What is Riley Gaines hiding? We investigated…

[Brewdug]

This podcast appeared in my feed today via an affiliated show… I know it is naive but it’s still hard to believe how blinkered - and unbearably smug the US liberal wing is on this. This is rubbish ( from the ‘Center for Investigative Reporting’, which I now wouldn’t trust to tell me if it was raining), but still enlightening… wondered if anyone else had heard it.

A six month dig to discredit Gaines - we’re not supposed to notice that everyone they’re trying to gotcha in this won’t dignify any of it - that finds her hiding (spoiler alert) nothing?

https://podcasts.apple.com/gb/podcast/reveal/id886009669?i=1000738472306

Isn't she saying that, about a baby girl, in the context of protecting women from trans ideology?

We often say the same here. 'But he has daughters, how come he doesn't get it'.

Did AOC accept the offer of a debate?

I don't think she is bragging about being a mother - she had just had a baby. Wouldn't any woman be cross if they were told they 'didn't have a real job' when they had just given birth?

I'm also a bit allergic to the 'mothers/fathers of daughters' line, but I acknowledge that it chimes with many people - the idea that people think differently about their daughters is pretty much the basis of the 'Staniland Question'.

Gaines very clearly supports Trump, but then so do an awful lot of Americans. I wouldn't vote for him, (and wouldn't get the chance, not being American) but does it therefore mean that anyone who would must be treated as an outcast?

Also, I don't understand what is meant by 'real job'?

Even if Gaines is a lobbyist and paid pundit, isn't that a job? Are there not Democrats who do the same thing?

Yes. I interpreted her words as saying that perhaps if people understood a mother’s perspective that she is trying to make the world a better and safer place for her daughter, they might have a better understanding of her position.

Of course, with robust safeguarding protocols and scientific evidence, people shouldn’t need to have the understanding from a parent’s perspective. Those are there to take any emotional aspect out of the decisions.

Thatʼs why I said i believe we need to protect children of both sexes. I myself have sons and a daughter; I feel equally protective of them at different stages of their development. What she is also saying that AOC cannot hope to understand this as she isn’t a mother, and she meant this as a barb.

You would have to ask AOC. I don’t agree with her on this one.

From that comment, it was about being the mother of a girl.

But yes, of course, parents are worried about children being in thrall to trans ideology. Boys and girls.

That doesn't really answer the question. So she thinks motherhood is important - well lots of people agree with her.

And it was AOC who targeted her first by saying she didn't have a real job.

Honestly, you seem to be stretching so hard to paint her in a bad light She's a mom and she thinks that role is important. There is nothing unusual or problematic about that. And I still don't know where you're getting 'reverential' from.

I agree!

So 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, especially when said representative's own work history consists of making lattes. Also, Gaines would be a dentist that no one had heard of if Thomas hadn't got his dick out in her changing room and cheated by entering a women's swimming race that she was in.

And making a latte for your income is something to be ashamed of, is it?

What kind of comment is this? “Creating a new citizen for her country”? She had a baby, like so many of us do. AOC did not start the argument, btw, Gaines did.

And “making lattes”? What’s wrong with that?

It's nothing to feel shame for, but it's also not the most exalted of jobs. The phrase "those in glass houses should not throw stones" springs to mind.

“Creating a new citizen for her country”? She had a baby, like so many of us do.

And in doing so, you made a new citizen for your country too. Recognising that women carry out work for their countries by bearing children, and recognising that the State will coerce this work through abortion bans etc if it thinks that women aren't having enough kids, is Radical Feminism 101 material.

AOC did not start the argument, btw, Gaines did.

Irrelevant. AOC has chosen to be an elected representative of her country's people. She can expect her country's people to challenge her if they think she's not doing a good job. On this issue, Gaines thinks AOC is doing a bad job.

Do you mean bartender? I haven’t read anything about AOC being a barista. When I was in college/university, many of my friends were bartenders. That’s how they could afford to live away from home and it seems it was around her early 20s that AOC was employed as one while doing an international relations/economics degree. I’m not sure I see what the problem is here. She worked her way up.

I possibly did mean bartender.

☑ Serves drinks.
☑ Faces public.
☑ Is paid badly.
☑ Starts with "bar".

I've worked checkouts and cleaned toilets, yet I regard my first "real" job as the one I needed a degree for. And I regard raising children as too difficult for me to even contemplate.

Holy fascist, Batman

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?

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.

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.

@Howseitgoin cool story bro

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

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

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.

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

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?