Swimmer Riley Gaines Testifies in Senate About Lia Thomas, Trans Athletes

Riley Gaines is taking her battle to maintain transgender ladies out of girls’s sports activities to our nation’s capital … testifying for a Senatorial listening to about her encounters with lightning rod athlete Lia Thomas.

The former collegiate swimmer — who competed for the University of Kentucky, and who additionally raced towards Lia on the NCAA degree — described to U.S. senators what it was like having to change in the identical locker room as Thomas … who’s a transgender lady.

She describes seeing Thomas’ male genitalia and the way jarring it was for her and others, saying no person ever requested for his or her consent or enter — they, the NCAA, simply let it occur.

In Gaines’ eyes, this was a transparent violation of their proper to privateness, and she or he went on to pose the query — what does this pattern imply for ladies’s sport? And, extra importantly, does anybody care the way it impacts cisgender ladies? By letting Thomas compete with them, she argues the powers that be have confirmed they do not.

Interestingly, Gaines says she’s not advocating for trans athletes to be banned from sports activities altogether. On the opposite, she says they’ll and must be athletes — but it surely seems like she’s suggesting they’ve their very own classification and never be lumped in with cisgender opponents.

Now, so far as how the lawmakers reacted … it just about fell alongside celebration traces. Dems pushed again on her characterization — and Republicans, by and enormous, embraced her.