What is Riley Gaines hiding? We investigated…

Yeah, some evangelicals in the US can sound unintentionally weird when they talk about parenthood (the dreadful 'a father is his daughter's first love' and vice versa lines) but Gaines seems perfectly reasonable here.

The Staniland Q - exactly. Tbf if I had a son, I wouldn't want him having to change with a trans boy or trans man, even though assault risk is negligible, it would surely be embarrassing. But the stakes are much higher for girls.

I also find it hard to understand why a woman wouldn't see the danger to herself first, before having a daughter. I get the maternal instinct kicking in, but don't most women soon realise that far too many men are not to be trusted, sadly?

These posters have obviously never heard of Hands Across The Aisle.

To quote KJK: "right-wing women are women". When a right-wing woman stands up for women's rights, we should stand with her.

Every single time Riley Gaines is mentioned on FWR, there will be a long string of posts on the theme of "I'm as GC as they come, and I actually agree with what Gaines says on women's sport, but here are 50 reasons why you should dislike Riley Gaines."

Those reasons vary, but they always boil down to Gaines being part of the Red Tribe and not the Blue Tribe, and because the Red Tribe is bad, she cannot be allowed to be in the right.

This contrasts with politicos like Sandy Cortez, who are all in favour of dicks in women's changing rooms, the more the merrier, but are assumed to have their hearts in the right place (and sometimes hallucinated to be secretly GC) because they belong to the Blue Tribe.

It's a bit similar to the posts from 18 months ago telling us all the reasons why Kemi Badenoch was terrible and didn't mean anything she said about genderwoo, and we should put our faith in the brilliant and principled Sir Keir Starmer KCB KC, who was totally going to sort everything out. How is that working out for those posters, I wonder?

You assume that Gaines is acting under orders and not just posting about something that interests her. Have you never heard of things "going viral" and hitting a lot of people's consciousness at the same time?

1. A nation's elected representative absolutely should think of it in those terms.
2. Failing to recognise that women's work bearing children is valuable to the nation state is a form of misogyny, because it devalues work that only women can do.

Go back to my original point:

Gaines has carried out what many would argue is valuable work, namely creating a new citizen for her country. It's pretty shit for an elected representative of that country to trash talk her for not having a conventional job

It is inappropriate for an elected representative to trash talk a new mother for not having a paid job, because that mother's new baby is a new citizen of the country that the representative serves and not just a lifestyle choice for that mother. From the perspective of the country's State apparatus, which AOC has chosen to be part of, that mother has done valuable work. Those who study Marxism and the history of countries as varied as Romania, who decided that women needed to have more children, and China, who decided that women were having too many and then later changed their minds, realise this.

But In this instance, she’s hardly an innocent bystander just making a comment, is she? She’s falling into line with the rest of the Republican activists when told to make X posts against the election of Mamdani. I don’t care about tradwives nor comparisons to career women. That doesn’t interest me.

I have no issue with her sporting activism. None. The rest of it? Not as much.

Yes, that did occur to me! 😄

paid Republican shill

We're back to this again. It is apparently bad form for her to make money from her activism.

While if she didn't make money from her activism, we'd have a lot of sneering about "tradwives" and how she is inferior to empowered career women like Sandy Cortez, who is totally not a political shill.

The basic rule of RG threads still applies: whatever she says or does, RG must be in the wrong.

Uh huh.

Perhaps you’ve forgotten she’s a paid Republican shill. AOC was doing normal political stuff, you know, campaigning. Gaines implied that the US was being destroyed by Islam with the help of AOC and Bernie Sanders. There was nothing I’m-just-a-concerned-citizen-here about it.

The team mates certainly sighted the evidence!

Yes she tweeted a news photo. Like all of us who are interested in current affairs and politics do on social media, every single day. Big deal. She didn't mention AOC by name.

She didn't tweet at AOC.

She as a citizen commented on a news article. If a politician is going to make personal comments about the job status of EVERY single citizen that scrutinises them, they would be very busy.

So as I said, AOC started it.

Exposed himself. If Thomas were female then being naked around female teammates wouldn't have been a problem. But he's not, because he has a penis. Which he exposed.

You don't "sight" evidence, you cite it.

Actually, it’s the other way around. Gaines tweeted an image of AOC campaigning with Mamdani, saying “We’re being destroyed from within.” It went downhill from there.

You need to check your facts. AOC started the argument. She tweeted Gaines first.

Don’t be too concerned. She’s had plenty of hate too from the other side for simply having side work while she studied.

It is, but most people don’t consider it in those terms.

Unsure why you’re bringing up ‘Romania’ and ‘Marxism’ though, when it is the US actively working to dismantle women’s reproductive rights. The US under Trump is not heading into Marxism, is it?

Of course women having children is women’s reproductive labour. Human beings provide resources to be exploited for human survival.

Romania was a communist country at the time of Decree 770. All nations, regardless of their economic policies, rely on women's reproductive labour to continue to exist. When I talk about a "Marxist understanding", I mean that this reality is something that one recognises through studying Marxist analysis of capitalism. I don't mean that all countries that are authoritarian enough to infringe on women's reproductive freedoms are Marxist.

I don’t consider women having children “reproductive labour”

That the State relies on women's reproductive labour in order to continue to exist is a matter of fact, not opinion. A nation state = land + people + some sort of government. If women stop bearing children, after a while you have no population and hence no nation state.

Sporting unfairness is irrelevant to the claim that Gaines is exploiting women's rights for gains…

@Howseitgoin cool story bro

Have you read Unfair play by Sharron Davies? If not I suggest you do.

She's got a lot of mileage out of that early job. "Bartender elected to Congress" is a good headline, the same way people always think of Ronald Reagan as an actor who became President, though he'd stopped acting 20 years earlier, done two terms as California Governor and established himself as a political heavy hitter. An actor becoming President is a more interesting story, and you can imagine a movie about it.

It also means people don't think about AOC growing up in a leafy suburb, going to an elite university and interning for Ted Kennedy. Her brand as a working class kid from the hood is about as genuine as Boris Johnson's artfully tousled hair.

I’m having some difficulty, then. Gaines is pro-lifer. The Trump administration, in line with Christian nationalism, is all for (white) women to have as many babies as possible. This messaging is all over the alt-right accounts on X and you can read about it in Project2025. The closest ‘State’ you speak of taking away reproductive rights is the US. This state is not Marxist by any means, is it?

I read enough of your link for my needs. I don’t consider women having children “reproductive labour” as I’m not a Marxist by nature.

This is a Marxist feminist understanding that has nothing to do with fascism. The only reason why some women get to opt out of childbearing is because enough other women have kids for the State not to be bothered about the few who don't. As linked, which I doubt you read, given how quickly you replied, Romania effectively outlawed contraception because its Govt thought that women weren't having enough kids. I am outlining a Marxist and radical feminist understanding of how fragile women's rights are because the State will take our rights away if it thinks we aren't having enough kids.

Are you seriously trying to deny that the State relies on the reproductive labour of its female citizens to create future citizens?