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 🤦🏻‍♀️

You’ll have to ask the people posting the videos. Or watch some of them. I just pointed out that they are there.

I think 'damaging her legacy' is a bit dramatic.

However as an athlete who's always been a role model to young girls, it's pretty devastating to find that she isn't prepared to stand up for their rights to sports of their own and is worried about the feelings of boys instead.

Not sure about damaging her legacy. Simone is too big a deal for one ill advised social media performance to do that.

What it has damaged is her ability to shill sportswear to women using body positivity messaging. Hence the climbdown.

I think the fact that she has climbed down is quite significant though, even if her PR people advised her to do it. I thought it was quite a decent apology.

Agree it's significant.

I think if she'd just done the first tweet and left the body shaming out of it, she could plausibly have just ignored the subject, waited for it to go away and if she were ever asked, make non committal noises about inclusion, hate and finding solutions for everyone. But that is not, of course, what happened!

Yes, I think the body shaming lost her a lot of support from people who might otherwise have been on her side and forced her to check herself. And that probably meant that she had to pay attention to everything else Riley said in response to her.

I'm not on Twitter so I can't see any replies to her tweets but I also imagine she got some backlash from trans activists saying they don't need trans sporting categories because trans women are women and taking hormones removes the advantage of going through male puberty, which as an athlete, Simone will know is complete bullshit.

Then there's the fact that Riley is an openly conservative woman who cosies up to Trump, which makes her very easy to dismiss as a bigot, but if you listen to what she has actually said here (which Simone will have had to do), she comes across as very well-informed, measured and reasonable on this subject.

Hopefully it was a teachable moment for Simone and she'll have come away thinking, "shit, I was the baddy" and, "maybe it's not as simple as trans people good, Riley Gaines bad".

She's definitely had a backlash from TRAs yep. Lots of them seemed to think she'd come round to their side and were willing to overlook the third category suggestion, presumably because of the person she was having a go at. Whereas more of them are now noticing that this is multiple tweets where she's conspicuously not said she wants categories based on gender identity rather than sex.

She's finding that there's no way to bat for both young girls wanting fair opportunities in sport AND boys who think they're girls who want girls' spots on the team.

Ypu gotta pick a side Simone.

I think it’s a bit of a mealy mouthed apology given that she hasn’t deleted the previous two tweets, if she were genuinely contrite she’d delete them.

She’s certainly being given a lesson in FAFO because the TRA’s are turning on her in droves. This ideology will try and destroy people one way or another, because there’s no reason or logic involved, it’s like trying to eat soup with a fork.

The fact she body shamed someone is absolutely shocking and nasty and will affect her legacy. It’s made a lot of people think of her in a very different way.

I agree with pp that Simone definitely didn't write this. It reads like it was written by someone in PR who is trying to adopt a reasonable middle ground position, but this won't work, gauging by the reactions from the TRAs.

And there is no middle ground because the science is clear that there is no way to include males in female sport without compromising fairness and integrity. The reasonable position is to find ways to increase trans participation whilst ringfencing women's sports as female only, but TRAs won't accept this as they reject third categories.

The statement is interesting though because it shows where public opinion lies on this. We've been told that in the US, it's an 80:20 non partisan position in favour of excluding males from the female category, and the backlash does suggest that. I wonder if the leftwing media will pay attention.

Are Simone and Riley’s positions even that different given Simone’s statement about a third category?

I have no idea what Riley thinks about the introduction of a third category. I haven’t heard her speak on the subject. She may be in favour for all I know. I just know that she - rightly - doesn’t think it’s her responsibility, or indeed the responsibility of ANY women and girls, to campaign for it.

If Simone feels so strongly about the introduction of a new category that so many of the TRAs she simps for feel is transphobic, SHE can campaign for it.

Yeah it's interesting.

Simone seems to have coded herself 'good/kind/tolerant' and coded Riley 'bad/nasty/bigoted' and took it from there. The truth is that Riley's just further along the trajectory than Simone. She knows there is no pleasing 'both sides'.

Even when Simone was blissfully ignorant that her 3rd category suggestion made her a disgusting transphobe, why she thought Riley was the person to advocate for it is a mystery. I can't think what would be less likely, Riley being willing to take any of that labour on or TRAs being willing to listen to her about it!

Simone was still rude about Riley and body shamed her and I can see this being a bigger issue for her going forward.

I think she just really doesn't understand the issue at all. She's taken it at face value that Gaines must be a dreadful person because all gender critical people are evil Trump supporters and therefore fair game. Hopefully she will reflect on things and if she ever speaks on the issue again will be more informed. I'm not holding my breath though!

Simone Biles issues apology after 'getting demolished' in debate over transgender athletes

Biles needs to understand that it's the sports organisations, schools and coaches who are putting children into these positions of being publically called out.

Because most people know it's unfair for boys to play on girls teams, because of their biological advantage as well as taking a spot from a talented girl.

Riley Gaines called it out, but if Riley hadn't, someone else would! This is completely inevitable.

Equity in sport? I remember a long while ago there was talk of including disabled runners into men's (and I guess women's) running, but it was quashed because those blades they wear give an advantage of speed.

Sport has rules for fairness and it's not bigoted to follow them.

Gaines is keeping it going by commenting thus on Biles’ apology: “Gaines: I accept her apology and see this as a really big win. You have this famous public figure now issuing a groveling public apology and backtracks after tweeting pro-trans propaganda, if you will.”

I didn’t see Biles’ retraction as “grovelling” and to suggest so is somewhat vicious, IMO. There’s really no need to also issue ‘I accept her apology’ statements’ - it just seems overly imperious where she really doesn’t have the higher ground. (And her statement above reflects that - ‘I got an athlete much better than me to apologise - to me’.)

I'm not sure why this 'athletes status' thing is relevant. You can win lots of medals at the Olympics and still be wrong about things.

Not half as 'vicious' as Biles' comments about Gaines' appearance.

And of course, RG has the higher ground. She didn't out-of-leftfield launch a personal attack on Biles, did she?

She really, really, really does have the higher ground on the comments about appearance.

I expect that's the main reason Simone apologised, actually. Might have got away with just the first tweet. But the second one torched years of no doubt expert, expensive branding work positioning her as an advocate for women's body positivity.

RG also realistically did need to respond to the apology in some way. Things like writing articles about it after the acknowledgment were more of a choice, but the fact is, Simone's actions meant Riley experienced a great deal more attention, plenty of it negative. It's still impacting RG this week and potentially will for a while yet. People are allowed to respond to things that have happened to them.

Also, I read the acknowledgment of Simone still being the greatest in her sport as Riley pre-emptively responding to all the loser, jealous remarks that inevitably accompany anything she has to say about women in sports.

Comments like the one you responded to confuse me too. Why should someone’s sporting success be a gauge as to whether they should apologise for unprovoked and very personal attacks or not?

Why should women have to accept being berated, undermined and attacked just because the person attacking is a sporting great? Why should someone who has been attacked by a sports star feel they have to be kind to that person?

I read the ‘grovelling’ as being aimed at Biles attempting to placate angry transgender activists. In that respect, I think it can be considered grovelling. And I think it is an important comment about the tactics of those extreme trans activists. And that even that apology will never be enough for some of those activists.

Why shouldn't Gaines comment on it again, she was the wronged party! And grovelling was clearly about her grovelling to the horrid trans activists. Gaines wasn't saying Biles was grovelling to her. The 'apology' to Gaines was barely even an apology.

What is vicious, is body-shaming a woman and calling her names. That is vicious. Do you often take up for the bully and the bad guys?