Former swimmer and women’s rights activist Riley Gaines joined student-athletes at Roanoke College in Virginia to protest the school’s decision to allow a transgender person to join the women’s swim team, who has since left the roster.
The team was informed in September that a biological man wanted to join, which led to disruption and division among members. Ten members of the swim team joined a press conference with Gaines, who spoke about her experience competing against transgender athlete Lia Thomas and said she related to the team’s feelings of “betrayal and belittlement.
THE REAL COST OF BIDEN’S $127 BILLION STUDENT LOAN GIVEAWAY
“Allowing males to compete on a women’s team is and always will be unfair, and the burden should not be placed on female athletes to convince their schools to accept this scientific reality,” Gaines said Thursday. “But that’s where it is being placed. And we as women, we’re being silenced. Our universities and institutions are gaslighting and emotionally blackmailing us to make us the likely oppressors.”
Gaines also stated that the next generation of girls “deserves to see themselves as champions,” and praised the school’s team for speaking out.
Bailey Gallagher, a captain on Roanoke College’s women’s swim team, described her feelings when she found out her team was accepting a transgender athlete, saying she was not able to eat or sleep and “spent a lot of time dealing with anxiety.” She also said that she considered quitting swimming and leaving the school, but eventually decided that she was not “the problem.
“Throughout the last month, the women’s team and I have felt manipulated, helpless, angry, confused, upset, guilted, and most importantly, unheard,” Gallagher said. “The early meetings that I attended were not productive. We listened, we spoke, and then quickly learned it was not OK to speak our minds. We were somehow wrong in our feelings.”
The school told the Washington Examiner that its board of trustees held a meeting on Tuesday to discuss the school’s policy on transgender athletes. Before this meeting, the athlete in question, who previously competed on the men’s swim team before taking a year off, recently withdrew from participation on the women’s swim team.
Roanoke College voted on Tuesday to adopt the NCAA policy on transgender athletes’s participation in sports, which “calls for transgender student-athlete participation for each sport to be determined by the policy for the national governing body of that sport.”
“In making this decision, the focus of senior administration and the board of trustees was on maintaining fairness in competition and protecting the integrity of all athletics at Roanoke College,” said Roanoke College President Frank Shushok Jr. “We remain committed to supporting our LGBTQ+ community and our student-athletes, all of whom are valued members of our vibrant community.”
CLICK HERE TO READ MORE FROM THE WASHINGTON EXAMINER
Gaines’s visit and support for the team comes as she has made a name for herself advocating for protecting women’s sports. Last month, she praised Gov. Greg Abbott (R-TX) for banning transgender athletes from women’s collegiate sports teams, which made Texas the biggest of the growing number of states that have placed restrictions on transgender athletes in collegiate settings.
In July, Virginia’s Department of Education released policies for public schools that stated that participation of students in any athletic program or activity would be “determined by sex rather than gender or gender identity.” Gov. Glenn Youngkin (R-VA) has made advocating for parents’s rights in education a major focus in his administration, which played a key role in the 2021 gubernatorial election.
