Outspoken conservative activist Riley Gaines has recalled the feeling of being ‘violated’ by being forced to share a locker room with a transgender athlete.
Gaines, now 24, while swimming for the University of Kentucky in the 200-yard NCAA freestyle championship tied for fifth place with University of Pennsylvania swimmer Lia Thomas in 2022.
Thomas, previously known as Will Thomas, became the first transgender athlete to win an NCAA Division 1 title in the same year.
Gaines has been vocal in her opposition to allowing trans athletes to compete in women’s sport and has dedicated the past two years to campaigning on the issue.
And now, she has once again spoken out on the subject, lifting the lid on sharing a locker room with Thomas.
‘A 6-foot-4 man was allowed in to undress, fully expose himself. He was full naked and, of course, full intact inches away from where we, 18-, 19-, 20-year-old girls, were fully undressed,’ she told Fox News.
Riley Gaines recalled ‘humiliating’ experience of sharing locker room with a trans athlete
In 2022, Gaines tied for fifth with transgender swimmer Lia Thomas (pictured left)
‘I can’t even put into words the feelings of violation. It’s humiliating. It’s awkward. It’s embarrassing. It’s uncomfortable. But most importantly I remember feeling so betrayed by my university, by the NCAA, by people who I believed had our best interests at heart. And in the blink of an eye they threw our rights to privacy as women entirely out of the window.
‘What we saw result from that was women, rather than going into the locker room to undress, they found other outlets. I know there were several girls, several of my teammates even, who opted to change in the janitor’s closet next to dirty mops as opposed to being exposed and exploited to a naked man.
‘So when they talk about «inclusivity,» what that really is is exclusivity and what they’re excluding is women out of women’s locker rooms.’
Thomas had competed for the UPenn men’s swimming team from 2017-20 under the name Wil before being introduced to the women’s team in Fall 2019.
She finished first in the 500- and 200-yard freestyle races at the 2022 Ivy League Championships.
Meanwhile, Gaines was invited to Donald Trump’s address to Congress Tuesday night when the President turned his focus to keeping trans athletes out of women’s sports.
The subject had been a big driving force in his election last November and Trump elected to highlight the story of Payton McNabb, a former high school volleyball player who was left with brain damage after being spiked in the face by a trans opponent, during his speech.
Trump’s speech came after he surrounded himself with female athletes and activists, including Gaines, at the White House last month to sign an executive order barring trans participation in women’s sports.
Gaines was one of several female athletes and activists incited to the White House last month
The order uses Title IX, a law against sex discrimination in taxpayer-funded education programs, to ban transgender girls and women from participating in female school sports activities.
Trump said his new Secretary of State Marco Rubio ‘is going to make clear to the International Olympic Committee’ that ‘America categorically rejects transgender lunacy .’
‘We want them to change everything having to do with the Olympics and having to do with this absolutely ridiculous subject,’ Trump went on.
The pledge was one of Trump’s most popular rallying cries during the 2024 election campaign.
Many college students and their parents expressed concern about opportunities that women were losing because of biological men competing in their sports.
