Women’s rights advocate and Turning Point USA Contributor Riley Gaines, spoke at Turning Point Education’s 5th Educators’ Summit Wednesday, discussing her history as a swimmer and the experience she had with the faculty of her college when competing against transgender swimmer Lia Thomas.
Gaines said she felt betrayed by a beloved institution that she believed had her best interests at heart.
“An institution that, quite frankly, I felt like I had dedicated my life to; and then, without even a blink of an eye, they threw our rights to privacy as women entirely out of the window,” she stated.
“I realized then that I had a choice to make right?” she said of the moment. “Comfort or conviction; silence or obedience; boldness or cowardice?”
Her decision to oppose the university’s and the NCAA’s treatment of her felt difficult at the time, though now it appears to her evidently to have been the right action.
“It didn’t feel like an easy decision, you would think, right, that it would be an easy decision to make. It’s so obviously wrong. Why wasn’t everyone saying it? You would think that, especially now, right? Think back to the ‘peak woke’ era. I know you as educators, you know that. It wasn’t an easy decision for me to make. And I say that as someone who’s always considered myself a leader of visibility to be courageous and to have impact. But I realize now that courage is not measured by visibility,” she said.
Gaines noted that “many of the most influential people in my life were people who were never famous.” These were her parents, teachers, and coaches, who both believed in and challenged her, and ultimately changed her life and thereby the lives of others.
“They changed the world one life at a time,” she said as she concluded, “and that’s exactly how you have a lasting impact. That’s how change happens. And it sounds cliche but it’s true that courage really does beget courage.”
