Never Apologize to Fascists (with Contrapoints)

Okay, fresh off the fifth place podium. Well, I guess there is no podium for fifth place. Now you just stand there holding your award, or like you take turns holding it because you tied. Okay. Hello, hello, and welcome back to A Bit Fruity. This past Sunday afternoon, my best friend texted me. Can you fill me in on the Riley Gaines-Simone Biles beef? Now, as someone who is a longtime super fan of women's artistic gymnastics and unfortunately aware of Riley Gaines, the concept of Riley Gaines-Simone Biles beef is among my worst nightmares. And after all, what could the beef be? Just recently, after the Paris Olympics, Riley tweeted, There's no other gymnast even close to Simone's level. And there likely won't be for a long, long time. Some of her skills don't seem humanly possibly. I don't care about her politics. She's goaded. Good. That was good. But care about her politics, Riley did. And when Simone Biles stood up for transgender children against bullying last week, in an albeit tepid way, Riley would unleash the full wrath of the well-coordinated online right against her. Today. We're going to take a look at the Riley Gaines-Simone Biles beef of my nightmares and see what it reveals to us about the true intentions at the heart of the trans athletics debate in heavy air quotes. We'll get into that. And the way the online right conducts these Gamergate style outrage campaigns to capture new audiences, audiences like you or your unwitting friends or family members who I don't think are being given. Good arguments against these campaigns and who are often taking the bait right out of Riley's little fifth place pause to do that today. We are joined by the one and only Natalie Wynn, a.k.a. Contra points, who I feel like at this point, whenever something that whenever there's like a really bad news cycle that's happening on Twitter, I'm just like, will you talk about this with me? Yeah, you give me all like you give me all the worst beats every time. It's like some some nightmare drama going down. You just give me a call. Sorry. There's some Hey, some stupid shit is happening. Get on here. Well, thank you so much for agreeing for taking the call. So happy to be here. So before we get started, I think we should explain who Riley Gaines is. Yeah, who I'd explain to you all who Simone Biles is, too. But I probably don't need to because in this beef, one of these people is one of the greatest athletes of all time. And the other one is Riley Gaines. I did a whole episode on Riley Gaines probably about a year ago. But essentially, she is someone who was a college swimmer at the University of Kentucky. I don't have any notes on this, by the way. I know this like the back of my hand. Unfortunately, my brain's rotted. And while she was swimming in college, she had a single infamous race wherein she competed against a number of cis women and one trans woman named Leah Thomas, with whom she tied for fifth place. This has been memory hold in such a way that like, you'd think based on the career Riley Gaines made out of this speaking in front of the Republican Party, that she had her dreams taken from her. I mean, I guess she did have her dreams taken from her if her dream was to come in fifth place and not tie for it. Riley Gaines and Riley Gaines and Leah Thomas tied for fifth place in this race behind four other women. And Riley basically took that and turned it into a career. In anti-trans speaking opportunities and Twitter fame. And she is in the literal ear of the president. She spoke at CPAC. She has a podcast, which is produced by Outkick, a conservative news media company. And the only other thing that I think is interesting to add about Riley Gaines, of course, if for some reason you want to know more about her, you can go listen to that episode. But she was initially pretty amicable towards Leah, like she was frustrated about being tied for fifth place and not getting her own trophy. Initially, it would later come in the mail. But, you know, in those early interviews right after the race, three years ago, she said, you know, I wish Leah well in her transition. There's no hard feelings. It just sucks. And since the opportunities started rolling in from all of these different conservative news outlets from the Republican Party, they've kind of incentivized her to become more and more cruel over time, which is sort of a through line you see with a lot of these grifty conservatives. And so I think one of the things that's really interesting about this is that it's not just about the conservative types, is they realize pretty quickly that their audience is hungry for more and more extreme takes. And so that is what they deliver. And it kind of turns everybody who's watching this from the sidelines more cruel and divided and bigoted as they, you know, stay along for the ride. Yeah, I like that you point out that at the beginning, she was kind of like, well, you know, I wish Leah luck, but I don't think this is fair. Like it is it's possible to have a civil disagreement, but at every turn, that choice is not the choice being made. And that's for delivery reasons, which we'll get to, I'm sure. And like I said, Simone Biles, the other player here is Simone Biles. So this also like one of the most famous athletes in the world, which Riley wasn't was never before or after the race against a trans swimmer. And so she had to make a career doing something else. And where that career has landed her was this last week, there was the Minnesota State High School. Softball championships, which this high school Champlin Park one, one of the players on this high school girls softball team is trans. So Riley Gaines quoted a picture congratulating this children's softball team and wrote comments off lol to be expected when your star player is a boy. So, well, what are we doing here? Right? Like, what is the point of this tweet? I mean, the point of this tweet seemingly would be to get a bunch of people to harass children on the internet. And she's just deciding to deliberately antagonize a random child. Yeah. So a little bit of background here. And honestly, I don't feel comfortable giving that much background here because I don't feel comfortable talking about a children's high school softball team. In this level of detail. They're not public figures. There was this softball team and one of the members is trans. There's press covering all of this in a way that I think is really unethical. And I just don't feel comfortable talking about children in really any level of detail. But essentially, she is a child. She's a high school student. She began transitioning when she was nine years old. And this is who Riley Gaines is choosing to go after on her Twitter platform of one and a half. A million people. What are we doing here? You know, she's saying, oh, well, the comments are off on that original post by the high school because you know that we'd come after you for having a boy on your team. It's like, what? You're a multimillionaire and you're mad that you can't harass a child in the comments of their school high school team Twitter account? Yeah. God forbid a children's sports team not want millions of strangers on the internet telling them to kill themselves. My thing is, when I saw this is this is so obviously cruel. Like, I don't need to spell out, especially for like someone listening to this podcast, why it is cruel to go after a 17 year old softball player. But it's also just like, if you look at the arc of Riley Gaines career, right, her whole thing is like, we need fairness in women's sports. And so we need to get rid of trans women. It is no secret that this has been a winning issue for the Republican Party over the last couple of years. And so much of the sports world has capitulated to this anti trans hysteria. And we'll get into the fact that like, this is not a real issue that's like affecting a big part of the population at all. Like, if it was, they wouldn't have to go over these obscure examples of like prepubescent high schoolers. But it is notable to add that like the NCAA where Riley encountered a trans competitor when she was an athlete. already prohibited athletes assigned male at birth from competing in NCAA women's competitions. They changed that rule after Trump got into office. So like, you'd think that Riley would be like, okay, great. You know, we won. But for her, the constant fomenting of outrage is the career. She's not actually arguing for policy proposals. She just needs a constant stream of outrage. And so once she gets what you'd assume was the goal, which is to ban trans women in NCAA sports, she moves on to literal children. Because the policy goal has already been achieved. So at this point, it's just the grift needs new blood. Child blood. Who's drinking the blood of children now? Who's drinking the blood now, Riley? We could do conspiracy on this podcast. The way that these people. The way that these people find ever new ways to victimize themselves, even after they literally get everything they wanted. They have all three branches of government. They have culture. They have the NCAA in Riley Gainscote. Like, you have everything. And it is part of this self-victimizing grift where you always have to be the underdog to continue raising support, to continue raising money, to continue gaining followers, to make it look like you're fighting for something, even when you have everything. They even have Democrats making concessions. They have Gavin Newsom agreeing with them. Yeah. Like, who are they fighting with at this point? You have everything. And yet all of these people, especially in this issue, they'll be like, we are fighting the hard fight and we're never backing down. It's like, you have everything. You have everything. To support trans people right now is so, especially trans athletes, especially trans kids, is the unpopular position. And you're still framing it like Riley Gaines, again, multimillionaire from bullying children online, is framing herself as, like, oppressed by this 17-year-old girl on a softball team, in a high school. It's ridiculous. Oof, I'm getting heated. Well, I think it also reveals a kind of dishonesty of what their talking points are on trans women in athletics. Because usually they'll talk like it's the Olympics, right? Or they'll be like, oh, this is a serious safety issue. Because, right, if you have men doing, you know, whatever, high contact sports, like, someone could, a woman could die, right? But then, okay, but the person, which you're actually doing, though, is you're making a making fun of, like, a 17-year-old trans girl who transitioned before puberty, by the way, and is also playing in a high school league. I don't know. Does, like, a trans girl not deserve to be part of this, like, what is, like, basically like a social part of most kids' lives growing up? I don't know. It's just so, like, transparently, like, mean-spirited. It's, like, so transparently not really about fairness or safety. It's just, like, this teenager is a transsexual. And it's just. It's just so interesting because if you have at least been peripherally paying attention to politics in America, you'd think that trans participation in sports was, like, one of the top five most important issues Americans are facing today. Yeah. And if that's true, then why, why is all you have to go after, why. Why are they having to dig this deep to come up with examples of it? Why do you only have this 17-year-old girl on a high school softball team? And I will say, if there were better examples, Riley Gaines would find them because this is her full-time job. And there just aren't. Well, they're always also, like, talking as if it's, like, this imminent event where, like, women's sports is going to be over as it's completely, is completely filled with men, right? And then it's like, okay, I feel like if that were happening, we would notice, right? Like, I think that there would be a lot of examples for you to choose that don't involve, like, high school teams in Minnesota. The head of the NCAA, before they ruled that trans women can't participate in women's NCAA sports, said that there were fewer than 10 trans athletes in the NCAA, which is made up of over half a million athletes total. And now those 10 can't play, so we're going to high school. It's just. I think I've made my case, but, like, it really is depraved what this woman does for a living. You have to do, like. There's an actual, like, discourse analysis to see, like, with what frequency Republicans bring this topic up, but it's in the top 10 for, like, the last year, right? Is transgender high school softball players one of the top 10 issues facing America today that warrants this level of obsession? I mean, it's like trying to think of an example for something I did in high school. It would be like if the Democrats spent, like, a fifth of their campaign messaging talking about how a lot of high school orchestras. Don't have money for cello bows. And the cellos are using viola bows. Yeah. The band room doesn't have the cello bow, and they're using the viola bow on the cello. And it's like, if we spent, like, hours talking about this, like, okay, I'm sure that's a problem somewhere, but, like, I remember it happening in my high school once, but the thing is that that would not become an issue because it's not an issue based on, like, scapegoating and sadism, which is what this is, right? Anytime people have political discourse. But trans people is always a proxy for some other form of insecurity or anger relating to sex and gender. It gets projected onto trans people. A hundred percent. And the thing is, this is so transparently ridiculous to people who spend a lot of time sort of thinking about how this discourse online always plays out. And it gets way more ridiculous. We have not even introduced Simone into the beef yet. The beef. But what I will say is that despite how ridiculous this shit. Is and how transparently it's not about fairness in women's sports or protecting female athletes from sex abuse, like, despite how it's very clearly not about any of that, they are very successful in making large swaths of the public think that it is. If you search anything related to what we're talking about today right now on YouTube or Google, all of the top results are legitimizing this as, like, a debate that's taking place when this ultimately just started and revolves around. Riley Gaines, a multimillionaire outrage artist fomenting harassment towards a child. Yeah, the impression a lot of Americans, I would think most Americans have, comes from right-wing media. And they've been convinced that the reason that this is a salient topic of public debate is because there is some kind of left-wing obsession with transgender athletes, right? As if there's, oh, there's like this agenda to promote transgender athleticism. And it's like, well, no, no one was talking about. Until right-wing commentators and strategists honed in on this as a kind of good point for a wedge on anti-trans issues, which itself is kind of the point of a wedge on reactionary ideas about gender in general. And so kind of the point and why I wanted to make this episode is so hopefully it also drifts to the top of these search results so that when people are, like my friend, are looking into, like, what is going on between Simone Biles and. Riley Gaines, it's like you don't get this bullshit answer that dignifies what Riley Gaines is trying to do here, which is have you, like, wade into the waters with her of transphobia. I want to tell you what's really going on here, which is what we're going to talk about today. Should we introduce Simone Biles to the conversation? Let's do it. So after Riley Gaines wields her following against a child, Simone Biles on Twitter chimes in. At Riley Gaines, you're truly sick. All of this campaigning because you lost a race. Straight up sore loser. You should be uplifting the trans community and perhaps finding a way to make sports inclusive or creating a new avenue where trans feel safe in sports. Maybe a transgender category in all sports. But instead, you bully them. One thing's for sure is no one in sports is safe with you around. Now, as many would quickly point out, an imperfect statement. But the main point, which is that Riley Gaines is a sore loser who's using her platform of millions to bully a child for MAGA internet points, I think was well taken. What's striking to me about this tweet, considering the direction this is going to go, is just how soft of a rebuttal it really is. Like with Simone, Simone is not even suggesting. She's not even really defending the idea of trans women in sports. She's proposing, well, maybe we could have a transgender category, right, for sports. And just so simply pointing out that Riley's comments are just sort of needlessly meant. She's not even really being mean-spirited, even if what she's concerned about is, you know, even if you think that trans women in sports is unfair, like, there would be a way to talk about this as not as mean-spirited as she's being. You could, for example, be advocating that for trans women in their own leagues. That's like all that Simone is even saying here, right, to be clear. Yes, and that's the other thing is like, if you caught up to this late, you'd think that Simone Biles was like, being honestly way more of like a champion for trans rights or something that she's even being. She's just saying, don't, don't. Don't bully a child online. That's not nice. Yes, she's, she's, this is not a super strong, like, trans rights statement. It's basically a stop bullying a child statement. Simone added an addendum here. Bully someone your own size, which would ironically be a male, at Riley Gaines. Now, did you see this? I did. You know. We don't love that. I don't love that. I don't, personally. I mean, there's, there's, there's moments for dark woke, but I feel well. I feel like this is odd because I know that Simone Biles has herself been like the target of harassment. I don't know that replicating that form of meanness is, you know, it was in the heat of a moment. It was in the heat of the moment. This is not my favorite strategy when arguing. There are a lot of things to go after Riley Gaines for, which we are and will continue to. But saying, actually, you look like a man. Yeah. No, you look like. A lot of this is actually, I mean, that is kind of where this is all headed. A lot of this is going to come down to, no, you look like a man. Right. That's like. Don't spoil the outline. I'm sorry. You know, an imperfect spar from Simone's corner. A lot of people were living for this. I, you know, not my favorite. But interestingly, this addendum from Simone Biles doesn't even really become the center of the controversy and the way that Simone would be smeared. I mean, the smear is about. about her standing up for a transgender person. and an outburst outrage campaign ensues. So Riley goes on to respond to this jab from Simone Biles more than 30 times over the next three days on Twitter. And she says and does a number of things that I find to be extremely revealing about the heart of the Riley Gaines trans women in sports outrage movement and what I think it's actually about. I'm also going to put a trigger warning here for talking about sexual abuse and talking about the USA Gymnastics scandal. So Natalie, did you see the Larry Nassar tweets? I did. Yes. Do you want to read this one that I have up here in the outline? I do. Wow, this is this is a wild tweet. The worst. This actually. Oh, this this is this makes me upset. Okay, go on. Oh, there it is. Sexual abuse Simone Biles witnessed and spoke out against caused by one man yet believes women should be forced to strip naked in front of men to validate the man's feelings. You know how many gold medals you'd have if your inclusive dream came true? Zero. And attached to that tweet is a photo of Simone Biles and a photo of Larry Nassar, the former USA Gymnastics doctor who abused Simone Biles and hundreds of other gymnasts sexually when they were children. This I find genuinely infuriating. But I'm not including it here. Because it's infuriating. I'm including it here because to me, this gives the entire game away when it comes to Riley Gaines. And all of these people who say that they're, you know, fighting righteous warriors for women's safety and sport. But no one, who were I have friends who work in sexual violence prevention, treatment support. One of my best friends, Kat Tenbarge, who's on this podcast all the time, has been reporting on all of this stuff for years. No one who engages in that work on any level would ever for any reason, tweet at someone Simone Biles is tagged in this tweet with a photo of their abuser to score a point in a Twitter fight. It's crazy. Like, look at look at your child molester. What because you said that I you said that I shouldn't be bullying a 17 year old softball player on Twitter. It's great. And it's just like, how can anyone do this and then claim that the thing that they're fighting for is like women's safety in sports? I mean, it's like, it's crazy making notice how like, they're not advocating against men being allowed to coach women's sports, for example, which would be less of a non sequitur than, what they what they currently are advocating. Larry, Larry Nassar is not a trend is not a transgender person. Yeah, Larry Nassar wasn't even an athlete. I don't know. The worst thing that could happen to a young woman athlete happened or girl athlete happened to Simone Biles. And Riley is just like, recklessly weaponizing that against her. And I don't know, I don't understand how anyone could see this and then be like, yeah, you are really about protecting women in sports. It's just so dishonest. It's one of many things that I've seen. And I don't know, many things about her that I find so dishonest. Riley Gaines seems to think that this is a winning strategy. And so she continues to pick this wound. There's another tweet from Taylor Silverman, who's basically like a less successful Riley Gaines. Do you know about her? No, I don't. Oh my god, are they like aspiring Riley Gaines's? Yes, it's literally Riley Gaines's daughter. It's so I was learning about Taylor Silverman this morning. She brands herself like in all of her social media bios as the skateboarder who spoke up. She was in like, one Red Bull sponsored amateur skateboarding competition years ago and lost to a trans girl. And that and it was like a local thing that you like pay $20 to participate in or something. And now she's like, I'm the skateboarder who spoke up. Well, invite her to the 2028 Republican National Convention. She'll be speaking. Right. Right. To address the pressing issue of transsexual skateboarding. So she has been a heavy hitter in this in this discourse. She tweeted at Simone Biles, if Larry Nassar came out as, quote unquote, trans, would you want him moved to a women's prison, which Riley Gaines quoted, and wrote, this is an excellent question for Simone Biles. So Simone Biles tweets, I don't think we should bully random transgender children. And in response, it's like, oh, so you're saying that famous sex criminals should be moved to women's prisons. And you're saying that you support your own abuser? Because that's what it sounds like you're saying to me. And they and she just kept pushing this Riley Gaines tweeted again the following day, a video of Simone's testimony before Congress for safe sport, which is a bill that protects athletes against sexual abuse. And she wrote, Simone Biles when she had to endure a predatory man versus Simone Biles when other girls have to endure predatory men. And it's a side by side of the testimony with her tweet at Riley Gaines. Oh, like, why? Why are they always relying on these like, outlandish hypotheticals to make their point? Right? It's like, wow, well, what if Larry Nassar was a trans woman? What then? It's like, okay, well, like, what is it's like saying, like, what if Jeffrey Epstein was a woman? Would you still be a feminist then? It's like, okay, well, Jeffrey Epstein's not a woman, right? What if Jeffrey Epstein was an immigrant? Maybe you wouldn't feel so pro-immigration then. Right, right. Like, okay. And also, Larry Nassar, Jeffrey Epstein, like, they're not trans women. No. These people, Riley Gaines and co, think that like, men who want to be sexually predatory will dress up as women to do that. Like, they'll just do it as men. It's a regular occurrence. I mean, it's always displacement, right? I mean, that's basically why this issue works for right-wing women is that it's these proxy issues, right? Because if you're a right-wing woman, you can't really take a feminist stance against powerful men because you're a crazy feminist, right? You can't be against patriarchy. But you can displace the target of your anger onto someone weak. And then it becomes an acceptable right-wing strategy, right? So, okay, women are allowed to talk about sexual abuse, but they have to talk about it coming from immigrants or from trans people, right? That's kind of like, that's the game we're playing. You're not allowed to criticize power. You have to criticize an outsider, someone marginal. Right. Escape them. And then Maya Poet, who I made another episode about, but who's a far less successful trying to be a grifter. Chimed in and wrote, And it's just like, have we lost our goddamn minds? It's again, I'm like reading all of these in succession. And I'm like, I can't believe anyone takes this seriously and in good faith. And yet, as this campaign was unfolding, any brand that had ever worked with Simone Biles, like Athleta, any person associated with Simone Biles who had interviewed her recently and put that on Instagram or anything, flooded with hundreds, thousands of comments being like, how dare you work with her? She must want what happened to her to happen to every little girl. I mean, I can't fathom how successful these campaigns are because they just are so ridiculous. Yeah. It's interesting that they're able to so fluidly draw an equivalence between a transgender high school softball player existing and universal acceptance of child rape. Right. Like, like, how are they connecting these dots? I mean, but do you think it's just that, like, they need to exaggerate it times a thousand every single time and twist it so severely? Because if they actually represented what Simone Biles said in these tweets, which was, maybe you shouldn't bully a child, then people would not agree with their outrage campaign. Yeah, they have to make it about something other than what it is about, because what they're saying just fundamentally doesn't make a lot of sense, nor is it really worthy of a high level of outrage. But again, they're drawing from, like, rage that people have about other issues, about sexual violence against children, for example. And they're sort of harnessing that energy to advance this goal that has basically nothing to do with that, right? Namely, scapegoating teenage athletes who are transgender, as if underage trans athletes bear all the responsibility for crimes against children. I would like to take a quick break. from the show to thank the sponsor of today's episode, Factor. Lately, between doing this podcast and social media commentary and keeping up with the news and trying to see my family, I haven't had a whole lot of free time. And might I add, it's now summer in New York, the best time to be in New York. And with what free time I do have, I want to get outside. I want to bike on the West Side Highway. I want to take a nap in Central Park. Well, maybe not a full nap. Don't want anyone to steal my backpack. But like a shut your eyes for 10 minutes without falling asleep kind of nap. You know what I mean? The point is, something that I really don't want to be doing is spending hours inside cooking or really spending much of any time at all. cooking for that matter, because I don't love cooking, but I do love eating. And one thing that helps me get around that conundrum is Factor. Factor is a meal delivery program with chef-made gourmet meals that make eating well easy. And the best part is they are ready to heat and eat in two minutes. Factor has a bunch of different menus with over 40 different meal options every single week. I personally go for the Protein Plus plan. If you are a closeted gym rat like me who also doesn't want to eat bland chicken and rice every day, I'm with you. Factor's with you. If you, like me, want to make eating at home a more varied and less laborious experience, I'd recommend trying Factor. You can get started right now at factormeals.com slash fruity50off with the code fruity50off. For 50% off, you can get started right now at factormeals.com slash fruity50off with the code 50% off your first box and free shipping. That is factormeals.com slash fruity50off. Thank you so much to Factor for sponsoring this episode. And now let's get back to it. There was another component of this outrage campaign where you're get ready because you're about to read a Nancy Mace tweet. There was another huge component of this outrage campaign that was like, if you had to compete against men, you wouldn't have any medals. Riley tweeted that one of her tweets, what did it say? You mentioned this earlier. Zero. Do you want to read this Nancy Mace tweet? Honey, if biological men competed in women's gymnastics, odds are no one would know your name. First of all, Nancy, if you didn't take a selfie in front of bathroom signs every time you went to take a shit, no one would know your name. So let's start there. What does Nancy Mace think gymnastics is? Well, we're actually going to talk about that in just a short second because I am a big gymnastics fan and I actually, I want to make the case that nothing these right wing outrage people are doing, like they don't actually care about sports. And what this is, is about something much bigger, which we're going to get to. But I care about gymnastics and I want to care about sports for a second because I know more about it than these people. But first, but first, I want to, address this sort of strain. I have a cold. It really came out when I said that. This strain. There's this strain of thought in trans exclusionary feminism, feminism, quote unquote, where basically they just think that like women are naturally worse at everything than men. Oh, absolutely. They'll argue this like, you know, that there shouldn't be trans women, like trans women have an unfair advantage, like jeopardy. Yeah. Yeah. Poker or chess. Beauty pageants. Beauty pageants. Yeah. Trans women have an unfair advantage in beauty pageants. Because they think that trans women are men and they think that men are just like. Men are better at literally everything. Everything. And I'm like this, how is this a feminist position? And so with that in mind, I would like to talk about gymnastics for a second. Men and women's gymnastics are essentially two different sports. And one could argue that men are actually given a competitive advantage by not having to compete alongside women. Men's gymnastics prioritizes upper body strength, while women's requires that and flexibility and the sort of athletic artistry. There were all these tweets being like, Simone Biles would have never won any of her medals if she had to compete against men, which first of all, we're talking about trans people here. I don't want to accept the premise that trans women are men, that trans women athletes are men. But just while I can go on this little gymnastics tangent, that is not true. It's not true. It's not true. It's not true. There was this one tweet, is Simone Biles willing to compete against Brody Malone on vault? Until yes, she needs to shut the fuck up. That got over 30,000 likes. Brody Malone is a famously MAGA supporting member of the 2024 US men's gymnastics team. Simone Biles would smoke him on vault. Simone Biles does something called the Yurchenko double pike, which very, very few men in the world would even attempt, and she can perform it better than any of the ones who do. And there are lots of videos on Instagram that you'll see of male gymnasts trying to perform very basic elements to women's artistic gymnastics, like a back walkover, and they can't do it because they don't have the back flexibility, for example. And so while this isn't really like the point for me, because I don't believe any of this is genuinely about sports, it's interesting to see these supposed sports advocates. I think it's interesting to see that these advocates openly display such an incuriosity about sports, right? Like with this Brody Malone tweet, they just attached a photo of him and like he has big biceps. And it's just interesting that a lot of these like trans exclusion and radical feminists, like they just see a man with biceps and assume that like that man is better at any woman at everything. Yeah. And then also, of course, the usual thing where it's like, they just don't make a categorical distinction between trans women and men. So they're like, like, you think that trans girls should be allowed to play high school softball? Well, then I suppose you shouldn't think the rock should be able to box your mom or like, okay, that's not really what we're talking about. I also just speaking of visuals, you know, when I go back to that photo that Riley initially commented on of this high school girls, softball team, you look at these kids, and like, they're really just kids. Yeah, kids tend to be like that. Sorry, I wasn't trying to be stupid. You know what I mean, though, because they want it. They want to invoke like, literally, like you said, like, would you want your daughter to be in the ring with Arnold Schwarzenegger? And it's like, yeah, yeah. What are we? These are these are for these are kids. I suppose you want your daughters changing in front of Larry Nassar. Well, first of all, people's daughters were changing in front of Larry Nassar. It had nothing to do with transgender people. Right? But the ignorance on display about gymnastics is also for me, it's a case of why the federal government shouldn't be making like sweeping prohibitions about sports ethics. Shouldn't this be something that's litigated at the level of leagues and of associations, right? And decided on by people who are experts in their particular sport? Like, I don't know that much about gymnastics, for example. So like, do trans women have an advantage have a group advantage of over 10%? I don't know. I'm not qualified to know that. And neither is Nancy Mace. And neither is Riley Gaines. Like, shouldn't these decisions be made by people who know what they're talking about? Well, and it's just, I mean, I feel like we've been making the case and will continue to but it's just you're offering practical solutions right now to people who aren't actually interested in that. Yeah, trans women, like I said, were categorically excluded from women's sports in the NCAA. They're still equally mad. And yeah, that satisfied Riley Gaines for all of seven seconds. Yeah, because it's not about sports. Like, I know a lot of people are going to hear this and be like, you know, when you call trans athletes inclusion in sports, like a non issue, like it's a cop out. But it's, it's really, first of all, it's like it is a non issue. Think about the amount of athletes that make it to the elite level. Think about the amount of trans people there are as a percentage of the population. And think about like, it we're talking about a couple people. This is not an issue that affects a population. And beyond that, I just again, I have to like hammer home constantly. That's not what Riley Gaines is interested in. And it's not what the Republican Party is interested in. They're not looking for solutions to this. They're they're just looking for constant outrage to build political support off of. And so when I see people get wrapped up in these hypotheticals of well, what if and what if Simone does want this? And what about your daughter? And that are it's like, well, none of this is happening. You know what this kind of reminds me of is, so when there were all these pro Palestine protests popping up on campuses across America, basically asking universities to divest from Israel to divest from the mass bombing and starving of Palestinians, right. And you had these three university presidents famously sit in front of a congressional hearing over anti semitism on campus. And Elise Stefanik, this Republican asked each of them the question which would ultimately lead to all of their firings from their universities, which was if students were calling for a genocide against Jews on campus, would that qualify as hate speech? And they gave bad answers to that question. Yeah. But it's also not something that was happening. The thing that was happening was them asking their universities to divest from the genocide against Palestinians. And so similarly, like with this, like trans athletes, it's like, well, what if a trans person was in the ring with your child and hurting them? And it's like, well, what's actually happening right now in reality on the earth that we all live in is like, Palestinians are being killed, and trans people are being brutalized. This is another thing that I learned from Kat speaking of like abuse dynamics, but it's like Darvo deny attack reverse victim and offender, which is in which you accuse the person who you are harming actively of harming you. And it strikes me as like a similar thing here. And they have to work in hypotheticals because hypotheticals are the only worlds in which like cis people are being dominated by trans athletes yes does that make sense i feel like that was a solid tangent well it kind of goes back to their so many of their talking points are just hypotheticals you know the way they speak you would think that there was like this this nationwide epidemic of female athletes being sexually abused by trans by transgender athletes and it's like i mean i can't think of a single case of that happening we're talking completely about hypothetical things here i don't know usually like really really uh pressing political issues don't need to be just discussed only in terms of hypotheticals right we promised you to your listener that this would devolve into a beauty pageant and we have arrived at that point another thing that really started to happen which happens a lot in these sort of anti-trans circles is it's just very quickly becomes how much do trans athletes look like my idea of what a woman is for example riley gaines tweets amidst this fury to simone biles this guy is a beautiful woman lol and it is a photo of you guessed it leah thomas the swimmer that riley gaines tied for fifth place with three years ago and who is a completely private figure but riley gaines career depends on constantly reminding us of the you know holocaust that she went through by tying with her for fifth place three years ago and it's like wait when did beauty become part of this yeah was that why is that the conversation what does beauty have to do with fairness in sports or anything for that matter well a lot apparently right i mean don't you think it's so revealing of how these people actually think gender works yeah i mean so much of the argument is based on the optics of like pictures right they'll show like a trans athlete next to a cis athlete and and the juxtaposition is the main argument but of course you can also do this with two cis people and increasingly they do do that i mean i've seen i feel like a lot of female athletes are being i mean everyone's being transvestite these days we did an episode on that but like i've seen like pictures of a katie ledecky going around yeah the female swimmer going around twitter with people being like this is a man yeah there was this one tweet that went viral where it was a side by side of simone biles in her sort of and riley gaines with her makeup and hair done in a dress full glam the tweet says simone biles recently said riley gaines looks like a man what do you guys think and so now the whole argument is over who looks like a man and who looks like a man usually involves a comment like like a juxtaposition of one woman who has muscles and is not wearing makeup next to a woman who has a full blowout and a full face of makeup and is wearing some kind of glittery dress okay and then someone quote someone quote tweeted that to prove the point you know with a picture of simone biles in a dress in purple eyeshadow and riley gaines you know with biceps in a leotard and saying well you know yeah yeah you could just put a photo of a woman doing sports next to a picture of a woman dressed up with makeup on and that's like half of what this discourse has become i mean it's interesting it actually like says a lot about gender which is that like sorry if this is getting into like the philosophy territory but like like judith butler says it's in gender trouble that like there's this element of difference in juxtaposition is like how sex and gender are constituted right the aretha franklin song you make me feel like a natural woman what is it that makes you feel like a woman well in the song the implication is that it's a masculine lover that makes you feel like a woman you know it's why in gay couples people straight people want to figure out who's the man who's the woman they want to look for this like difference that makes the idea of masculinity or femininity coherent because those two things are defined by their contrast with each other and so a lot of this is like this you know optical argument about who's more feminine um when it comes to women's sports and i feel like that i feel i mean i feel like the outcome of this is that is like i don't know women competing at the olympics as if they're as if they're pageant queens totally again very quickly this became like a beauty contest of like who looks more like a woman riley gaines or simone biles and i'm like well this feels feminist there was this photo that went around from ryan mcinerney who's sort of a nepo pundit she's kaylee mcinerney's sister but it was a photo of her and riley gaines and she said team riley gaines which riley gaines retweeted and it's interesting because in this photo riley gaines is like she is literally like yassified to maintain anonymity yes she she was like a plastic doll yeah she is so deliciously facetuned and i'm like god like you're part of a movement where like it's not it's not genitals that make you a woman it's it's facetune yes womanhood is stored in the facetune does it make you a man if you have pores i wanted to take a quick break from this episode to thank blue land for sponsoring today's show if you're only listening to the audio version of this episode that is me doing some nail asmr on my blue land forever thank you very much thank you very much did you know that an estimated five billion billion with a b plastic hand soap and cleaning supply bottles are thrown away every year blue land is on a to eliminate single-use plastic by reinventing cleaning essentials that are better for you and the planet with the same powerful clean you're used to i for nearly two years now have integrated so many blue land products into my home from window cleaner to multi-purpose cleaner to the hand soaps in my kitchen and the idea is simple instead of buying these supplies over and over and over again and throwing the bottles out every time you finish 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even call it beef because like simone biles tweeted twice and riley gains goes on about this for four days and on and she's doing her fox news appearances she actually had one fox news interview about this where she said that simone biles was creating controversy around herself and riley so as to use riley's name to drum up media attention around her upcoming netflix documentary the intention behind this is that simone has a new docuseries coming out on netflix they believe it's an attempt to put her name her profile her face her image back in the public sphere which was really fascinating because i just love how riley gains thinks that simone biles needs her to like get publicity somehow less of a celebrity than yeah i mean maybe in my world of deranged niche twitter drama but not for like normal people i want to bring this back down to earth a little bit and like explain what's actually going on here with this whole online outrage cycle and the effect that it has on like real people in real life who aren't doing weird transvestitative online beauty pageants and to understand that i think we have to talk a little bit about gamergate natalie could you explain what gamergate is and how it kind of ties into what happened last week can i ever well gamergate was kind of uh one of the most foundational events in the history of internet harassment this began in 2014 when i mean i would say the background of it was long there was these sort of long-standing resentments within the video gamer culture i guess about an increasing line of criticism from professional games reviewers which would critique misogyny and gaming in other words what would apply like fairly standard like methods of criticism that we would apply to movies or to any other form of art but apply to video games and it would ask questions like why is it that in so many video games a woman is basically functioning as a prize or instead of as a character right so this is this was very threatening to a lot of gamers and so a conspiracy theory thinking developed where they i guess began to accuse what initially started with one particular game designer a female game designer who they through elaborate like conspiracy type connecting of the dots were like i think that she slept with this journalist for reviews and then the number of targets sort of increased and as the conspiracy movement turned into this harassment campaign and eventually the effect of it was basically to terrorize anyone in the gaming industry who was a woman who was not white who was queer the effect of it was basically a mass intimidation of people to stay in their place and not speak up because you will be doxxed and swatted and you will live in fear basically if if you don't conform to you know our status quo of like masculine traditional game gaming or whatever right and gamergate which oh my god i remember it was like there were like three i think main like female video game critics who were like harassed within an inch of their lives like they had to get like security to go anywhere these were like private either three and um zoe quinn and brianna woo brianna woo yeah and brianna woo who's now well that's for next time that's for next time yeah but they were all harassed within an inch of their lives private citizens and i feel like this laid the groundwork for like libs of tiktok and stop anti-semites which is like the zionist version of libs of tiktok to terrorize anyone who supports them Palestinian liberation they drum up this like mass amount of harassment to like you said make sure that anyone who's a woman anyone who's queer anyone who like supports anything short of like total fascism does not get to speak those views and so the way that that looked in this situation was like like i said anyone who was even tangentially associated with simone biles was totally harassed to the point where like they needed to answer for her one of simone biles recent brand partnerships like i mentioned was athleta and the comments on the athleta brand page were all demanding for the company to cut ties with her there were mainstream news outlets covering how athleta refuses to reveal whether or not they'll cut their partnership with simone biles because some people are like oh my god i don't know if they're going to cut their partnership with simone biles because some people are like oh my god i don't know if they're going to cut their partnership with simone biles told her she couldn't bully a child it's funny because the main conservative obsession for like five years was this idea of cancel culture yeah was the idea that oh like you know the politically correct woke scolds are going to try to get you fired if you say the wrong thing and it's like well this is exactly that right they're basically trying to target simone biles career her revenue sources over a statement that barely was political and and so the point of these campaigns whether it's gamergate or libs of tiktok who very explicitly wants to get people fired or things like this where it's attacking all of simone's sponsors and a hundred thousand comments and all of her friends instagram posts it's the the point here is not fairness in women's sports the point is like i mean it is cancel culture it is literally like we want to make it socially politically commercially financially professionally unviable to hold any position short of trans people shouldn't exist yeah would you say that's fair that that is fair yes there i mean there there's very few people on the right at this point who have any kind of even remotely moderate stance about trans people right there's no there's no like oh well trans people have a right to exist as equal citizens and participate in public like no like no one's saying that i would not say that the mindset is of extermination but it's like the quieter form of you know erasure ratcheting up the stigma and marginalization to the point of this type this population being pushed out of sight i think that's what they what they would like and i think that simone biles unfortunately doesn't understand that as evidenced by this follow-up apology she released at the time that we're recording this so simone biles publishes this apology and i'm not going to read the whole thing but it's basically i wanted to follow up from my last tweets i've always believed competitive equity and inclusivity are both essential in sport i want to apologize to riley for getting personal and heated these are sensitive complicated issues she kind of does this middling response of like well i didn't mean to get involved and i just want to be very clear like simone biles should not have apologized and obviously i say that because like politically i'm like never apologize to riley gains but also strategically never apologize to any of these people because this apology right it presumes that the people harassing her are doing so in good faith and will stop if she says i i'm sorry and that's not that's not what's happening here this is a big win for them i think they're happy about the apology because it signals that they have the power to do what they want to do and the strength to assert dominance in this way right that they can tell you to shut up and you have to yes basically because it threatens your career threatens your relationship with advertisers it threatens your ability to exist in public without being harassed by mobs of people riley gains literally while natalie and i have been recording this riley gains went on fox news and said simone biles was pushing quote pro-trans propaganda and she's apologized for it and realized she was wrong and i'm grateful for that nonetheless i accept her apology i see this truthfully as a really big win you have this really famous public figure who is now issuing a groveling public apology and backtracks after again tweeting pro-trans propaganda if you will this scenario would have been unthinkable a year certainly two years ago uh whether it's sincere or not i think that's a different question but nonetheless she learned we are not living in 2020 anymore and it's like this is why we're living in 2020 and it's like this is why we're living in you can't cede to these people at all yeah i feel like i want to go back and look at simone's original tweet it's because it's because i'm like did she really post pro-trans propaganda but to these people like saying that you shouldn't bully trans kids is pro-trans propaganda yeah i mean the claim is you should be uplifting the current trans community and perhaps finding a way to making sports inclusive or creating a new avenue where trans people feel safe in sports maybe a transgender category in all sports so in other words like acknowledging that trans people exist and should be given some level of fair treatment in society whatever that may look like to you that's what we're claiming as trans propaganda so i think at this point like even saying the word transgender without scare quotes means that you're doing trans propaganda to them right yes because they from their point of view there is no such thing as being transgender and the idea of being transgender is this like degenerate ideology that's being like pushed on us by the globalists right you know someone right but the thing is like transgender people are are not an ideology we are a type of person and to you cannot erase the concept without erasing the people so unfortunately unfortunately there will be a human cost to this and now you know riley gaines goes on and like i'm sure we'll parade this around for the next however many days weeks months of like oh simone biles learned her lesson yeah these people you know gavin newsom did a version of this recently which i think you mentioned natalie where he was basically like he like threw trans people under the bus he was like i'm a democrat who won't get caught up in that trans sports craziness yeah but that assumes that these people want compromise and that they're actually concerned with trans people in sports like i've made the case for there are very few elite athletes in general and almost no trans ones so what is this really about well it's a it's a it's an overton window shift right they're constantly pushing and pushing and pushing and it's a result of trump winning in 2024 in part right i think it's a major cultural victory i think i think in a way it was a major cultural victory gavin newsom seems to think it was major cultural victory and the result of that is that democrats are now are kind of shifting rightward on immigration and trans people as they try to kind of meet the i mean this is how democracy works is that you have is that uh unfortunately sometimes the majority actually is who decides things and right now the majority is not really the majority of the people i'm sorry to say i mean i think it's comforting to say some kind of conspiracist thing about like oh you know it's just like the elites that hate trans people are keeping us down and most people actually support us well i don't know if most people support us i think that most people could be persuaded to support us um i think that probably most people again it wouldn't if you actually meet with them one-on-one as a trans person i would say probably most people will find that oh great you're a person and they'll treat you like a person but i think that the current media environment meaning social media meaning very effective i guess right-wing mass media has succeeded but in other words creating these moral panics around trans people and sports is currently our most uh losing issue so i guess strategically i don't know i don't know i can't quite decide what to do about it at the moment but but we have to figure it out right i mean at moments i've even felt um temptation to like make the concession to just be like okay well never mind like obviously it's on the sports thing let's try to defend something but i don't that's not a good idea i know it's not because the second they get sports because like you say it's not about sports it's just not it's not about sports it's in and the second they went on sports okay bathrooms are next okay health care is next okay housing is next okay right it's it's they don't want trans people to to exist exist so sports is an area they've discovered where oh they can get most people on their side but that's the beginning not the end a thousand percent sorry are you gonna no it's i'm just thinking out loud which i guess is like what a podcast is oh my god how do we fight back against this i mean that's a question it is genuinely hard when you feel like you're going uphill against this moral panic and it is a moral panic again yeah if it wasn't a moral panic riley gains the professional picker of examples to foam and outrage around would have a better example to pick than a high school softball player yeah i talk a lot about moral panics on this podcast and my theory around a lot of it is just like people in power people like you know rupert murdoch who are who are bankrolling people like riley gains it is in their interest to make you continue to think that your life is not the way that you would like for it to be because of a 17 year old softball player in minnesota that's not who's getting in the way of your american dream people like rupert murdoch are standing in the way of your american dream it's always like i hate to be like it comes back to billionaires but it's like that's how power works they're getting you with someone with relatively very little power to consume your your your life and your frustrations towards people who have even less power than you so you forget about who's really in power not to do like the leftist podcast thing but right no but i mean that's true and i also think there's another layer on top of it where it's like i think a significant number of people have noticed that this does seem to be some kind of a distraction in the sense that like it is a little bit difficult to explain to yourself why you're spending so much time on this podcast and why you're spending so much time on this podcast and why you're spending this much time talking about transgender people in sports right and so i think so i think a lot of people do sense that this is a distraction of some kind but then they attribute the blame for that in the completely the wrong direction right before we started recording this podcast i listened to jimmy dore's podcast on the same topic and he had this like take where it's like trans people in athletics is this like you know it's an agenda that's being pushed by the by palantir and by the broadway zionists and by the by the big pharma right and it's like there to to to distract working people from it's like well this is like 50 correct and upside down right it's like it's like yes this is a distraction it is functioning to keep working people from getting mad at people who are exploiting them but it's not the fucking liberal deep state that's that's pushing a transgender ideology that's not the source of this distraction the source of this distraction is that a bunch of right-wing pundits and strategists realize that it's really a distraction and it's a distraction and it's a easy to get people angry about the idea of men and women's sports and so they create endless stories about that and look how deep they have to reach to find those stories they have to reach into you know high school softball but they as long as they keep that in the forefront of discourse and they keep that in the forefront of what constitutes news yeah they have you they have you thinking about this instead of thinking about something else i have a question for you the listener who i know can't respond to this because this is a podcast sorry but like riley gaines got what she wanted in college sports so now she has to go after children and people who defend children online how dear they and like i have an honest question i have an honest question that you can't respond to because this is a podcast if they were to create some federal law banning all transgender athletes in high school and in middle school from participating with other children in the sports leagues that uh align with their gender do you think riley gaines would be like i'm done now do you think there is a point at which riley gaines and everybody like her who's part of this movement would be like i'm done now natalie do you want to answer the hypothetical in place of anyone listening like they're never done i mean riley gaines might be done in the sense that she will she may cease to be useful she will cease to be like invited to cpac and to republican conventions as they move on to the next thing right but i think that no that that the conservative social agenda as laid out in things like project 2025 as we've all known what it is because there's all these evangelical think tanks and so on who who promote it the goal is a kind of return to they don't want they don't want women working they don't want women having reproductive self-determination they want not just trans people but also gay people to be excluded from public life out of schools that's the vector of this strategy so the so sports is a is a convenient entry point for them and it's one that they've used very effectively but no if if they achieve total victory on this they will immediately move on to the next thing and they already are and they already are even just in this simone biles news cycle case riley gaines is going on fox news admitting to more of a victory than simone conceded in this statement simone said well i think we should figure out something and riley said well i'm glad she apologized for spewing pro-trans propaganda right you know and it's like that is why i'm such a believer that like you can't seed an inch on any of this stuff because these aren't people interested in compromise these are fascists yeah well and it's it's frustrating right because you get treated as hysterical when you try endlessly to argue that i don't think they really care that much about fairness in women's sports but then it's like okay simone apologizes for her comment on this and the response is like she apologized for pro-trans propaganda okay so so you're anti-trans in other words right that's just that like riley gaines just is she's just anti-trans this is more or less openly admitted i think at this point this is not like 2020 jk rowling where it's like oh i love and support trans people and i'd march with you if you were oppressed but like no they would not march with you they want you to be oppressed and they're more or less openly saying that yeah so i guess i feel strongly about making people aware of how these campaigns work because i don't think it's a good idea to when you search simone biles and all of these things come up that make it seem like she has done something irredeemably controversial and just you see underneath every single thing that mentions of her thousands of comments her apology from yesterday has 41 000 replies of people telling her that she already soiled her reputation by standing with the pro-trans mob or something yeah it's it's so easy for an onlooker to just see the numbers the sheer numbers the like force that these people exert in these online campaigns and think that something legitimately controversial has taken place and i feel like that is how the overton window moves right by treating standing up for a 17 year old transgender kid as controversial as this like brutal attack on all women so i guess it's like what do we do to better combat these campaigns because clearly like you just you can't apologize yeah i mean it's very difficult to make people see that they're being over something disproportionately because it sounds because when you try it when you try to make that argument it sounds like you're sort of dodging the question i think like at the level of politicians what i think that the democrats messaging on this should be is i mean maybe this will be perceived as evasive so i don't know workshop this but i guess what i'm liking at the moment is is like the federal government should not be legislating sports ethics right this is a on an individual basis which is which i think makes sense right and if people have disagreements with the rules take it up with with the leagues not with riley gaines the president of the united states yeah or riley gaines or fox news right like it just it makes no sense the sports governing body of riley gaines right riley gaines who knows so much about gymnastics yeah yeah yeah it's awful for that matter i think to cap this off i'm just going to reiterate something from her no one in sports is safe with you around is that a good place to cap it love that i mean i hate it but yeah you know it is what it is i'm revoking the apology on simone's behalf yeah we take it back can we make her unsay it i guess i also want to clarify that like i feel bad for simone in this situation no i don't agree with her decision to apologize but i don't want to add another layer of harassment of people being like wow i can't believe you would apologize you know what i mean isn't there a way to do politics that doesn't involve harassment can't maybe not maybe i'm naive i don't know it just feels like what the internet has become it's i know it's just like what the internet does and i guess all we can do as like better bystanders again it's just like look at what's actually at the heart of what's going on which is like standing up for a trans kid encourage people to slow down and like try to like think a little more about like what they're doing and what actually is happening and to like try to process the ideological spin that these things are given and like step back have a sense of before you know you decide that the most earth-shaking issue of our time is ethics and games journalism or transgenderism in high school softball natalie i know we don't usually this was more of like a like current twitter tea it was yeah than i usually do but uh you know it's when you've seen these campaigns play out so many times it's so easy to identify them in real time and like i was like oh don't apologize they're gonna run with it and now they're running with it all we can do is run with it is just like make people aware and like don't participate in these things and like don't anticipate in the moral panic around trans sports like it's not worth it it's it's it's actually bad it's actually bad natalie thanks for coming on thanks so much for having me maybe we can do a another episode sometime and talk about something that's more fun yeah sorry i promise next time i'll give you well actually i mean it's probably won't be more fun let's be honest i never talk about anything fun because i feel like the world is the world is just not a fun place at the moment i'm not having fun yeah but like i don't know maybe we could talk about buy sister or something we could talk about buys oh my god we could do like the five year oh wait have we already passed the five year anniversary yeah it was it's uh i think we just passed six years i feel like my like my like bones are turning to dust six years since buy sister you me and tati westbrook yeah yeah i need that tati uh skin smoothing filter you need some halo beauty yeah i need halo beauty exactly thank you so much for listening today i know everything feels really shitty right now and honestly it kind of is but like i just want to at least be able to recognize reality together and that's sometimes what we try to do on this podcast so thank you i love you until next time stay fruity