Simone Biles, the unquestionable title holder of Greatest of All Time in Olympic gymnastics, recently went after Riley Gaines, a college swimmer who once tied for fifth with trans swimmer Lia Thomas and subsequently has made a career of persecuting trans athletes. The fact that she would have come in fifth even if Lia had not been allowed to swim has not prevented her from becoming the aggrieved poster child for conservative media in their thirst for anti-trans content, and no doubt made her a lot of money in the process.
A grift of the highest order, but I digress. What had agitated Biles was Gaines attacking a 17-year-old trans girl who was the pitcher of a high school softball team that won the class AAAA state championship in Minnesota. Simone stepped into the online fray and called Riley “a loser” and more for going after a trans kid. A largely cisgender-controlled liberal media went wild with praise calling her a true champion for trans athletes.
The truth however, when we parse what she actually said, fell well short of a full-throated defense of trans women in sports.
Her posts to Riley, aside from telling her to pick on someone her own size, which she further elaborated would ironically be a man, also said that work needed to be done to balance inclusivity with competitive “fairness.”
Implicit in her statement was the idea that the limited success of trans women in women’s sports indicated a problem that needed to be solved. This despite the athletic league regulations already in place based on the best available science of trans sport performance, and the incorrect assumption that there are enough trans people in sports to make a segregated trans league even remotely viable.
In fact, the idea of creating a segregated league was lifted straight out of right-wing talking points. It showed an alarming lack of awareness for the historical justifications of past segregated leagues, and the fact that gendered leagues were created not to protect women, but to save men the embarrassment of losing to the “weaker sex.”
This was incredibly disheartening to me as a trans person. Even more so that this glaring flaw in her reasoning was completely ignored by liberal media in favor of selling the narrative that “Simone Biles is on the right side of history defending trans people! She truly is the GOAT!”
If that wasn’t bad enough, the next day Simone was forced to issue an apology, clearly crafted by her publicists in an ill-conceived attempt to appease all sides, after conservatives went nuts over her “body shaming” Riley by comparing her to a man. As if conservatives have ever given a flying f-word about body shaming except to ridicule the concept.
It was a transparently calculated move to use progressive language as a weapon, and it got the result they wanted. The headlines were nauseating with even a queer publication like LGBTQ Nation highlighting it as “Simone Biles Apologizes to Riley Gaines.” Given how few people typically read articles for clarification, for all the world it looked like Simone had relented on her defense of trans people.
To be clear, I am not saying Simone Biles is a transphobe, but like so many cisgender people who fancy themselves allies, she is showing her support has limits borne of a lack of education. I only wish she had taken the time to learn what she needed to know before she chose to pop off at Riley in such a high-profile exchange. One that I think ultimately hurt trans people more than helped us by endorsing the idea of trans exclusion as a reasonable proposition. And she is far from alone in this regard.
Everywhere trans people turn, it seems we are being let down by wishy-washy cis allies without the tools to properly defend us. Governor of California Gavin Newsom, 2028 presidential hopeful and liberal darling for standing up to Trump over the unrest in LA, has stated outright that he thinks trans women participating in sports is unfair to women. The Democratic Senator from Arizona, Ruben Gallego, recently said that concern over trans participation in sports is “legitimate.” With friends like these, who needs enemies?
The thing is, if you are going to go around saying trans women are women with your full chest, then you actually have to do the work to make sure you can offer an educated defense. It cannot just be a hollow rallying cry to stoke support from liberal fans and constituencies that ultimately folds at the slightest provocation and when we need it most.
The moment you agree with the transphobes to draw exclusionary boundaries on trans womanhood; you put to lie the phrase. You’ve in fact created a clear division between trans women and our cisgender sisters that at some level, if you are honest with yourselves, is based on discomfort with trans bodies and misogynistic European ideals of women’s bodies.
After all, how can the small successes of trans women be taking anything from women’s sports if we are actually women? You can’t have it both ways, but some of you, like Simon Biles, are sure trying. Trans people deserve better from our allies.
Melody Maia Monet has her own trans lesbian themed YouTube channel at YouTube.com/MelodyMaia.
