Cringe: Simone Biles Erupts at Riley Gaines for ‘Bullying’ Boys in Girls Sports
Olympic gymnast Simone Biles erupted at Riley Gaines on social media Friday, accusing the former NCAA swimmer of bullying transgender-identified boys in girls sports and shaming her for being too masculine.
You read that right.
The contentious exchange kicked off after Marissa Rothenberger, a boy, led the Champlin Park Rebels to a 6-0 shutout victory in the Minnesota girls high school softball championship on June 6.
Gaines, who had been sounding the alarm on Rothenberger’s participation in a girls league for weeks, immediately criticized the Rebels’ win.
“To be expected when your star player is a boy,” she wrote in one tweet, reposting a picture of the team holding the trophy.
Apparently, Biles had had enough.
Biles’ rant references Gaines’ race against Lia, formerly Will, Thomas — a man — in the 2022 NCAA championships. The two tied for fifth place in the 200-meter freestyle.
After castigating Gaines for bullying, Biles concluded:
Gaines, no stranger to attacks like Biles’, posted a blistering rebuttal Saturday, which you can watch here.
Biles’ comments deserve the strictest scrutiny. If she supports stripping female athletes of sex segregated sports, which she has excelled in, she should offer a darn good reason why.
If she has one, Biles’ posts do not articulate it.
Exhibit A — her concluding line.
“Bully someone your own size, which would ironically be a male.”
Strong arguments don’t lean on insults, so not an ideal finish. It’s also just … a bad insult.
So, Gaines looks like a dude — why? Because she’s muscular, like Biles? For a post ostensibly “uplifting” people who believe sex doesn’t matter, or even exist, Biles chose a remarkably sex-centric conclusion —one that acknowledges men are built differently than women and, ironically, insults her own physique.
Ill-advised insults aside, Biles contends Gaines uses her platform to improperly “bully” transgender-identified athletes. As Biles sees it, Gaines should be “uplifting” transgender-identified athletes or find a way to include them in sports.
Biles’ argument smacks of hypocrisy. She bullies Gaines in the name of stopping Gaines’ bullying. And, in her myopic focus on trashing the former swimmer, Biles gets some crucial facts wrong.
Biles calls Gaines a sore loser, implying she began “bullying” boys in girls sports because she tied with Thomas in 2022. But, in interview after interview, Gaines has cited her interaction with NCAA officials after the race, when Thomas received the only trophy “for photo purposes,” as the moment that galvanized her opposition to men in women’s sports.
In a 2022 interview with the Daily Wire, Gaines even claimed she had no problem with Thomas himself, only the NCAA’s automatic prioritization of gender confused athletes.
Gaines’ experience illustrates the ways men’s participation in women’s sports diminishes the athletic accolades and accomplishments of women. Biles sidesteps this facet of the argument entirely.
In addition to her initial mischaracterization of Gaines, Biles relies on two implicit assumptions to prosecute her case: that advocating for sex-segregated sports is bullying and that allowing boys to play in girls sports is uplifting.
Both are wrong.
Advocating for sex-segregated sports is not bullying — it’s an acknowledgement of biological reality. Congress recognized the same reality in 1972 with the establishment of Title IX. Sex-segregated sports were necessary, legislators understood, because women could not compete with the physicality of their male peers.
In a world without male and female leagues, women would warm the bench, if they were lucky.
Biles herself seemed to acknowledge as much in 2017, tweeting:
Allowing boys to compete in girls sports cannot be called “uplifting” to gender confused boys, in part, because their victory is at the expense of girls’ athletic opportunities and accomplishments — not to mention their privacy and safety.
Biles conspicuously fails to address women’s concerns about sharing private spaces with intact males, as NCAA swimmers were forced to do with Thomas. Her failure to empathize with athletes like Paula Scanlon, Lilian Hammond, Gaines and others affected by changing in front of a male is particularly disappointing given Biles own experience with sexual assault.
Biles competes in one of the few sports in which a man may not have an automatic competitive advantage, at least in some events. Perhaps that’s why she feels comfortable airing her thoughts on social media.
But, as one of the most successful and recognizable female athletes in the world, Biles should endeavor to think before she tweets. Attacking one of the foremost protectors of girls sports without explaining why future athletes should be deprived of the sex-segregated sports Biles succeeded in is tone deaf — at best.
Additional Articles and Resources
Girls Shouldn’t Apologize for Protesting Boys in Girls Sports
Female Athletes Challenge Minnesota Policy Forcing Them to Compete Against Males
Education Department Finds UPenn Violated Title IX & Women’s Rights
Minnesota Lawsuit Advances Shockingly Poor Attack on Title IX
Attorney General Pam Bondi Sues Maine for Title IX Violations
USA Fencing Explicitly Prioritizes Men’s Feelings over Women’s Safety and Athletic Achievement
ADF Files Civil Rights Complaints to protect Female Athletes, Parents
Olympic Track and Field protects Women. Why Won’t Other Sports Do the Same?
Girls Sports Coaches are Incentivize to Recruit Men — Parents Shouldn’t Let Them
Maine Schools Violated Title IX, Must Apologize, Feds Say
Olympic Women’s Boxing Champ is Officially a Man
Shoving Girls of the Podium: More Male Athletes Participating in Girls Sports
Four Women’s Volleyball Teams Forfeit—Won’t Play Team with a Man
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