A former collegiate swimmer turned woman’s sports advocate is pushing the NCAA to establish separate locker facilities for biological males and females after she and her fellow female teammates were forced to undress in front of Lia Thomas, a transgender female who is biologically male.
Riley Gaines, a 12-time All-American and five-time SEC champion, told Fox News on Wednesday she is calling on the NCAA to create separate locker rooms for trans athletes as she discussed her discomfort over being exposed to University of Pennsylvania swimmer Thomas’ “male genitalia” in a female locker room following a meet.
“We were not forewarned beforehand that we would be sharing a locker room with Lia. We did not give our consent, they did not ask for our consent, but in that locker room, we turned around, and there’s a 6’4″ biological man dropping his pants and watching us undress, and we were exposed to male genitalia,” Gaines said.
At the time, Thomas had begun hormone therapy but had not yet had genital surgery.
“That to me was worse than the competition piece,” Gaines said. “Not even probably a year, two years ago, this would have been considered some form of sexual assault, voyeurism. But now, not even are they just allowing it to happen, it’s almost as if these large organizations are encouraging it to happen.”
Fox News noted further:
Gaines, who attended President Biden’s State of the Union on Tuesday as a guest of Rep. Lisa McClain, R-Mich., has been at forefront of ensuring female athletes have an equal opportunity to perform in women’s sports after she was given no choice but to compete against Thomas, a biological male, in a national swimming competition where the two tied for fifth place. The match sparked ongoing debate over transgender females’ eligibility, with critics citing unfair physical advantages like height, muscle mass and heart and lung size.
As a spokeswoman for the Independent Women’s Forum, Gaines said the NCAA not only fails to protect the integrity of women’s sports, but it has become a champion of transgender female athletes in recent years.
“Of course, after NCAA championships, the NCAA then nominated Thomas for NCAA Woman of the Year, so we [they] are celebrating this movement. This is not something that happened by chance on a one-off basis,” she said. “They are encouraging [biological] men to compete in women’s sports.”
The former collegiate swimmer also took a swipe at the Biden White House for promoting what she called “gender ideology propaganda,” accusing officials of pressing for more female-identifying males to compete in woman’s sports around the country.
“Honestly, you have all these people all the time tell me how courageous it is to speak to this and how brave I am, but truthfully does it make someone brave to just acknowledge women deserve equal opportunities?” Gaines, who competed at the University of Kentucky, asked Fox News host John Roberts. “That’s how far we have come as a society and within our culture.”
She also acknowledged that others are afraid to speak out publicly, especially young females still in college and still competing.
“People are terrified, especially speaking from my experience of talking to other NCAA swimmers specifically. Lia Thomas’s teammates even. They are told their school has made their stance for them. They are told if they feel uncomfortable seeing male genitalia in the locker room, they should seek counseling resources. They’re told they will never get into grad school if they speak out,” Gaines, 22, said.
“All of these terrible, awful things that are not true. They are told, of course, that they will be called a bigot and hateful and transphobic, but it doesn’t make you any of those things to acknowledge that there are two sexes, you cannot change your sex and women deserve opportunities,” she added.
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