In recent months, I’ve had a growing awareness of Riley Gaines, a self-styled right-wing political commentator. She was a college athlete/swimmer whose defining moment was coming in fifth place at an NCAA swim meet and having to share the fifth-place trophy with a trans athlete. That is what radicalized her – the idea that a trans woman will compete in women’s sports. Instead of pausing and wondering if she was just a sore loser clinging to trans-panic as the political hot-button issue du jour, Riley has plowed ahead and made a career out of bullying trans children who participate in sports.
Well, I have no idea why GOAT Simone Biles decided that she had the time to take down Riley Gaines, but Simone did so online. It started when Gaines was trying to bully a trans child on a high school softball team, posting a photo of the team and basically putting a f–king target on this poor kid’s back. Simone wiped the floor with her:
@Riley_Gaines_ You’re truly sick, all of this campaigning because you lost a race. Straight up sore loser. You should be uplifting the trans community and perhaps finding a way to make sports inclusive OR creating a new avenue where trans feel safe in sports. Maybe a transgender… https://t.co/pjpzuZ0AlO
— Simone Biles (@Simone_Biles) June 6, 2025
bully someone your own size, which would ironically be a male @Riley_Gaines_
— Simone Biles (@Simone_Biles) June 6, 2025
I honestly didn’t expect Simone to come out this way for the trans community and the “stop bullying trans kids” community. It’s incredibly cool that she’s saying this with her whole chest. She left her comments open and they are despicable. The sheer number of people using Larry Nassar as some kind of clapback on Simone is deranged. Isn’t that the larger point though? Larry Nassar, a cisgendered man, abused dozens of children. While dipsh-ts like Riley Gaines cry about trans people in locker rooms, the overwhelming majority of predators are cisgendered men.
Photos courtesy of Backgrid, Avalon Red.
