The absurdity of being Riley Gaines

Riley Gaines, the former University of Kentucky swimmer who has made transphobia her entire personality, made headlines this week when she snapped like a petulant child at Rep. Summer Lee (D-PA) for the crime of suggesting that some people might say something transphobic at a House Oversight Committee hearing built around a transphobic premise (it’s important to note that Lee did not mention Gaines by name).

“And Ranking Member Lee, if my testimony makes me transphobic, then I believe your opening monologue makes you misogynist,” Gaines snarled, not citing a single thing that Lee said that could have been misogynist. Gaines basically said, “I know you are, but what am I?” in a congressional hearing.

Related:

Bomb threat causes library evacuation after anti-trans activist Riley Gaines attacked it online

Now she’s threatening to sue Pink News for reporting on it.

When Lee moved to have Gaines’s comment stricken from the record since personal attacks aren’t allowed at committee hearings, Gaines tried to argue with the actual members of Congress sitting opposite her about the rules of the House.

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It was a truly bizarre moment. What kind of 23-year-old has the arrogance to talk like that to a sitting U.S. congresswoman, even if they disagree? How does anyone of any age have the chutzpah to bark at a stranger to their face when there’s a large audience and cameras everywhere? Why would Gaines get so angry that she lost control of herself at the mere suggestion that some people in the room – again, not her specifically! – might say something hurtful?

Her reaction was petty and over-the-top, and that’s how she operates. The story Gaines uses to get sympathy in her speeches and media appearances is laughably petty. The point is to show that no matter how tiny a violin one would have to play to accompany Gaines’s sorrows, the very real rejection, discrimination, and violence faced by transgender people is worth an even smaller one.

For the uninitiated, Gaines rose to national prominence last year after she tied for fifth place with transgender University of Pennsylvania swimmer Lia Thomas in the 200-yard freestyle at the 2022 NCAA championship. This is nothing to be sad about – getting fifth place in the national championship for her sport is impressive, and Thomas didn’t even take away her rank.

Still, she described tying for fifth – instead of getting the fifth place rank all to herself – as “heartbreaking and somber.”

But her grievances about that day don’t stop there. She told The Daily Wire that an NCAA representative told her that she wouldn’t get a fifth-place trophy that day and that hers “will be coming in the mail.” It’s a minor inconvenience, but Gaines talks about it like it’s the biggest hardship she has ever faced.

“It was a bit disheartening,” she later said. “It really was. I left the pool with no trophy. Not a big deal, but it was the goal that I had set all year.” She said that it made her feel like the NCAA was “trying to back” trans athletes “more than… 90 to 95% of the rest of the swimmers.”

The competition’s organizers didn’t make two copies of all the trophies. Making so many on the off-chance that there would be a tie would have been a waste of resources. Someone was going to go home without a trophy. Gaines proposes no other solution other than that she should have gotten to go home with the trophy simply because she’s cisgender. When she says that Thomas taking the trophy home is proof that the NCAA is backing trans swimmers over cis swimmers, what she means is that it is completely unacceptable to her that she experienced even a trifling inconvenience as a result of a transgender person living their life.

At that same competition, Thomas was being protested by strangers who didn’t believe she had a right to exist.

Gaines’s tantrum at the time would have been embarrassing but forgivable if she had stopped there. Instead, she turned that experience into her entire personality… and a career in rightwing punditry. She appeared in multiple ads for GOP candidates in order to get more bans passed on trans people participating in sports, turning her tiny disappointment into a lifelong vendetta against an entire class of human beings.

“Sadly, few stood up for me,” she boohooed on Sen. Marsha Blackburn’s (R-TN) Unmuted podcast. “But [Sen.] Rand Paul is not afraid to fight for fairness for women and girls.”

Gaines also went on a speaking tour of college campuses, organized by the rightwing Turning Point USA, to push her message. She spoke at the Kentucky State Fair earlier this year, earning a cool $25,000. She has a book coming out next year – available for pre-order on Amazon for $30 – entitled Swimming Against the Current, and she appears in a swimsuit on the cover.

“Riley Gaines has been called many things: Collegiate athlete. All-American. Olympic hopeful,” the book’s summary says. “But in 2022, everything changed. The narrative shifted. Now, critics smeared her as: Transphobic. Narrow-minded. Evil.” The synopsis promises to share “her unbelievable story.”

Of tying for fifth place at a swim meet?

And, of course, she has appeared on Fox News. Instead of complaining about tying for fifth place, though, she was outraged that Target sells an ornament of a Black Santa in a wheelchair. Really, her life must be fairly wonderful and her worldview pretty fragile if someone else buying an ornament she doesn’t like is something she needs to decry on national television.

Her feed on X, formerly known as Twitter, is pure anger directed at liberals, with one out of every several posts involving Lia Thomas in some way.

She will not forgive Lia Thomas. Or even find a new hobby.

One post that Gaines shared on X is a snippet from another part of that House Oversight Committee hearing where she snapped at Rep. Lee. The National Women’s Law Center President Fatima Goss Graves – the Democrats’ only witness at the hearing – talked generally about the benefits of sports in schools, saying athletes learn about “persistence and leadership and discipline and, last, they learn to lose gracefully, hopefully.”

Goss Graves was not talking about cis or trans athletes learning to lose gracefully but that sports are supposed to teach that to all participants. However, Gaines reposted a message from a GOP organization saying that the message was specifically telling cis women they should get used to losing to trans women.

The four cis women who beat Lia Thomas in that race apparently don’t exist; Riley Gaines is always the main character.

The problems many transgender people face would be unimaginable to Gaines’s precious mind. Transgender adults are twice as likely to be unemployed, and, even when they are employed, cisgender workers make 32% more. 75% of transgender students feel unsafe at school, according to a 2015 survey, and 65% said they have been verbally harassed at school. Trans people are estimated to be four times more likely to be the victims of violent crime compared to cisgender people.

None of this matters to Gaines. Having to wait a couple of weeks for a trophy is worse than being denied an equal education, which includes sports education. She never talks about the hardships trans people face, if for no other reason than to show that she understands the issue she speaks about so frequently. She never proposes anything that would help transgender people or lift people who are not her – or similar to her – up. It’s always about her.

She imagines that she can and should be able to live in a bubble, free from all pain and hardship. Even vague talk about being a better person is enough to make her spit venom.

Her entire story is an absurd premise for a tragedy, and that’s the point. Like her supporters, she doesn’t believe that transgender people are worth the slightest consideration.