Why Riley Gaines Matters

By Rich Lowry

Sunday, April 16, 2023

 

If Riley Gaines didn’t know what she was in for, her recent appearance at San Francisco State University should have ended it.

 

Infamously, a mob chased the former University of Kentucky swimmer at the conclusion of her talk, and she had to be escorted to safety. The president of San Francisco State put out a statement, regretting how traumatic the incident was . . . for the trans community.

 

The entire episode was revolting, although with the upside that it ensured that the legend of Riley Gaines only grew.

 

This is important because she is the single best advocate that opponents of males participating in women’s sports have. Gaines alone, who is now a spokeswoman for the Independent Women’s Forum, is worth a hundred politicians, countless op-eds, and a $20 million ad budget. She brings a voice and credibility to the issue that simply can’t be matched.

 

She’s walking point for a commonsensical perspective that doesn’t have the number of public proponents it should because so many other female athletes have been cowed into silence.

 

Once Riley Gaines decided to speak out — after she tied Lia Thomas for fifth in the 200-meter NCAA women’s championships, but Thomas got the trophy — she achieved the status of someone who can’t be intimidated or silenced. If that comes with costs, it also brings great freedom.

 

Along with that, she has other qualities that aren’t easily replicated.

 

She speaks from personal experience. It’s one thing to dismiss a conservative politician who rejects males in female sports but hasn’t gotten any closer to Division I athletic competition than the president’s box at a college football game; it’s another to dismiss a twelve-time All American who has been in the arena — or, in this case, the pool — and can speak in the first person about the unfairness of it.

 

Gaines, importantly, isn’t an ideologue. Her opposition to trans insanity in sports isn’t one of a number of off-the-shelf conservative views that she’s long held and been public about. No, it was catalyzed by the discomfiting fact that, at the pinnacle of her career in women’s sports, she was expected to share a locker room and pool with a man.

 

Relatedly, she’s young. That enhances the sense that she’s not a dug-in warrior on culture issues, but someone who approaches the trans controversy with fresh eyes and a fresh point of view.

 

Finally, she’s firm, fierce even, but not bitter. She is excoriating about the cowardice of the NCAA and the wrongs done to the women who missed out on winning or some other recognition because a man was in the pool. She’s not in any way anti-trans, though, and her righteous indignation doesn’t cross the threshold into anger.

 

All this means that if those who want women’s sports to be for women didn’t have a Riley Gaines, they’d have to invent her — and wouldn’t be able to. The more recognition she gets, the better for the cause. This makes the apparent determination of the trans radicals to routinely protest her — and raise her profile — for the offense of disagreeing with them with grace and credibility ultimately self-defeating.