Simone Biles attacks Riley Gaines

[ItsCoolForCats]

Simone Biles has come out in defence of males in women's sports, and has attacked Riley Gaines for fighting against it. She said on Twitter:

"@RileyGaines
You’re truly sick, all of this campaigning because you lost a race. Straight up sore loser. You should be uplifting the trans community and perhaps finding a way to make sports inclusive OR creating a new avenue where trans feel safe in sports. Maybe a transgender category IN ALL sports!! But instead… You bully them… One things for sure is no one in sports is safe with you around!!!!!"

So, so disappointing. Both my daughters do gymnastics and are huge SB fans, so it is awful for her to show such contempt towards RG, who is fighting for a level playing field for women and girls in sport. And to suggest a separate category as if nobody has ever thought of that and tried it 🤦🏻‍♀️

Look at her popular podcast Gaines For Girls, where she pals around w the homophobic Alliance Defending Freedom, & Kirk Cameron, who calls homosexuality a danger to society. She expresses v anti abortion & somewhat anti feminist views too on there. She may not be MAGA as in a Trump worshipper, but she does have views that align w the more extreme bits of MAGA.

I honestly find some people on here a bit naive. I agree we should ally w the right to fight trans. But people seem v naive about the reactionary views many right wingers hold. Just go on Wikipedia or search Riley Gaines view on different issues, and you can support in an informed way.

I called her that in response to a snide comment by someone special pleading and deflecting from Biles’ shitty comment. She called her that sarcastically, and I responded by saying I agreed she was marvellous. But I can see we’re well into the purity spiral 🙄

Again this diminishes women's sport to let them set the narrative around '5th place'. We shouldn't allow that in the pursuit of reinstating boundaries. We can stand firm for respect across the board.

I wouldn’t trust Wikipedia to tell me what year it was.

Exactly.

https://x.com/againstgrmrs/status/1931374073709560155?s=46&t=ZX_bLozRqm8etdGICMcAvA

Gays against Groomers wrote a post about working with RG for years. You would think an LGB group with such a big following wouldn’t be interested in her if they thought she had an issue with them.

Would you be able to link to where Riley Gaines says something hateful about LGB people please?

This is the utter shitshow of the Wikipedia entry on Imane Khelif. It’s “naive” to think you get any sort of balanced information from Wikipedia.

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Talk:Imane_Khelif

Having had the experience of researching the accusations made about Kellie Jay Keen on Wikipedia, I wouldn’t trust Wikipedia at all when supposedly reporting anything about woman’s rights campaigner.

I would go to the original source and actually also listen to what was said.

Considering simply talking to someone considered controversial leads to an alignment accusation these days, I don’t take anything Wikipedia and even any media source at face value these days.

I honestly find some people on here a bit naive.

Says the person suggesting we research stuff on Wikipedia

That's a great leap of whataboutterry there - pull any old time, discredited belief to make my comment look unwise.

We are not in fact talking about segregation.

Gaines is the product of a religious, conservative, Republican, patriarchal upbringing. She is coming from a completely different place than most of us are in the Uk. I'm not going to judge her, or her fellow Americans who believe this stuff.

It strikes me that often when people talk about 'far right' they are really just talking about fairly standard centrist or right of centre, conservative views.

Something which Australian Liberal John Pesutto trusted to be accurate, which proved costly for him.

Agree.

You've no idea where anyone else is coming from. We all have our own backgrounds, experiences and perspectives...and our views on various matters do not all have to align along narrow party political lines or tribal identities.

I've seen Riley Gaines speak quite a bit, and she is not the extremist you are portraying her as. So what if she belives in 'family' and in 'God'?

@AliasGrace47 There is never an excuse for not thinking for oneself. If we all stuck w what everyone else believed we'd still be in the Dark Ages.

Yet we get pilloried for saying we support one teeny little bit of a republican agenda or are proud of a (republican) woman supporting other women. We are not supposed to think for ourselves. We are supposed to sign up wholesale to the progressive agenda so that it can create a new Dark Age for women and vulnerable children as a casual by-product of, yet again, putting men's needs first.

We're here to support a woman/female centred view on things, and to honour and give integrity to the female experience.There is no one feminsim. In my mind anything which centres women and girls and fights for their corner is feminism.

Republicans could be seen to centre and value women's role as mothers and homemakers - because they value family and home...that doesn't necessarily make them anti feminist, though.There are plenty of successful, career focused women in the Republican party and in its orbit..and here in Britain it is Conservatives who have elected three female leaders, not the left of centre Labour Party.

I agree it can often be wrong, but if the claims are backed up by reputable news links you can probs trust them. My source on Gaines was her own podcast, anyway

Indeed! A dossier compiled from mostly Wikipedia entries and found to be falsely making alignments that were simply not true. I don’t believe any of the dossier was upheld to be an accurate characterisation.

What is interesting is that my teenager, even 5 years ago was being taught in secondary school how to research for themselves to fact check Wikipedia? I don’t know it that was general UK curriculum or just their school. But the classes were being told never to simply trust Wikipedia.

So do you have links to Riley Gaines saying she doesn’t support LGB people please ? Which episode of her podcast did she say this?

It’s not just wrong, it’s severely biased, and they pick and choose “reputable news links” and ignore the ones they don’t approve of. Read the Imane Khelif talk page.

And wtf is a 'reputable news link' nowadays anyway? BBC? Guardian? The Daily Mail has given better coverage of the attack on women's rights (which I refuse to coyly refer to as 'trans issues')

I imagine this will be "she had someone from ADF on", which wouldn't surprise me because they litigate religious conscience claims, which often clash with gender ideology.

But so what? I've met George Galloway. You can't deduce therefrom that I agree with everything Gallows has ever said and done, and in fact I very much don't.

With a claim like that, I'd expect a sourceable quote from her, not "she was seen talking to [bad person]"

ADF & Kirk Cameron interviews on her podcast that I cited earlier.

“I do think the focus on Gaines' case can be counterproductive as TRAs counter that she only tied for 5th place w Lia Thomas, rather than being blatantly beaten.”

I have just read this.

No. I absolutely disagree with this.

Just because a male athlete can be beaten doesn’t diminish the logic that they should not be included in female sport. And why the fuck should we have had to have examples such as women being punched in the face?

Riley Gaines’ experience came BEFORE women were being punched in the face by Khelif.

Plus male people with DSDs are a different campaign to male people who declare their performance has been reduced by hormone treatment. We need both branches of this campaign.

And we don’t need to be only focused on shock tactic examples. We actually need to get the message through to policymakers that male people at any stage of transition do not lose their male advantage. And that any male person born with a DSD that allows their body to be virilised to any degree has an advantage over female people.

It doesn’t matter if a male person comes last in a final. Just taking the place of a female athlete is not acceptable. That compared to exceptional female athletes even making elite races, these male people are mediocre.

No way. I don’t agree that we need to focus on shocking examples because then we get measures that prevent shocking results. We don’t get male exclusion for any male person who has gone through any period of being able to process the testosterone their body produces.