TWIBS: Riley Gaines Saga Explained by Mother Jones
A new profile on the prolific anti-trans activist by Mother Jones sheds light on Gaines’ obsession.
Opinion by Aly Gibbs
This Week in Barrel Scraping (TWIBS) is Assigned Media’s longest running column! Every Friday, Aly Gibbs digs deep from the well of transphobia and finds the most obnoxious, goofy thing transphobes have said or obsessed over during the week and tears it to shreds.
Wow, what a week! This is the best twofer I’ve gotten since gas station sushi gave me food poisoning last year: Graham Linehan and Riley Gaines, two anti-trans activist losers I absolutely despise, making the news within a few days of each other!
Happy American Thanksgiving, everybody… and by that I mean donate money to the American Indian College Fund and the Native American Rights Fund, or seek out mutual aid requests from indigenous Americans on social media and send them money directly.
Mother Jones released an extremely thorough and enlightening profile on Gaines’ history of anti-trans activism on Sunday. It’s long, but well worth the read, and even exists in collaboration with an episode of a podcast or something. I don’t know, I haven’t listened to that and I probably won’t. I’m too busy sitting around playing video games to sit around listening to podcasts, you understand.
Madison Pauly does a great job selling the key takeaway right out of the gate: Gaines is an activist propelled to fame by a single loss against a group of people who constitute less than a single percentile of elite competitors, and has benefited tremendously from her crusade against trans people, hobnobbing with the president of the United States and creating a powerful weapon for conservative politicians by turning debate about trans athletes into an integral part of the culture war against trans Americans.
Trump even thanked Gaines at a signing ceremony for one of his many early days anti-trans Executive Orders, crediting her as a significant part of why he won a second term.
Pauly also points out that Gaines has more or less succeeded in her stated goal of ousting trans people (chiefly trans women) from sports: between federal level bans and 29 state bans, trans athletes are prohibited from participating in sports throughout most of the United States, and probably the Olympics too starting next year. She’s also made serious bank in the process, hosting a bankrolled podcast and demanding $25,000 per speaking engagement while most trans people live in abject crushing poverty.
What I really want to talk about, though, are segments of Gaines’ 2024 memoir, Swimming Against the Current, that Pauly talks about in Riley’s profile.
In her memoir, Gaines talks about childhood abuse from her father in the form of exercises meant to toughen her up, like jumping into an outdoor pool in the middle of winter and being commanded not to shake or chatter. She also remarks upon extensive verbal and emotional abuse from Olympic swimmer and former University of Kentucky swim coach Lars Jorgensen, highlighting the way he would “trash talk” her, insisting she had no talent as a swimmer.
In October, Jorgensen received a lifetime ban from coaching by the US Center for Safesport for misconduct, or more specifically (per their online database): “Intimate relationship involving a power imbalance; physical misconduct; retaliation; sexual harassment; (and) sexual misconduct.” He has also been accused in a lawsuit of a pattern of sexual harassment and assault during his time at UK, who are also named in the suit for trying to cover up his misconduct.
In her book, Riley Gaines describes Jorgensen as one of her best friends.
The rest of Pauly’s profile consists of excellent coverage about Gaines’ development as a leading figure in the anti-trans movement. Assigned has written about most of that before (and much of that writing was done by me, because I hate Riley Gaines and won’t pass up an opportunity to rail against her), so I won’t bother recounting it point-by-point.
What I will say is this: Gaines’ discussion of trauma in her childhood and young adult life paint a picture, I believe, of a woman who turned herself into an activist because she couldn’t accept that she wasn’t the best. Don’t get me wrong, I’m sure the piles of cold hard cash and ego feeding have been huge motivators, too, but I think that at her core Gaines decided to go all in on the idea that she had been cheated out of a win to protect herself. Cognitive dissonance at its finest, if you will.
I think that, like most people who are violently pushed into competitive sports at a young age (and deeply damaged by the abuse they suffer at the hands of parents and coaches), Gaines has spent the last few years lashing out at anyone and everyone who might question her superiority as an athlete to cope with the fact that, in her mind, she will always be a disappointment to the monsters whose respect she so desperately craves.
It’s an interesting look into Gaines’ psyche, to be sure, but I do want to stress that it doesn’t change anything. She is the bottle blond, spray-on tan face of transphobic intolerance in sports, and she’s done more harm to young trans Americans than most bigots could ever dream of. Her sob story is, frankly, nothing compared to the countless lives she’s ruined with her single-minded hatred for people who just happen to be different from her.
So, as I’ve said many times before: Go to hell, Riley.
Aly Gibbs (She/They), formerly Alyssa Steinsiek, is a trans writer who reports on news important to the queer community.
