Riley Gaines enlists CPAC in the fight against male-born athletes in women’s sports

Twelve-time All-American swimmer Riley Gaines recalled the moment she felt a transgendered woman had nullified her lifetime of work to become an elite female collegiate athlete.

She had just tied with University of Pennsylvania swimmer Lia Thomas in a 200-meter freestyle race at an NCAA championship meet and when the two swimmers approached the podium, she was told Thomas, a 6’ 1” biological male who had recently transitioned into a woman, would get the trophy. 

Ms. Gaines, a University of Kentucky athlete who has been swimming competitively since the age of 4, would go home empty-handed. Thomas, the swimming officials explained, needed to have the trophy for “photo purposes.”

“The NCAA had reduced everything I had dedicated my life to, to a photo-op to validate the identity of a male,” Ms. Gaines told an audience at the Conservative Political Action Conference, recalling that moment.

Ms. Gaines said she decided then “to take a public stand, and really, just standing in the truth.”

Ms. Gaines, 22, appeared on the CPAC stage alongside Chloe Cole, a young woman who had been medically transitioned into a male beginning at the age of 13 and is now advocating for state legislatures to ban gender-switching medical procedures on minors.

Ms. Cole, who is detransitioned, but still suffers from the effects of male hormone treatments and a double mastectomy performed on her at age 15, told the audience at the influential gathering of conservatives that she has faced significant backlash from LGBTQ activists who say her opposition to children medically transitioning has contributed to increased suicide rates.

“I’ve been speaking out about my experiences for about a year now and in doing so, my goals are to stop childhood transition and to improve the standard of care across the board for patients of all ages,” Ms. Cole, 18, said. “There’s very little evidence to suggest that transgender transitions are actually successful. And the standard for a successful transition is that the patient didn’t commit suicide, which is a really low standard of care.”

The two women have helped raise awareness about the creeping influence of transgenderism on children. Nearly two dozen states are weighing bans on gender-transitioning medical treatment for minors, which, when adults are included, has grown into a multi-billion dollar industry.  

In February, the Republican governors in Tennessee and Utah signed bans on such treatments for minors. 

Another nine states have passed legislation banning biological males from competing as females in school sports.

Ms. Cole said she had always suffered from a poor body image but never thought much about becoming male. The idea became appealing to her through social media, she said, where members of the LGBTQ community promoted gender switching. 

“Before that, it was mostly adult men and prepubescent boys who had gender dysphoria and most of those boys would grow out of it by adulthood,” Ms. Cole said. 

Ms. Gaines, who testified before state legislatures in favor of laws banning biological males from women’s sports, said she has talked to female athletes around the country who say the number of transgendered women on female sports teams is quietly increasing. The roster of one women’s softball team includes four biological men identifying as women, but schools don’t want to admit the trend is growing and female athletes are terrified to speak up about it, she said.

Ms. Gaines was the first female athlete to publicly complain about Lia Thomas, a fully intact male, changing in front of female athletes in the women’s locker room. 

Thomas, who broke several NCAA women’s swimming records, was banned in 2022 along with other transgender women from competing on women’s swim teams by the international governing body for swimming. 

“It’s so important to use your voice and not feel like you have to cave to the woke fads of today,” Ms. Gaines said. “Silence is complicity and when we are complicit, the left in particular is going to keep getting away with things that the majority of the country is not OK with.”