hours at this point on social media.
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She's basically incinerated her legacy in just two tweets.
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There have been very few who have crashed out spectacularly as bad as this.
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Let me get something very clear on the front end of this.
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I have had so much joy over the past eight years watching Simone Biles,
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watching her compete, watching her succeed, watching her dominate.
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I have been very public in my admiration and respect, truthfully, of Simone Biles,
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I mean, she's even gone back at this point and seen some of my tweets.
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Nonetheless, we got into an altercation, you guessed it, over men and women's sports.
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I can't even, for the life of me, understand why in the year 2025,
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Simone Biles would suddenly take the stance that she did.
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It's kind of like this bad case study of what happens when you mix arrogance with the embrace
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And I say arrogance because it's no surprise that Simone Biles, whether it's wearing the
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I believe she had every right to do that, okay?
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And I've known she's always been a liberal, okay?
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We're just going to kind of unpack where this came from, what was said, the back and forth
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Let me pull up the tweets because, again, this is happening now.
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We're going to have to insert some things post-production here.
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The first tweet that Simone Biles put out, again, out of thin air, like this came out
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of nowhere, you know, like off the top rail, no idea where this came from.
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All of this campaigning because you lost a race.
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First of all, saying I lost a race, I'm assuming that she is insinuating, I know which race
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It's the national championships where we had a man in the pool.
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Of course, I have lost so many races over my time as an athlete, right?
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Sure, I've done that more than I've won, as would most, again, athletes at that level.
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But to insinuate that this male beat me and to call me a sore loser because of it, number
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one, he didn't beat me in the race you're referring to.
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We went the exact same time down to the hundredth of a second, which I would describe as mildly
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embarrassing for the six foot four man that you were calling a brave, valiant warrior here.
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Anyways, continuing on, you should be uplifting the trans community and perhaps finding a
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way to make sports inclusive or creating a new avenue where trans feels safe in sports.
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Why is it the job of women to have to create an environment where men feel safe, where men
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have their feelings validated and their identity affirmed?
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If that's what you want to do with the platform that you have, the incredible platform that
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you have, uh, that you've been able to, to build and develop because of your supreme athleticism,
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then by all means, like it's America, you get to do that.
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I get to call you stupid for doing it, but you get to do that if you want to do it.
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I don't believe we're totally opposite ends here.
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I do not believe it's the job of women to make men feel happy.
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Like, like not my job, this whole, you should thing.
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Uh, continuing on maybe a transgender category in all sports.
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I don't think she realized that in that one sentence, she's admitting that these people
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who, who say they are transgender women are really just men.
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She's admitting that by saying we should have a third category.
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Secondly, this has been done several times now, uh, FINA, which is the international
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They were very quick to do this following that national championships.
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They did create a third category, uh, even at the, like the international level, really
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high level meets, uh, to which they said, look, we welcome all who are non-binary gender,
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non-conforming those who identify as transgender.
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Will Thomas sued over this because he said it wasn't satisfactory.
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He didn't want to swim if he couldn't trample on women in the process.
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So this compromise that you're trying to make, don't, don't come to me with it.
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You should go to the other side and see how they feel about this compromise, because it's
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a compromise that they are not willing to make.
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She says, but instead you bully them by bully them.
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She means calling out the cheating boys or men.
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I can't even actually make sense of that last little bit.
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Um, me, someone who has been advocating for the fairness and the safety of women and girls
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on the court or the field or the track, whatever athletic setting it is, they're not safe with
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Anyways, so, so that was the first little encounter that we had.
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Uh, I was pretty quick to respond back just, just very briefly.
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Like I don't have my notifications on with X, but it bypasses.
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Like if there's, if someone comments to you or responds to you or mentions you and they
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have a certain number of followers, it overrides the, the no notification rule, at least on my
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So I get this notification that says, you know, Simone Biles has tagged you and I click on it.
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I was so shocked because again, I've admired her for so long.
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Like I was starstruck really when I got this notification.
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Um, to which at that point I was fully prepared for an onslaught of hatred and negativity to
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come my way from her profile, which is not what happened at all.
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It's not my job or the job of any woman to figure out how to include men in our spaces.
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You can uplift men stealing championships and women's sports with your platform.
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And I say that with my full chest, uh, I then go on to say, look, my take is the least controversial
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Uh, did not have Simone Biles being a male apologist, uh, at the expense of young girls
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Maybe she could compete in the pommel horse and rings in 2028.
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She then tweets and it's separate like little thread here.
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This was just a tweet she put out, she says, bully someone your own size, which would ironically
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This was the one that really took the cake for me.
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A couple of reasons why number one, ironically enough, again, admitting that she knows that
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men and women are, are physiologically, biologically categorically different.
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Anyways, wokeness sometimes actually all the time, uh, blinds the ability to rationally
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Like of what I would describe as, as pure muscle.
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Like when I was in college, I, we don't, I don't have the ability to like measure my body
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Now when I was competing, granted, I was definitely more fit and lean and toned.
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Then, uh, my body fat percentage was 10 to 11%, which is, is pretty severely low actually
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for a, a woman, uh, because of the way our bodies are built.
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Um, and I think the thing that got me the most about this, and again, I'm very secure.
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I've had so many people, it's like been the most sweet and amazing thing ever messaged me,
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I don't need you to do that because my head never went down.
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It never dropped, uh, because I know I'm on the right side of history.
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So comments like this, they don't hurt my feelings.
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So many messages to look, I click on the message app.
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You guys broke my phone like so sweet, so supportive, kind of annoying, uh, that now
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again, on this, this weekend, I intended to be spending peacefully at home.
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Anyways, that's, that's truthfully such a blessing to be able to have that problem.
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Anyways, five foot five Wikipedia, ironically enough, lists me as five foot nine.
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Uh, I actually made a video with my husband debunking this.
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Figured I would whip out a tape measure to settle this debate.
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Simone Biles yesterday told me to bully someone my own size and then said, ironically, that
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This is my six foot four husband, the same height as Will Thomas, my super cute husband.
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I have to stand on it or the haters are going to say we have like a Republican tape measure.
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65 and a half on the nose, the hair below, actually.
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Uh, Wikipedia says, as I mentioned, I'm five foot nine.
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They are very much trying to like lessen the gap there.
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No, he's a full eight, nine inches taller than me.
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Simone Biles commenting on any other woman's body, which it's going to get even crazier
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in, uh, less than a week when I share some, an announcement with you guys, um, as to, I
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mean, just how absurd it is to have a woman commenting on another woman's body, especially
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when it's Simone Biles, a woman who has, I mean, over the years, historically been scrutinized
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She, she has a very masculine, uh, appearing body because of her sport, something athletes
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like me, uh, former athletes like me can understand, right?
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Like that's the body that serves her for the purpose it needs to serve her for.
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That is why she is so good because her body is built the way that it is.
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Um, she, again, because of the scrutiny that she has faced, she has been a part of several
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If you will, uh, we've got a picture here that we're going to insert of, um, one of the
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It says here, it doesn't matter what others say.
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Uh, that's one of the body positivity campaigns that she's been in.
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If we have a video, uh, here that I'm going to show you guys, check it out.
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It helps with gymnastics and it teaches younger girls to love their bodies as well.
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I think I've learned to love my muscles a lot more than when I was younger.
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I feel like if you love your body, then that's all you can do.
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Here she's speaking positively about her muscles in an effort, again, to inspire young girls to
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I'm not one that typically gets behind like the body positivity movement, especially when
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But this I think is incredible, again, to inspire young girls to be fit, to be muscular, to to
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exercise, to have their bodies serve the purpose that it needs to serve them for, especially
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But again, she said, I looked like a man because I oppose boys in girls sports.
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A couple more points I want to make now that I'm thinking about it.
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Number one, for Simone Biles, again, to now come out and say, basically support the idea of men
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participating in women's sports at the expense of young girls dreams.
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The first thing, truthfully, that I thought of was how heroic and brave she was in calling out,
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number one, witnessing and helping to expose the sexual abuse that female gymnasts like herself
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And again, let me make my my stance on this very, very, very clear.
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I hope Larry Nassar spends every single second for the rest of his life rotting away and miserable
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OK, gymnasts were failed by a system that protected an abusive man at the expense of girls safety,
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So Simone and I are on the exact same page there.
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But where we, of course, align a little differently is when other girls outside of Simone Biles or
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I don't say it lightly to compare Larry Nassar to men who want to undress and shower with women,
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which is exactly what me and my teammates had to go through.
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Many of those girls in that locker room describing, again, the scene that I witnessed that I am now
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speaking out against similar in the sense where many of these girls were sexual assault survivors.
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OK, like had already in some way, shape or form experienced sexual abuse.
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Now they're in a setting where they're forced to undress, strip naked in front of a fully grown man
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OK, like could you get more perverted than that?
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Those are the conclusions that I'm drawing here.
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But Simone Biles doesn't seem to take a problem with female athletes who continue to be failed by a system
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that protects abusive men when it comes to the issue of allowing men into our sports and into our locker rooms.
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She believes that women should be forced to strip naked in front of these men to protect the men's feelings.
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I found this yesterday of Simone Biles testifying before Congress again in a manner that I believe to be heroic.
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I am also a survivor of sexual abuse, and I believe without a doubt that the circumstances that led to my abuse
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and allowed it to continue are directly the result of the fact that the organizations created by Congress
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to oversee and protect me as an athlete, USA Gymnastics,
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and the United States Olympic and Paralympic Committee failed to do their jobs.
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I don't want another young gymnast, Olympic athlete, or any individual to experience the horror that I and hundreds of others
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have endured before, during, and continuing to this day in the week
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again, testifying before Congress and the Senate many times,
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Again, to those who can very blatantly see the abuse,
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the sexual, horrific abuse that Larry Nassar was performing
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I mean, I can only relate this to the experience I had.
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Yet, there seems to be a bit of a disconnect here.
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of men should not be allowed to compete in women's sports.