Riley Gaines is an outstanding athlete and one of the most prominent advocates today for fairness in women s sports. Born and raised in Tennessee, Riley rose through the world of competitive swimming and excelled on the University of Kentucky s swimming team, earning numerous titles and SEC awards. Her journey took an unexpected turn when she found herself competing against Leah Thomas, a male swimmer on the U.S. women s team. In today s episode, we discuss Riley s swim career, her experience competing against Thomas, and the consequences of her speaking out. We also dive deep into her advocacy work with legislative bodies and the potential legal fallout for women across America. In this episode of the Sunday Special, we chat with Riley about her life, her career, and her new book, Swimming Against the Current, which is coming out May 21st. To find a list of our sponsors and show-related promo codes, go to gimlet.fm/OurAdvertisers. To learn more about our sponsor discount code: CROWN15 for 15% off your purchase of a new CROWN 15-piece Spring Cleaning Set, CROYE15, CRYE15 for a total of $99 or $99 for a two-piece set of seven pieces of snowboarder and a custom snowboard set, CRYING 15, plus shipping and shipping service, and a free shipping set, to any other retailer willing to accept $5,000, they'll get a discount code! We'll be working with a third-party sponsor to get you an ad-free version of the entire set, and we'll get you a personalized experience in the entire experience, including a review, and an entire set of the experience, and they'll also get it all that'll be that'll get it in the ad, and you'll get all of that'll say it's that'll work it, it'll also receive it's best of it, will get it's chance to review it, and all of your best guide and a review and a full of it's guide and it'll get that'll also say it'll hear it's a review? Thanks for listening to it, too say it, right in the review and other things like that, right at it's review and your guide to it's truly, right on it's $5 or your guide, and more, right, it's not that's it's really that's a good thing, right they'll have it, really they'll really hear it, you'll really get it, etc.
00:00:32.000I think we have a lot of people who like to complain.
00:00:34.000We have a lot of talking heads, people on, again, social media, Twitter, on both sides of the aisle, who aren't actually willing to do anything about it, which is frustrating.
00:00:45.000Riley Gaines is an outstanding athlete and one of the most prominent advocates today for fairness in women's sports.
00:00:50.000Born and raised in Tennessee, Riley rose through the world of competitive swimming and excelled on the University of Kentucky's swimming team, earning numerous titles and SEC awards.
00:00:59.000Riley's journey took an unexpected turn when she found herself competing against Leah Thomas, a male swimmer, on the University of Pennsylvania's women's team.
00:01:05.000Riley's advocacy for the protection of female locker rooms and fairness in women's sports sparked a national debate around gender identity and its dangerous implications.
00:01:13.000Today, through her eponymous center at the Leadership Institute, Riley travels around the country to fight for the maintenance of Title IX policies and the protection of single-sex spaces.
00:01:21.000Her book, Swimming Against the Current, fighting for common sense in a world that's lost its mind, touches on the very nature of truth and the emergence of a fourth wave of feminism.
00:01:29.000In today's episode, we discuss Riley's swim career, her experience competing against Leah Thomas, and the consequences of her speaking out.
00:01:35.000We also dive deep into her advocacy work with legislative bodies and the potential legal fallout for women across America.
00:01:40.000this and much more in this episode of the Sunday Special.
00:01:43.000Riley, thanks so much for stopping by.
00:02:42.000Swimming, softball, soccer, basketball, all the things.
00:02:46.000Stuck with swimming, though, which really couldn't have been a better option for me.
00:02:53.000Went to University of Kentucky, where I very proudly finished my career as a 12-time NCAA All-American, five-time SEC champion, SEC record holder in the 200 butterfly, making me one of the fastest Americans of all time.
00:03:07.000Two-time Olympic trial qualifier, SEC Scholar Athlete of the Year, SEC Community Service Leader of the Year, but all of that to just reiterate, it's a lifelong journey.
00:03:16.000Upon getting to Kentucky, you mentioned the training and what that kind of looked like.
00:03:20.000Oh my gosh, Ben, I thought I worked hard before college.
00:03:23.000I was wrong, because upon getting to college, we were in the water six hours every single day, with three of those hours being before 8 a.m.
00:03:35.000to 8 a.m., you go to class, you come back, you practice again from 1.30 to 4.30.
00:03:40.000Ate your dinner, did your homework, iced your shoulders, went to bed, woke up, did it all again the next day.
00:03:45.000We swam probably 15,000 yards every single day, which is equivalent to about 10 miles every single day.
00:03:53.000So to say it was a time commitment and sacrifices were made would be an understatement.
00:04:00.000I mean that's an astonishing amount of work and obviously it's not just you, it's also your teammates and all the other women who are competing in the sport in which you were competing.
00:04:07.000So why don't you tell us about how you first found out what was going on with Leah Thomas.
00:04:14.000So, I'll take you back to my junior year of college.
00:04:17.000I ended up placing 7th in the country, which, it wasn't a best time, but I was proud of this.
00:04:22.000You're top 8, you're an All-American, it's a pretty high honor.
00:04:24.000But it was right then and there that I placed 7th in the nation my junior year, that I set a goal for my senior year to win a national title, which would of course mean becoming the fastest woman in the country in my respective event.
00:04:36.000And so senior year rolls around, uh, I'm right on pace to achieve this goal.
00:04:41.000About midway through my senior season, I was ranked third in the nation in the 200 freestyle trailing the girl in second, uh, by a few one hundreds of a second, a girl I knew very well.
00:04:50.000Uh, because like in most sports, your top tier athletes know of each other, regardless of where you compete, because we had grown up competing against each other.
00:04:59.000So I knew the girl in second place very well, but the swimmer who was leading the nation.
00:05:23.000A lot of stuff that didn't make sense.
00:05:27.000Keep in mind we hadn't seen a photo of this person or else things would have been a little more clear.
00:05:31.000But for all I knew at the time, This was a senior, which no one just comes out of nowhere their senior year, from University of Pennsylvania, which is not a school that has ever or has historically produced that caliber level of swimmers, leading the nation by body lengths, as I said, ranging in events from the 100 freestyle, which is a sprint, and all of the freestyle events in between through the mile, which is, of course, long distance.
00:06:13.000And we continued to stay in the dark until an article came out.
00:06:18.000And in this article, very briefly disclosed in a blip of a sentence, as if we were really supposed to just read right over it.
00:06:25.000It said, word for word, Leah Thomas is formerly Will Thomas and swam three years on the men's team at University of Pennsylvania before deciding to switch to the women's team.
00:06:34.000And so when I read this, this is in November of 2021, when I read this, of course I was shocked.
00:07:08.000They did not see it the way that I did, that my parents did, that my teammates, my family, my coaches, anyone with any amount of brain activity would probably see this.
00:07:19.000And to your point, upon looking up who Will Thomas was, This was a man who, in the same event the year prior, ranked 554th when competing against the men.
00:07:30.000As I said, was leading the nation in the 100 freestyle.
00:07:32.000He wasn't even top 3,000 when competing against the men the year prior.
00:07:40.000So about three weeks before our national championships in March of 2022, they announced that Thomas's participation in the women's category was a non-negotiable, meaning There was nothing that we could do as female athletes.
00:07:52.000There was no questions that we could ask or concerns that we could raise.
00:07:56.000We were told we had to accept this with a smile on our face.
00:07:59.000And so, you know, how exactly did you go about dealing with that?
00:08:03.000And then obviously there's all sorts of controversy over Leah Thomas in the locker room, what the behavior looked like in the locker room for the other ladies who are on the team and also at tournaments.
00:08:13.000So why don't you explain how sort of the controversy played out for, you know, we all saw it at the 30,000 foot level, we saw some headlines, but obviously you were there and saw it in person.
00:09:27.000You'll lose your scholarship and your playing time.
00:09:29.000And oh yeah, Riley, speaking of that scholarship, remember you signed that.
00:09:33.000And when you signed that scholarship, you gave away your rights to speak in your own personal capacity.
00:09:38.000Remember who you represent, whose name is across your chest and across your cap, because it's not yours.
00:09:44.000It's ours and understand we have already taken your stance for you.
00:09:48.000So there was a lot of fear, really, I mean the threats and the intimidation that they had instilled at the time that to me that seemed real, which now I realize what a bunch of mumbo-jumbo all that stuff was.
00:10:05.000But nonetheless, upon getting to the meat, Those feelings of intrigue and curiosity and feeling like we were in this circus shifted immediately to feelings of heartbreak.
00:10:19.000Really, I mean, I think that's the best way to put it.
00:10:26.000If you qualify top 16, you'll come back that evening and you'll swim finals, which is where you achieve your overall national ranking.
00:10:33.000And so the first session of a week-long meet, I'm sitting there watching and it's the 500 Freestyle, which is the event that Thomas won the national title in that evening.
00:10:42.000And so I'm standing next to this girl from Virginia Tech.
00:11:43.000But despite tying down to the hundredth of a second, We go behind the awards podium, the NCAA official looks at both Thomas and myself, Thomas towering over me, and the official says, great job, you two, but you tied.
00:11:56.000And we only have one trophy, so we're going to give the trophy to Leah.
00:12:01.000And when I asked the dreaded question of why, the question no one dared ask all season, the question that they clearly weren't given a script of how to answer, I actually appreciate his honesty because this official said, Riley, I'm sorry, but we've been advised that when photos are being taken, it's crucial that the trophies in Leah's hands.
00:12:23.000That's what the unfair competition looked like.
00:12:25.000You mentioned the locker room very briefly.
00:12:29.000First of all, we weren't forewarned that we would be sharing this changing space.
00:13:06.000I think the best words to describe the locker room atmosphere was, I mean, it felt like betrayal.
00:13:13.000It was an utter violation and it was traumatic and not even necessarily traumatic because of what we were forced to see or how we were forcibly and non-consensually exploited.
00:13:24.000It was traumatic for me to know just how easy it was for those people who created and enforced these policies to totally dismiss our rights to privacy without even a second thought, without even bare minimum forewarning us that this would be the arrangement.
00:13:39.000I mean, this whole thing, obviously, is astonishing to anybody who's got half a brain.
00:13:44.000It is totally incredible that you put in all this effort, all this hard work.
00:13:48.000One of the kind of lines that's been used by pro-trans feminists has been the idea, well, you know, all of that's a lie.
00:13:57.000All of these divergences between the sexes, well, sex is a fluid thing, and obviously you have women who are more competitive than other women, so what's What's really the big deal?
00:14:06.000Shouldn't you be flattered that you are able to compete against a biological male?
00:14:11.000What do you make of all of those statements?
00:14:14.000I mean, it's, again, it takes you back to this almost comical reality of it.
00:14:21.000Because it is, like, the irony is astounding here.
00:14:25.000You have women or people who have claimed to champion women, the rights of women, fighting for equal pay, all of the different things, who are now leading the charge in dismantling sex-based protections.
00:14:43.000No one would know who Megan Rapinoe is if it weren't for women's sports, if it weren't for Title IX, if she weren't granted the opportunity and reap the benefits of playing in women-only sports.
00:14:55.000Do we need to remind everyone that her U.S.
00:14:59.000women's national team lost like 12 to nothing to a group of 15 and under boys?
00:15:04.000Same thing with Serena Williams, right?
00:15:07.000Which she's been quoted, I think, on David Letterman back in like 2013 saying, hey, I don't want to play men's tennis.
00:15:14.000Oh my gosh, I would lose in a blowout, which she did.
00:15:18.000Both her and Venus lost to the 203rd ranked male player who drank in between sets, was smoking in between sets, and played 18 holes of golf before.
00:15:29.000It's not bigotry to say that, it's biology.
00:15:33.000And so yeah, these so-called feminists, even most recently when I testified before Congress, I was sat next to the president of the National Women's Law Center.
00:16:14.000Title IX was enacted 52 years ago, and now we have a president in the White House who's just rewritten, illegally, an illegal administrative rewrite of Title IX and abolished it as we once knew it, by equating sex and gender identity.
00:16:29.000It doesn't make sense, but that's their goal, is to blur the lines of objective truth of biological reality.
00:16:39.000So let's talk about your personal journey in terms of speaking out about this.
00:16:42.000So you mentioned that the University of Kentucky told you you needed to sit down and shut up, that you should basically just accept the standard.
00:16:50.000When was the moment where you decided that you'd had enough of this and that you weren't going to sit still for it any longer?
00:16:54.000It was that trophy moment because up until this point, I just thought, Someone else would handle it.
00:17:02.000Someone else somewhere would be... I guess for someone who was supposed to be protecting us, I naively thought that they would protect us, right?
00:17:11.000A coach, someone within the NCAA, someone with political power, some other swimmer, someone's dad, quite honestly, would come down there and yank this man out of our locker rooms.
00:17:20.000But it was in that moment, when I'm standing on the podium, Sharing my podium spot with a man towering over me, a man who, you know, had literally just grown out his hair.
00:17:48.000And it hit me, what in the world am I applauding?
00:17:51.000I'm applauding our own erasure, our own demise.
00:17:54.000That's what I'm cheering on right now.
00:17:56.000And it hit me, how in the world could we as women, as female athletes, Expect someone to stand up for us if we aren't even willing to stand up for ourselves This has to come from us.
00:18:09.000And so that was kind of I think the first defining moment and since then I've only been reassured That the stand that I have taken Unapologetically and firmly is in fact the right stand.
00:18:22.000I never questioned this but the vitriol that I face, the anger, the violence in many instances that I face for merely saying that there are two sexes and that you can't change your sex and that each sex is deserving of equal opportunity, privacy and safety.
00:18:45.000All of the angst that comes with that It kind of just reassures me that I'm right over the target, right?
00:18:52.000You don't waste ammunition on targets that you don't want to hit.
00:18:55.000So, many defining moments since that first one, but I think the podium moment was when I really realized the severity, the trajectory, and what's at stake if we don't speak out.
00:19:06.000So what were your first steps into the public arena politically?
00:19:09.000Because it became a political hot button, obviously.
00:19:37.000The Daily Wire was my first step, to be totally honest with you.
00:19:42.000There were many reporters who were at that meet, which we all know swimming is not a sport that garners media attention, but this meet was different.
00:19:50.000There was left-leaning reporters, right-leaning reporters, everything in between, and they were desperately Reaching out, they would find your name on the heat sheet.
00:20:10.000And again, this was me and all my teammates.
00:20:12.000But we had all been instructed, do not speak to the media.
00:20:16.000And so my inbox was flooded with all kinds of reporters.
00:20:22.000And so I thought to myself, I'm going to send this to our sports information director, see what she says about speaking to them, which she was very clear when she responded and said, thanks for sending me these.
00:20:36.000I said, I didn't ask you to decline them for me.
00:20:39.000And that's when I took it upon myself.
00:20:42.000I had a bunch of reporters to pick from as to who I would share my experience with, the locker room stories, the silencing, all the different aspects, pieces of the pie here.
00:20:55.000And I talked to Mary Margaret Olahan at the Daily Wire, and she was instrumental in helping me feel confident and comfortable enough to share our lived experience.
00:21:07.000Again, nothing even opinionated about it.
00:23:35.000It means suggestion is what it meant in that case.
00:23:38.000And so having that experience with COVID, I knew our universities weren't going to do anything.
00:23:43.000There was no legal grounds for them to be able to do anything.
00:23:47.000So, I called them on their bluff, which not a lot of people were willing to do.
00:23:51.000So, when you look at the reaction, what's so weird about this particular issue is that if you poll Americans as to whether they believe that men should be able to compete in women's sports, this is like an 80-20 issue.
00:24:00.000The vast, vast, vast, it's hard to find an issue in American life that unites left and right and center in such a way as to say, should biological men be able to compete With women, because everybody understands the innate absurdity of the proposition.
00:24:15.000But this has become insanely politically divisive at the top levels, in terms of sort of the elites of our society.
00:24:22.000Not the common man who votes Democrat who thinks it's an idiotic idea, and the common man Republican who thinks it's an idiotic idea, but the people who are elected officials.
00:24:30.000You've been going around talking about this issue obviously for a while now, and you've talked to Democrats, you've talked to Republicans.
00:24:37.000Have you been received by the various parties?
00:24:40.000I will tell you, I mean, you hit the nail on the head.
00:24:43.000The way the media portrays this issue, the way our elected officials are voting on this issue is not representative at all of society as a whole.
00:24:55.000I think this is the worst thing that they could do for their party.
00:24:58.000We mentioned Title IX and what the Biden administration has done.
00:25:01.000Let's call this what it is, the most anti-woman, anti-reality pursuit we have seen from this administration thus far.
00:25:10.000I can't imagine who in the world is advising him that this is a good idea, that this is something they should pursue, because in my experience, and talking with people, people of all different backgrounds all over the country, really all over the world, There's a lot more common sense people than what Twitter or our media shows.
00:25:33.000I've talked to so many Democrats, people who call themselves lifelong liberals, people who are a part of this LGBT community, who say this is way too far.
00:25:48.000People who have kids, who have young girls, who want their girls to be able to have opportunities, who intuitively know, common sense people who intuitively know that men and women are different.
00:26:02.000And that's still the majority of society, despite what we see, despite the negative stories.
00:26:08.000I certainly believe that the tide is turning.
00:26:10.000I mean, truth and sanity, they always prevail.
00:26:12.000It's kind of just a matter of how long do we have to endure this?
00:26:19.000How many girls have to be exploited in locker rooms before People find it necessary and worthwhile and urgent, quite frankly, to take action.
00:26:30.000There's just been too many stories up until this point.
00:26:34.000And so I think this is the worst thing that the Democrats could do to themselves, is pigeonhole themselves as anti-reality, anti-woman.
00:26:47.000We'll get to more on this in just a moment.
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00:27:49.000One of the things that I've been pointing out for a long time is that there are particular issues that are very radical that the left has decided to embrace, that certain people have decided to embrace, that no one actually believes, but they do it as a virtue signal to the rest of the group.
00:28:03.000That if you're willing to even humor the stupidity that a man can be a woman, well then you're willing to do anything.
00:28:07.000You've shown true fealty to the ideology if you're willing to go to a campus and yell at Riley Gaines for pointing out that men are not women. And it does feel as though the sort of apotheosis
00:28:19.000of that are these protest movements where it's the same people, they're just putting on
00:28:22.000different hats. I mean the same people who are in the quad at Columbia yelling about Israel are exactly
00:28:27.000the same people who are showing up to your speeches and screaming at you and physically threatening
00:28:32.000you and it's the same administrators who are pooh-poohing that.
00:28:35.000Why don't you talk about what's happening on some of these college campuses because
00:28:38.000obviously I've had some of this over the years but you've gotten it in extraordinary ways
00:28:42.000as well and the media were bound and determined to pretend that none of it ever happened.
00:28:47.000Of course, yes, and you know better than anyone but yeah, to your point, there have been several
00:28:54.000I spoke on 25 different college campuses this past semester, so a fairly large amount.
00:29:00.000And I think on these 25 different college campuses, there's probably 10, 12 people arrested for trying to attack me, hurl themselves at me, throwing things at me, all the different things.
00:29:14.000One of those, I mentioned the kind of defining moments for me, one of those was speaking at San Francisco State University last year.
00:29:21.000I was naive to think that the student body, the community members would come with an open mind and the willingness to have their hearts softened because they did not.
00:29:59.000I'm being punched by these men wearing dresses, which fortunately for me, their punches really don't hurt that bad.
00:30:07.000But anyways, these protesters They ended up barricading me in a room and holding me for ransom for four or five hours through the middle of the night.
00:30:15.000Now you might be wondering, okay, well, where are the police?
00:30:36.000To which they said, no, there's nothing we can do.
00:30:40.000We're not allowed to do anything because we're not allowed to be seen as anything other than an ally to that community or else we'll lose our jobs.
00:30:48.000And keep in mind, this is the same community who's on the other side of the door calling these officers racist pigs for protecting a white girl like me.
00:30:58.000The Dean of Students shows up, again, the middle of the night, it's probably midnight, and starts negotiating with these students how much I owe each of them to be able to leave, to which the price they agreed upon was $10 each, which makes me mad, because I think I'm worth more than $10.
00:31:16.000You couldn't even get me out of bed for $10.
00:31:17.000I'm like, you guys are like, whatever.
00:31:19.000So anyways, eventually, we're able to get out of there.
00:31:24.000But the next day, And I think this really speaks to...
00:31:29.000Just how, I mean, it's like a Frankenstein story to me, how these universities have created these monsters, which now, because of everything going on in the Middle East and the protests and different things we're seeing, we are seeing how these hideous creatures that these universities have created are ultimately, they'll be the demise of the creator.
00:31:49.000But anyways, the university, it was the Vice President of Student Affairs at San Francisco State University.
00:31:57.000She sent out a university-wide email to the professors, the faculty, the entire student body, and in this email she said, we are so proud of our brave students for handling Riley Gaines in the manner that they did.
00:32:11.000We know how deeply traumatic her presence is on this campus, and so here are some counseling resources for you guys.
00:32:19.000Just know that we see you, we love you, we hear you, and we stand with you.
00:32:26.000Nowhere in this email did it say we condemn violence, violence against women for that matter.
00:32:30.000Nowhere in this email did it say we uphold our First Amendment rights and the freedom of speech.
00:32:37.000And actually, just recently, the police department, the same officers who were locked in the room with me, the same officer, She sent me an email and she said there's no evidence anywhere to charge anyone with anything.
00:32:51.000She couldn't charge the individual students, she couldn't charge the university, she couldn't charge the police department for failing at their most basic duties in ensuring my safety.
00:33:00.000So there's no evidence, despite what a quick Google search would show her.
00:33:05.000There's an ample amount of audio, video, eyewitness testimony Of course, she knows because she was in the room.
00:33:11.000But nonetheless, all that to say, we certainly have a two-tiered justice system, and universities are beyond, beyond a scam.
00:33:22.000So, obviously, you're a very successful woman.
00:33:55.000This isn't what I want to spend my time doing.
00:33:58.000I want to spend my time on my farm with all my dogs and my horses, and that's what I want to do.
00:34:03.000Eventually get back to... I was set to specialize in endodontics, which is root canals, which now, I don't know, that kind of seems miserable now that... But maybe not as miserable as what we're doing now, so perspective.
00:34:13.000So I would love to get back to the plans that I had made for myself, but I've realized that the quickest way to make God laugh in your face is to make plans for yourself.
00:34:24.000So I want to get your take on sort of the hot controversy of the day in both the sporting world and in the sort of gender world.
00:34:30.000And that is this Kansas City Chiefs kicker, Harrison Butker, who has now come under severe fire for saying Catholic things at a Catholic university.
00:34:39.000He was speaking at a Catholic university and he mentioned that men and women are different, that men cannot in fact become women.
00:34:45.000And he also suggested that actually the happiest and most fulfilling part of a woman's life is being a wife.
00:34:50.000And a mother who's immediately called sexist and horrifying for all of this.
00:34:54.000And I couldn't help but think of you in this context because, again, so much of what's going on with regard to the entire trans debate has nothing to do with biology.
00:35:03.000It's really about exploding the very notions of masculinity and femininity as concepts.
00:35:07.000The idea is that everyone is inherently sort of androgynous.
00:35:10.000There's no such thing as masculinity or femininity.
00:35:12.000It's very hard to kind of separate off The biological sex issue from the gender issue.
00:35:19.000The left has successfully done this in some ways by kind of saying these are two separate, completely different things, and only gender identity matters.
00:35:26.000Plus, gender identity is entirely malleable.
00:35:28.000But, obviously, the sort of more traditional argument is that these things absolutely do matter, that people do have roles in society.
00:35:47.000I thought, okay, at first when I saw the clips on social media, on Twitter, whatever, I figured it was just the left being the left, the media being the media, hating God, hating religion, hating morality and reality, and it would very quickly blow over and kind of move on.
00:36:05.000A week almost at this point, it's been the only thing on my feed and it is so, it's a telltale sign of where we are in society when you have people trying to root, not even just Denouncing his stance, people trying to ruin his life, ruin his livelihood, sending around petitions to get him kicked off the Chiefs, finding out where his mom works, putting out all of that information.
00:36:33.000The Kansas City Twitter releasing the city that he lives in, obviously in some weird evil call for threats or for violence, doxing him entirely.
00:37:08.000This was a fantastic commencement speech.
00:37:11.000And like you said, it's a Catholic university, a deeply Catholic university, and he is a staunch Catholic speaking, called, invited to speak on his Catholic faith and to be of encouragement and an inspiration to these students, which he was because the students gave him a standing ovation.
00:37:30.000So clearly he did a phenomenal job at what he was invited there to do.
00:37:34.000So all of that to say, It's insane that you have people who, again, are willing to go the lengths at which they're going to, to cancel him, whatever you want to call it, yet won't denounce the men in the NFL who beat their wives, who do drugs, all the awful things that we see relatively often as a result of the money and the fame and the power.
00:38:01.000That they have been enshrined being football players.
00:38:05.000So, and again, yeah, these same people are the same people who aren't, who I guess applaud when these terrorist sympathizers on college campuses won't let Jewish students Obviously what he's saying ties into a broader critique that you've made as well with regard to the excesses of feminism.
00:38:37.000So in your book you talk about the progression of feminism from first to fourth wave and can talk a little bit About where that went wrong, where the original critique, which was women aren't being treated equally in society, they're not having the opportunities they deserve, how that went so wrong to the point where men can now be women?
00:38:55.000Yeah, well, it's been a, over the past, I think, 50, 60 years, what we have seen from this feminist movement is, I mean, ultimately we have the feminist movement to blame for where we are now.
00:39:08.000The feminist movement, you look at second, third wave feminism, These were women who were telling men, we don't need you.
00:39:20.000We've emasculated men, which is very clear in the way that we're governed by these weak men.
00:39:28.000All of that led us to where we are now, which this battle, as it pertains to the gender ideology movement, especially as it pertains to sports, given that women are most adversely affected in this scenario, it's fallen on our shoulders.
00:39:46.000Why does it have to be up to, you know, you look at what happened in West Virginia to these five 13 year old girls who track and field championship meet.
00:39:55.000They're throwing shot, but shot put, they have to throw against a boy.
00:40:48.000We just need people who are willing to defend reality, defend morality, and we are so far off the beaten path.
00:40:56.000So to sort of steel man the far left position on this sort of thing, it seems to me a case of what we would say in law school, hard cases make bad law.
00:41:05.000Let's assume for a second good faith on the part of some of the people who are participating in this sort of activity.
00:41:10.000The left looks at those people and says, what do we do for those people?
00:41:13.000And so they say, well they can't compete with the girls because, you're saying they can't compete with the girls because they're not women.
00:41:19.000And they can't really compete with the men because they're undergoing hormone treatment or surgeries or whatever it is that they want to undergo.
00:41:26.000So what do you think is the solution for those people?
00:41:28.000Should there be a third league for people who are gender non-specific?
00:41:34.000I have debated this internally for a while, you know, do we create a third league?
00:41:40.000And ultimately what I've decided here is no.
00:41:44.000I think creating a third category, well first of all, Sports is where you go to abandon all identity factors.
00:42:19.000The finances, the resources, garnering enough people to play in these divisions, garnering enough people to watch these divisions, I don't think it's realistic.
00:44:17.000So one of the things I'm curious about on sort of a personal level is what it's been like moving from athletics to politics.
00:44:24.000Obviously, I've been in this since I was 16, 17 years old, and I remember a time when a more innocent version of me, I will say, I thought that a lot of politics was about the pure ideology of it, just trying to get to solutions that work, trying to get to victory, trying to work with coalitions in order to achieve all of that, believing that everybody who's sort of in that business was in that business.
00:44:48.000And over the course of, you know, 24 years doing this, one of the things that I've learned is that there are a lot of people who are really good-hearted trying to get things done.
00:44:54.000There are also a lot of people who are trying to make celebrities of themselves.
00:44:57.000A lot of people who are trying to make a name for themselves by attacking.
00:45:01.000What's been your experience in politics, and what's the good, what's the bad?
00:45:10.000I'll be honest, I had no understanding of civics at all, to be totally frank with you, which is kind of embarrassing to say, but I mean, I never had to take a government course.
00:45:32.000And so I kind of naively jumped into this sphere and had to learn, and I have learned from my surroundings, and you said it perfectly.
00:45:42.000We have so many characters, and I call them characters because that's what they are, who I don't want to say they don't actually care about the well-being and safety of this country, because I don't think that's fair, but they have other priorities, things that are more pressing at this point in time for them, and that is their own career, that is making money, whatever it might be.
00:46:06.000We have people in Congress who you would never know, you would never expect it, but people who have never passed a bill.
00:47:24.000I think we have a lot of people who like to complain.
00:47:26.000We have a lot of talking heads, people on, again, social media, Twitter.
00:47:31.000on both sides of the aisle, but who aren't actually willing to do anything about it, which is frustrating.
00:47:38.000And so I was hesitant for a while to call myself an activist, right?
00:47:41.000When you think of an activist, you probably picture someone with blue hair who's like screeching, and that's certainly not what I wanted to be.
00:47:51.000And I know not everyone can spend their time traveling state to state, testifying in front of state legislatures, I know not everyone can do that.
00:48:00.000I'm not saying that's what we should expect.
00:48:06.000And so many people are abandoning that because they don't think it's their role or they have other more pressing matters.
00:48:13.000You know, one of the things you mentioned there was social media, which is absolutely toxic and poisonous and I'm firmly convinced largely separated from reality.
00:48:21.000And it is a weird sort of echo chamber that you get sucked into because it's constantly, especially if you're at your level of notoriety, it's constantly talking about you.
00:48:32.000You're gonna trend every three weeks or so for saying or doing something,
00:48:35.000and then you're gonna get hit with a wave of attention.
00:48:37.000And the normal human response to all of that, having been through it myself, is to doom scroll.
00:48:41.000Is to say, well, what are people saying about me?
00:48:43.000Because that's a normal human response in any situation from high school on.
00:48:46.000If people are talking about you, it's both interesting but also very uncomfortable.
00:48:50.000And in a social media landscape where you have tons of people
00:48:53.000who are talking about you constantly, it can really wreck your life.
00:48:57.000It can make your life much more difficult.
00:48:59.000It's very difficult to deal with emotionally, obviously.
00:49:01.000Have you dealt with going from a relatively low level of notoriety
00:49:06.000to being an extremely famous person in the United States in the social media era?
00:49:10.000How do you deal with that on a personal level?
00:49:13.000To be totally honest with you, easily.
00:49:26.000I don't need that to know that I'm right, both objectively and what I'm fighting for, and biblically what I'm fighting for.
00:49:33.000So, I won't say it's always been that way.
00:49:36.000Of course, at first, it was hard to read the things that were being said, people who Who didn't know a single thing about me.
00:49:44.000Who read the headlines and immediately label you as anti-trans, transphobic, domestic terrorist, fascist, racist, white supremacist, whatever they'll call you.
00:49:55.000And I wanted to always message back and justify myself, defend myself.
00:50:00.000But there's no point in doing that because the people who are willing to go out of their way to comment on, at the time, what, like a 20-year-old girl's Instagram picture, Twitter picture, and so I don't spend time looking at it.
00:50:16.000I honestly, like, I'm pretty lousy at Uh, the whole social media thing.
00:51:04.000Yeah, it's been... I've put myself in some hostile environments, which the beauty of it is this topic is so easy to... There's really not...
00:51:15.000Something that I don't feel like I can rebut adequately.
00:51:18.000I got to go on Joe Rogan recently, which was, you know, great given the fact that it wasn't speaking into this echo chamber, which I know that we tend to be used to preaching to the choir.
00:51:30.000This was different than that because his audience is so broad.
00:51:34.000I would say his audience, they're people with common sense, so majority of them agreed with me, but it's not because they were staunch conservatives or Republicans or what have you.
00:52:00.000I'm getting interviewed by like I was so intimidated I'm like oh my gosh I don't want to get analyzed by Jordan Peterson on my best day at the best time and here I am at 2 a.m.
00:52:10.000I'd gotten pulled over on the way there by a police for speeding I'm like so frazzled that I'm getting analyzed by Jordan Peterson.
00:53:04.000So day by day, this is certainly a fight that I'm going to stick out, willing and ready to fight.
00:53:13.000Hopefully we get a new administration in the White House that will reverse, I think, do a lot of damage control to not just women's sports, but to a lot of the different policies and things that have been implemented that have put this nation in a decline.
00:53:31.000Again, I'm not vying for some political Spot or anything like that.
00:53:37.000I just want to live my life, be the Riley that I was, still am, prior to all of the notoriety and exposure that this experience has seemed to give me.
00:54:22.000Playing sports, it gave me my best friends, it gave me my husband, it taught me how to be a leader, it taught me how to set goals and work to achieve those goals, it taught me time management, how to be persistent and resilient, all kinds of great things that I'm using in my life now that I don't think I would have been afforded or benefited from without playing sports.
00:54:59.000I was, but when I finally got the courage to not really walk on eggshells anymore, to have the conversation with people around me, my teammates, what have you, I realize they all agreed with me.
00:55:12.000That's not to say that I only surrounded myself with people who did, but you will be surprised in the people who agree that women deserve to compete fairly.
00:55:23.000The message to parents is to defend your kids, defend your daughters, teach your sons how to be strong men.
00:55:33.000If you're a parent, your daughter has to face this, show up wearing a shirt.
00:55:38.000I mean, as simple as save women's sports or what have you.