This past Friday, Riley Gaines, a former SEC athlete turned public figure, hosted the ‘Reclaim Feminism Campus Tour’. The event, put on by the SUNY Cortland Chapter of Turning Point USA (TPUSA) and the Riley Gaines Center, was met with varying opinions from attendees.
The event was organized by the TPUSA student chapter at SUNY Cortland, a non-profit organization advocating for conservative ideologies across high school, college, and university campuses.
Turning Point USA gained official club status at SUNY Cortland in March, following previous denials by the Student Government Association (SGA) due to concerns about its affiliation with the national organization. The national organization has faced criticism for propagating views deemed racist, homophobic, and transphobic. TPUSA initiated legal action against the college and the SGA, alleging a violation of First Amendment rights.
Read the Dragon Chronicle’s breakdown of the lawsuit HERE.
Gaines is known for her athletic career at the University of Kentucky, where she won multiple championships and was a 12x All-American swimmer. After graduating in 2022, Gaines strayed from her initial plan of going to dental school to pursue a newfound passion of hers: advocacy. “The purpose of this tour is to revitalize and engage the youth,” Gaines told the Dragon Chronicle in an exclusive sit-down interview before the event.
“It’s hard to say the things that I’ve been saying – which is honestly just merely saying that there are two sexes and you can’t change your sex. I understand that’s a difficult thing to say and it’s considered brave, so just inspiring younger people cause ultimately it’s our future that’s at stake,” she continued, telling us what revitalization she hopes the Reclaim Feminism Campus Tour tour will bring to college students across the country. Gaines is an activist advocating for the National Collegiate Athletics Association (NCAA) to exclude transgender athletes from participating with cisgender athletes.
When we asked Gaines how she responds to backlash of her work, she stressed to us that she is not “anti-trans” but is “pro-women.”
In the days leading up to the event, posters and signs were posted throughout campus. On Thursday (4/18) afternoon, there was a big beach ball outside Corey Union. This was dubbed the ‘free speech ball’, and there were representatives from Gaines’ team promoting the speaking event and encouraging students walking by to write anything they wanted on the ball.
Notable entries from SUNY Cortland’s own included “Love is love,” “F*** Jake Gyllenhaal,” “Don’t go to Texas, grass catches on fire,” and “Keep on going you got this.”
Gaines’ journey in advocating for the separation of transgender athletes from cisgender athletes began after competing in the 2022 200-yard NCAA freestyle championship. It was in this race that Gaines tied for fifth place with University of Pennsylvania swimmer Lia Thomas, a transgender athlete, who uses she/her pronouns.
During the talk to SUNY Cortland students and community members, attended by around 200 people, Gaines went into depth about this occurrence. She detailed how in the weeks leading up to the race, she and her teammates didn’t even think Thomas would be allowed to compete. Gaines claimed she and other swimmers were “in the dark” about Lia Thomas.
The 200-yard freestyle championship ended with Thomas and Gaines in a tie for 5th place, an impressive feat in swimming, which is timed down to the hundredth of a second. Then, Gaines told the audience how she lost out on receiving a trophy from the NCAA officials, who allegedly told Gaines that Thomas was the one who had to be pictured with it on the podium.
Gaines described this experience as “A photo-op to validate the feelings of a man at the expense of our own [women].”
At the NCAA championships, Gaines noted that athletes were uncomfortable sharing a locker room with Thomas, calling the experience “traumatic” for her and many teammates.
Gaines is currently one of 16 athletes suing the NCAA for violating Title IX. The lawsuit details the shock Gaines and other swimmers felt when they learned they would have to share a locker room with Thomas at the championships in Atlanta.
The lawsuit said the plaintiffs “bring this case to secure for future generations of women the promise of Title IX that is being denied them and other college women” by the NCAA.
“Watching the national championships that I was a part of, and of course, Lia Thomas was a part of, the NCAA saw how this [the regulations for transgender athletes to compete] was blatantly unfair – as proven by the outcome and the results there,’ Gaines told us.
Since 2022, the NCAA has changed course and now leaves it up to each specific sport governing body to make their own policies, which Gaines says “shows you how they [the NCAA] don’t want any accountability… which to me shows me that they know they were wrong.”
The NAIA, a division made up of mostly smaller private schools, voted in an overwhelming majority to bar transgender women from competing in female sports altogether. Gaines told us she hopes the NCAA follows suit in the vote next week on April 25th, 2024.
Upon returning from the national championships, Gaines says the University of Kentucky swim team had to go to ‘sensitivity training’ for pronoun usage, describing her discomfort in learning how to use she/her and he/him pronouns.
It was then that Gaines told the audience that seeing Lia Thomas and Iszac Henig (he/him), a transgender swimmer from Yale University, standing on the pool deck together made her “feel like I was in the Twilight Zone.”
Thomas and Henig had the words ‘Let trans kids play’ on their arms, advocating for their own right to compete in the NCAA that Gaines is actively up against.
Gaines then joked about the legitimacy of the Ivy League, getting a laugh from the audience.
Then Gaines spoke about her religious identity (Christian) and how that has influenced her stance on this topic, current events surrounding transgender people in the US, and signs in the women’s restrooms on SUNY Cortland’s campus. In the post, shown below, Gaines provides her own interpretation of what the postage meant.
At this point, Gaines began closing out her time at SUNY Cortland by saying “We are declining because we live in a godless society and this nation is riddled with weak men.”
In our interview with Gaines, she told us how her passion for swimming was re-directed towards her life now, and playing sports has given her the leadership and tenacity she currently needs. Currently, she is testifying all the way up at the Congressional level with her story and beliefs.
Ending the event, Gaines reiterated how thankful she was for Cortland acceptance of her presence, unlike past experiences on her campus tour. The room erupted in applause after Gaines’ final statement: “There are a lot of things I am scared of, but a man in a dress will never be one of those things.”
Sponsored by the Leadership Institute, of which Gaines is President, the ‘Reclaim Feminism Campus Tour’ aims to stimulate dialogue on contentious issues, despite varying interpretations of feminism and gender equity.