Riley Gaines Just Tried To Make Negative Fan Reaction To Anti-Trans WNBA Player All About Herself—And We Can't Even

The WNBA has been enjoying immense growth as more people tuned in to the women's NCAA championship then followed their favorite players to the professional league.

Sensing opportunity, Riley Gaines, a former collegiate swimmer who made a career out of tying a trans woman for 5th place in an NCAA championship race, went to a recent game between the Indiana Fever and Minnesota Lynx at the Target Center in Minneapolis.

Gaines went there with Jennifer Sey, the founder of XX–XY Athletics, a fledgling sportswear brand whose entire marketing shtick is transphobia. Gaines is, of course, their spokesmodel.

But as Gaines' star is fading fast, with invitations to the White House and CPAC drying up, she and Sey journeyed to Minnesota for a pregame photo op with new MAGA anti-trans, Aryan ideal poster girl Sophie Cunningham. Sporting their branded shirts to promote their clothing line, Gaines and Sey flanked Cunningham for a photo with a sign reading, "Sophie thank you, a girl mom."

29-year-old bench warmer Cunningham, like Gaines an athlete of modest talent, followed Gaines' route to the spotlight. Unable to rely on talent, both blond, blue-eyed women opted to attack a population so small in their respective sports as to be a non-issue.

Despite no public record or indication that Cunningham has ever played with or against an openly transgender athlete, she decided to make public statements condemning the inclusion of trans kids in sports.

Gaines' only encounter with a trans athlete helped prove that trans women have no unfair advantage as most critics of inclusion claim, with both Gaines and swimmer Lia Thomas tying for 5th place behind four cisgender women.

Minnesota head coach Cheryl Reeve had her own reaction to an issue that affects less than 0.002% of college athletes in the United States, saying that the handful of trans children in each state that play sports shouldn't be excluded by statistically unsupported fear mongering.

When Utah proposed a statewide trans athlete ban to "protect girls," only four transgender student-athletes out of roughly 75,000 to 85,000 total high school sports participants existed. Of those four, only one was a transgender girl playing on a girls' team—or 0.001% of athletes.

On game night, Coach Reeve wore a shirt saying, "Trans kids belong."

Looking to boost her brand/profits, Gaines reposted a photo of Reeve with one of herself with Cunningham.

Pushing her grift further, Gaines made sure to report on her WNBA experience on Fox News, mentioning the clothing brand that pays her while also repeatedly centering herself in the narrative.

Gaines claimed:

"Every time Sophie Cunningham was on the court every… she was booed by the entire stadium. They’re trying to do to her what they did to me."

You can see Gaines' comments on Fox here:

Actual sports legend Martina Navratilova—who won 59 tennis majors including nine wins at Wimbledon, in women's singles, women's doubles, and mixed doubles—weighed in. Navratilova has repeatedly supported the inclusion of trans athletes in men's and women's sports.

Plenty of others also had some feedback for Gaines.

@WhatTheHec_tor/X

@K Phillips7/X

@marthabrendel/X

@DefunctWebs/X

Another solution searching for a problem, the MAGA Republican Party has made attacks against trans people a focus at every level of government—local, state, and federal—for years. And a gullible, ignorant public fell for it.

Trans women are such a small portion of the population, people are unlikely to ever encounter them in sports or in public bathrooms. But trans women, especially BIPOC, are disproportionately the victims of violence.

Government and institutional attacks on trans people through laws and policies have proven repeatedly that the people ultimately targeted are cisgender girls and women with short hair or who don't wear make-up or female-coded clothing or otherwise don't fit narrow stereotypes of what girls and women look like.

Proposed state laws requiring "gender verification" would have allowed adult officials, the majority of whom are male, to check the genitals of any girl in K-12 sports that anyone suspected was trans.

So much for protecting women and girls.