Riley Gaines was an elite collegiate swimmer who was forced to change in front of and compete against a man at the end of her college career. And now, she is still making waves as an advocate for women s sports and so we are going to be talking to Riley today about why she has chosen to step up. Also, she has a special announcement that she's making at the ending of this episode.
00:09:23.880So whether it's your own personal trials or tribulations or hardships or inconveniences or seeming distractions or obstacles or hindrances,
00:09:33.400or whether, again, we're looking at how the culture is going, how our country is going,
00:09:38.580there's nothing that shocks God and nothing can thwart his plans.
00:09:42.940He will use it all for the advancement of the gospel.
00:12:48.240If it weren't so sad, it would be laughable that this is something that's even debated or allowed.
00:12:52.700But a legitimately wonderful and amazing female swimmer, Riley Gaines, competed against him.
00:13:01.500And you can see in this picture that we have up on YouTube as she is looking at him thinking,
00:13:08.120what in the heck she actually tied with him?
00:13:10.000As I'll talk to Riley about, which makes her pretty, pretty incredible at swimming.
00:13:14.420She decided to then take her platform that she gained from competing against him and speaking out about having to change with this person in the locker room to fight for women's rights in sports and in sex exclusive spaces.
00:13:32.600So let me tell you or let me show you the speech that she gave that went viral about competing against Will Thomas.
00:13:42.600It's impossible to speak for everyone.
00:13:44.740But I can attest to the tears that were shed on that pool deck by these poor ninth and 17th place finishers who missed out on being named an All-American by one place.
00:13:52.420And I can attest to the extreme discomfort in the locker room when you turn around and there is a male watching you undress while exposing himself.
00:14:00.960I can attest to the anger and frustration from these girls who had worked so hard and sacrificed so much to get to this point.
00:14:07.640And we'll get into the details about that.
00:14:11.460But you'll notice she pointed out that there are women who missed out on these opportunities by one place because they had to compete against a man who has different aerobic, anaerobic capacity, muscle mass, bone density, a bigger heart, all of these things that make it much easier for him to compete against them.
00:14:29.040And Riley, for her stance and for her curse, she didn't have to do this, but she took the steps to defend these girls who cannot speak up for themselves.
00:14:39.940And she has gotten she has gotten a lot of a lot of vitriol.
00:14:45.180Here she is at San Francisco State University after giving a speech about why it's important to protect women's sports.
00:14:59.040Yeah, it's like what we talked about on Thursday.
00:15:26.960We had to bleep out a lot of what was being said, psychopathy, narcissism, violence.
00:15:33.240It's just kind of intrinsic, unfortunately, in this activist class of this ideology.
00:15:38.800So she's taken a lot of hits for this.
00:15:40.980I'm I just admire her a lot for taking a stand.
00:15:44.580And I'm so glad that she is that she's here today.
00:15:48.600And then we also she's also got a pretty special announcement to make at the end of this.
00:15:54.620So without further ado, here is Riley Gaines.
00:15:56.960Riley Gaines, thanks so much for being here and thanks for what you do.
00:16:51.640It really would have been easy for me to kind of just ride off into the sunset and continue on with the plans that I had made for myself.
00:16:58.880But after seeing and feeling the injustice of competing against the biological man and everything that came with it in terms of the locker room, in terms of the silencing that our institutions and universities were trying to to submiss our voices.
00:17:15.320Seeing that I saw such a need for someone to stand up to it.
00:17:22.980But I feel as if I was kind of thrusted into this position and I feel like it would be a disservice to not only myself, not even just female athletes, all women to not take a stance in the truth.
00:17:36.540But your fellow competitors and I'm sure teammates really felt the same way that you did.
00:17:42.040And so I just wonder what it was about you and the grit inside you that made you step out in a way that a lot of other female athletes did it.
00:18:10.380Or was there a moment that you were like, I'm going to do the hard thing?
00:18:13.940The moment that thrusted me into the position of taking a public stance was when after I tied with biological male Leah Thomas in the 200 free cell, we go behind the awards podium.
00:18:26.780And keep in mind, this is the fastest meet in the world.
00:18:29.560This is the most elite female swimmers in the country.
00:18:31.760And so we go behind the awards podium and the NCAA official looks at both Thomas and myself after tying down to the hundredth of a second.
00:18:40.620But we have one trophy and we're going to give that trophy to Leah because Leah has to have it for pictures.
00:18:46.500And so that was the moment when I, of course, knew what was happening before this was wrong in terms of the unfair competition.
00:18:52.320And again, the locker room, but when they reduce everything we'd worked our entire life for down to a photo op to validate the feelings and the identity of a male at the expense of our own.
00:19:58.320We're changing the language that we use.
00:20:00.340Again, the silencing aspect of it is really deeply rooted in Marxism.
00:20:05.500You can open any history book and see how that turns out for any civilization.
00:20:08.900And so I think that's kind of what really gives me the strength to stand firm, stand secure, and take the arrows because I know what I'm standing for.
00:20:19.780Yeah, that's something that we say a lot on this show is sharing the arrows.
00:20:36.160That when someone is unfairly maligned for something or someone is bullied for saying something that is so obviously true, like men and women are different, then rather than backing down and saying, oh, I'm so glad that that wasn't me.
00:20:48.560That teaches me a lesson never to stand up.
00:20:53.220We should all stand up and say, you know what?
00:20:54.900The arrows that Riley's getting, you can send them my way too, because this is true and therefore it's worth standing for.
00:21:01.340I mean, I think it's just like a God-given grit and courage and determination in you that he just decided, okay, there's going to be someone who is going to stand up for this.
00:21:13.480And I mean, that person, there's a lot of people, but that person right now is you.
00:21:18.480And I just wonder if before all of this happened with Leah slash Will Thomas, if you considered yourself political or if you were involved in the culture wars at all, or were you just like head down, collegiate athlete, didn't care about that kind of stuff?
00:21:57.340So there wasn't much time to get involved in anything else.
00:22:00.580And that wasn't my main concern at the time.
00:22:03.060And now a year past being done swimming, I've taken a step back, of course, and I kind of realized I was naive to everything going on.
00:22:12.660And I always considered myself in tune and I don't want to consider myself someone who is naive, but I kind of was with what's happening and how we've gotten to the point that we've gotten to.
00:22:23.360And had you been swimming like from little, little, like competitively?
00:22:27.880I started swimming when I was four, just your typical summer swim that a lot of kids do.
00:22:32.380But then by the time I turned eight, so in second grade, that's when I started swimming year round.
00:22:37.760So really from eight to 18, you practice every day, two hours a day.
00:22:43.080And then, of course, middle school, high school, you go to practice before school, then you go to school and then you go back to practice.
00:22:48.860And like I said, in college, you're swimming six hours a day, three of those hours being before 8 a.m.
00:22:53.720And was it ever a question growing up, middle school or high school, about whether male competitions and female competitions were different when it came to swimming?
00:23:04.040Or was it always just, yeah, obviously, boys and girls are going to be separated?
00:24:01.020Take me back to the moment, because you have described this.
00:24:03.640I saw a snippet of it from another podcast when, I mean, that very awkward and I'm sure in some ways traumatizing moment, like when you were changing in the locker room.
00:24:25.400We were not forewarned we'd be sharing a locker room.
00:24:28.060No one told us that we would be forced to do such.
00:24:30.740The only time we became aware of this was when we were in the locker room and Leah Thomas, a 6'4", 22-year-old man, walks in, drops his clothes, and is fully intact with and exposing male genitalia while we're simultaneously undressing.
00:24:45.600Of course, it feels like belittlement.
00:25:53.680I think the irony behind it all is almost hysterical.
00:25:58.020It really is comical seeing how, of course, the left was once a party that embraced women's rights, embraced empowering and recognizing and celebrating women based off of their own uniqueness.
00:26:09.440And now we're seeing the narrative totally flipped, even in regards to Title IX.
00:26:15.280This is the same party who once fought for Title IX.
00:26:18.160And now the Biden administration is actively working to undermine that entire fight by changing the definition, changing or rewriting it to where it's no longer preventing discrimination on the basis of sex.
00:26:30.000It's preventing discrimination on the basis of gender identity.
00:26:32.740So what this means is men can join sororities, which is already happening.
00:26:35.720It's happening at University of Wyoming, where these girls are pursuing a lawsuit and what they've I've talked to them at great lengths as well.
00:26:42.300And what they're enduring is terrible.
00:27:20.320So these girls, I mean, that's hard for anyone to do, especially when you see what happens to someone like me when I go to San Francisco State University and speak about something, again, that should not be controversial.
00:27:32.520Explaining my experience, what we face in the locker room, the silencing piece and just how men and women are different.
00:27:39.140That's not something that should require courage to say.
00:27:41.940And it's not something that should be controversial.
00:27:43.440No, and we played that clip before you came on of San Francisco State and just the mob, the assaults, the absolute disgusting harassment that you endured simply for saying that men and women are different.
00:27:59.500And like you said, explaining your lived experience, which we are told is so important to be able to explain our lived experience and to have empathy in all these things.
00:28:09.620The very same people wielding those words and weaponizing those words.
00:28:12.740They don't mean them when it comes to people that they disagree with.
00:28:16.260What does your husband think about this?
00:28:18.320I mean, I'm sure like you were dating your husband at the time that the whole Will Leah Thomas thing happened.
00:28:23.020I'm sure as a man, he's like, oh, my gosh.
00:28:25.460And then now the abuse that you endure.
00:29:47.260My little sister, who's the Tennessee state champion for gymnastics, so she doesn't have to go through this.
00:29:52.740I can't imagine being in the position that I'm in, facing what we face, seeing what we saw, having the testimony that I have in regards to the trophy and how that was handled and not fighting for them.
00:30:17.240How many girls have to get injured before someone does something?
00:30:20.740How many girls have to be exploited in a locker room?
00:30:22.960How many girls have to be asked to kindly smile and step aside and allow these men onto our podiums and onto our teams, taking our scholarships and our trophies, our accolades?
00:33:44.480My message to female athletes, I get messages all the time from girls, from parents who tell me, you know, my daughter's quitting her sport because she's discouraged.
00:33:54.600You know, she plays on her high school basketball team and they're going against men or they have men on their team.
00:33:59.180And she just doesn't want to play anymore.
00:34:58.060So I've just realized that these are people who are insecure with themselves and they will resort to anything to try to silence you.
00:35:06.460But they can't dissuade from your argument.
00:35:08.060And it is not bad for your brand to defend women.
00:35:10.920Yeah, I saw Thomas on a podcast recently and he and the other person were talking about how people like us, you know, that they would label TERFs or whatever, are the ones who were really dealing with like deep seated insecurity ourselves.
00:35:27.060And, of course, as always, it's projection.
00:36:30.040And then we actually heard a few days later that she wanted to come back and make an announcement.
00:36:35.460She wasn't actually able to be here in person.
00:36:37.860And so we recorded a remote interview with her so she could make a very special announcement on this show.
00:36:45.680She's going to tell us something about Title IX.
00:36:48.320And I will let her explain what that news is.
00:36:50.380But just to give a little context, because we didn't we weren't able to get into this in our original interview.
00:36:55.600Let me tell you about the Biden Education Department's proposed changes to Title IX that Riley and others have been pushing back against.
00:37:03.880So in April, the Biden administration announced that it has some new proposed amendments to Title IX that would prohibit schools that would prohibit schools receiving federal funds from enforcing bans on males competing in female sports.
00:37:19.440So basically, if you had a school that received federal funds that says, sorry, only women can play in women's sports, only girls can play in girls sports, they would no longer receive those federal funds.
00:37:31.940Schools would be prohibited from adopting or applying a one size fits all.
00:37:35.940Policy that categorically bans so-called transgender students from participating on sports teams consistent with their so-called gender identity.
00:37:43.440This is all absolutely ridiculous, considering that bodies compete, not identities.
00:37:49.780Schools covered by the proposed rule would be permitted to draft their own policies, limiting athletic participation based on a set of sex related criteria unique to their community.
00:38:01.800They must take into account each sport level of competition and greater education level.
00:38:06.520The department said any restriction should be substantially related to the achievement of an important educational objective and designed to minimize harms to transgender students, not minimize harms to women, minimize harms to men who think that they're women.
00:38:19.160Because no one's worried, by the way, about girls who want to compete on boys sports teams.
00:38:23.780That's happening very, very, very rarely.
00:38:49.840This is what the Biden administration is proposing we protect.
00:38:55.720It is expected that transgender elementary school students will generally be able to participate on sports teams consistent with their gender identity, while older students are expected to be subjected to sex-related criteria that limit their participation in sports.
00:39:49.340First and foremost, I want to say to the people who commented on this Title IX public comment period that the Biden administration put forward, we did a phenomenal job because they have now delayed their implementation of changing Title IX, which is great news.
00:40:06.700That being said, we have an administration in the White House right now who does want to rid women and girls of opportunities, not just in sports, but women and girls in general.
00:40:16.280They're really, with aggression proceeding with this erasure, the systemic erasure of woman and womanhood and what it means to be a woman.
00:40:26.340As we've also seen, this presidential election in 2024, it's gearing up, it's gaining traction, it's crucial to get behind a Republican candidate who will support these cultural issues.
00:40:41.000And that is why I am so excited to announce that I am endorsing Governor DeSantis for president.
00:40:47.180I really first became active in politics because of this assault on women's sports, especially.
00:40:53.420That being said, I followed Governor DeSantis' success in Florida, especially in what he's done there and how well he has succeeded and how well it's resonated with his constituents there.
00:41:04.080I feel like our elected leaders, they've totally abandoned us until Ron DeSantis.
00:41:11.680I'm thrilled we have conversed a lot behind these issues, and I know that he will do a phenomenal job in putting the right foot forward in protecting women and girls and protecting children.
00:41:22.400That's what this whole movement is about.
00:41:35.120Well, thank you so much for announcing that on this show.
00:41:38.560Tell us just a little bit more about what makes you so confident among the other candidates that Ron DeSantis is going to be the one to champion this really important issue of protecting the rights and the safety and the fairness of women and girls.
00:42:12.780He is this leader who makes fighting this gender ideology movement really a litmus test for conservatives across the country.
00:42:19.620And that being said, I think these cultural issues that we're seeing in regards to this gender ideology propaganda, whether that's sports, whether that's through corporations, as we're seeing in Target and Bud Light and all kinds of others, whether that's in the education system, really just seeing how he's handled this.
00:42:39.900Truthfully, I think they're spiritual warfare and seeing how he's tackled them, seeing how he's handled them really with no he's really drawn the line.
00:42:47.920And I've yet to see another candidate do so such as he has.
00:42:50.660Therefore, I think he's absolutely entirely the best option to handle these.