University VP Thanks ‘Peaceful’ Students for Harassing and Attacking Riley Gaines
It isn’t just women’s sports that needs protecting in this diabolical war for trans extremism. It’s women themselves. Former NCAA swimmer Riley Gaines made that abundantly clear in a visit to the campus of San Francisco State University last Thursday, where she was physically attacked for suggesting girls deserve a safe space to compete. Turns out, there are no safe spaces — not when you spurn the mob.
The ambush started before Gaines was halfway through her story. In the room where Riley talked about her experience competing against male Lia Thomas, students started waving pink and blue flags and holding up signs that read “trans rights are human rights.” Eventually, the quiet demonstration turned into full blown chanting, ultimately escalating to the point where police felt the need to extract Gaines and hurry her down a hallway while students screamed “Go the f--- home!” and at least one man in a dress hit her. While protestors threatened from outside, she spent three hours barricaded in a room, waiting for the crowd to disperse.
And what was the university’s response? Not horror, incredibly — but pride. To everyone’s astonishment, SFSU Vice President for Student Affairs Jamillah Moore took to Twitter to applaud students for their hostility, posting, “Thank you to our students who participated peacefully in Thursday evening’s event.” Moore insists “[i]t took tremendous bravery to stand in a challenging space” — speaking, not of Riley, who stood her ground in a ruthless crowd, but of the “courageous” actions of the school’s raging horde.
“… [O]ur students demonstrated the value of free speech and the right to protest peacefully,” Moore said. “These issues do not go away, and these values are very much at our core.”
Like everyone else, Gaines was speechless. “I’m sorry,” she posted, “did this just say ‘PEACEFUL?’” “I was assaulted,” she continued. “I was extorted and held for [ransom]. The protestors demanded I pay them if I wanted to make it home safely. I missed my flight home, because I was barricaded in a classroom,” she wrote. “We must have different definitions of peaceful.”
As of this morning, no arrests have been made in what school officials continue to call a “disruption.” “Imagine if the roles were reversed and a group of white, conservatives ambushed someone within the LGBTQ community physically assaulted them, and held them for ransom for 3 hrs...” Riley insisted. “There would be arrests and repercussions for the perpetrators and administration who allowed this.”
Days later, the crime has not only gone unpunished but cheered by woke school faculty. Gaines’s agent, Eli Bremer, called it “stunning,” telling reporters that he can’t believe it’s “acceptable for biological male students to violently assault a woman for standing up for women’s rights” in 2023. All Gaines has done is speak up for privacy, biology, and the “integrity of Title IX” — a policy the Left actually supported until it collided with their quest for sexual anarchy.
As Family Research Council’s Mary Szoch told The Washington Stand, the violence this White House is doing to female equality is an eerie parallel to the beating women are taking in real life. “The bodily assaults on Riley Gaines at San Francisco State University are a physical manifestation of the assault that the NCAA and the Biden administration has allowed trans activists to execute against female athletes and women across the country as they empower men in dresses and heals to trample on women. Riley Gaines’s defense of women is heroic.”
“Like most Division I female athletes,” Szoch said (as a former one herself), “Riley is deeply aware of the physical limitations of the female body. While women are certainly equal to men in worth, dignity, and intelligence, it is a biological fact that in peer competition, men are stronger and faster than women. … In order to respect the equal dignity and worth of men and women, it is essential that the playing field be fair: men vs. men and women vs. women. The assault on Riley Gaines is evidence that those who want men playing women’s sports don’t want equal opportunities — they simply want to shove women back down the ladder of success.”
The entire episode, Gaines pointed out, is evidence that girls need protecting. “This is proof that women need sex-protected spaces,” she wrote. “Still only further assures me I’m doing something right. When they want you silent, speak louder.”
In a conversation with Fox News’s Tucker Carlson, Riley vowed her attackers will face “legal repercussions.” “… I am worried about my safety. I have to be now,” she said. “When we have people who are willing to do this, and we know why they’re willing to do this, it is because they don’t have reason, they don’t have logic, they don’t have science, they don’t have common sense on their side. That’s on my side. And so they protrude by violence, whether it’s physical or verbal violence.”
Whether it’s in state capitols or Christian schools, transgender activists have shown their willingness to savage anyone standing in their way. As Carlson told audiences, “Mental illness leads to violence. This is a species of mental illness, and there is no mental illness greater than the delusion that you are god and that is exactly what this cult teaches its adherents. You are god. You can change nature with your will, forget biology.” Now, thanks to the Biden administration, “terrorism that is the inevitable result of this belief system is accelerating.”
He’s right. On the very day Riley was attacked, President Biden — who champions the zealots who harassed her — announced his plans to sweep away every state sports protection Gaines is fighting for. It is, as FRC’s Meg Kilgannon told TWS, “a terrifyingly timely example of the ideology that is infecting the Biden administration. The mind-numb student cult members that will chant ‘Transwomen are women!’ are no different from the Senate-approved appointees running the Department of Education and other agencies. Biden officials will use institutional authority to codify the demands of the chanting mob.”
As she explained to guest host Jody Hice on Monday’s “Washington Watch,” what the president announced last week would completely override democratically-enacted laws. “What this means is, if, in your red state, there’s a student in your school who identifies as transgender and that child is a boy who is born in a male body… but wants to play girls’ softball, for example, it will be assumed that he has the right to play on the team … if [your school] wants to receive federal funds.” It doesn’t matter if your legislature passed a law that protects girls. Joe Biden believes he has the power to completely abolish states’ rights — and America’s women too.
Even so, Gaines is not deterred. In the face of the president’s activism and this lost and brainwashed generation, she says, “This assures me that I’m doing the right thing. This will not silence me. When they want me to be silenced, it just means I need to speak louder.”
Suzanne Bowdey serves as editorial director and senior writer at The Washington Stand.