This Week in Barrel Scraping: This October Xth is All About Chromosomes

Transphobic grifter Riley Gaines has proposed that October 10th shall henceforth be Real Women’s Day and our Real Woman Columnist is all about it.

by Alyssa Steinsiek

Riley Gaines wasn’t a particularly impressive swimmer, but I’ll be damned if she doesn’t take first place in the “beating a dead horse” category. It’s been well over a year since she tied for fifth place with trans athlete Lia Thomas in the 200 meter freestyle competition at the NCAA Division I Women's Swimming and Diving Championships, and she remains as salty as the briney sea.

If you aren’t familiar—bless your untroubled mind—Gaines was a “good for UKY” collegiate swimmer, until she graduated last year, who has established a substantial grifting platform off of a single race she and her transgender peer failed to win. Though initially supportive of Lia, she has since changed her tune for some mysterious reason…

Nowadays she’s a spokeswoman for the Koch brothers-funded anti-woman Independent Women's Forum, the cochair for a PAC that wants to destroy Title IX protections for girls and women in education and work, an amateur Chaya Raichik impersonator, and an inspirational public speaker who aspires to recruit more transphobic women to her vapid, evil schemes.

But what, you ask, has Gaines done this week to spin my eyes so hard they roll right out of my fucking skull?

screenshot from twitter.com

Oh, yes! She wants to establish a national day for only real women who are real and not fake but real women, maybe wombyn, possibly womxyn, maybe even woemen. According to Gaines, there is one true definition of womanhood, and it has nothing to do with shared social experiences and fulfillment of cultural expectations. No, it’s not even important what you peep with your peepers!

It’s all about the chromosomes, baby!

Gaines opens up her video talking about how instead of honoring real true honest to goodness actual factual lady women, we now honor MEN. Forget trailblazers like Quannah Chasinghorse, Charolette Tidwell, or Dasia Taylor—or the other sixtyish women named by USA Today, or any other publication or organization acknowledging women across the world—only MEN are honored by modern society! Because the gender wars are on, and Riley needs you to FIGHT!

Gaines insists that, according to “fifth grade biology,” XX “is [sic] the female chromosomes.” There certainly aren’t men or women walking around whose chromosomal composition doesn’t match their biological reality. It’s not like one in one hundred Americans are intersex, or anything. Why would we need more than a fifth grade education on human biology, anatomy and culture? What a waste of time that would be!

After admitting that she chose October 10th because the Roman numeral for 10 is X, and thus the date could be written as X/X, like some sort of fumbling child testing out the concept of humor, Gaines goes on to compare her own “Real Women’s Day” to somebody arbitrarily deciding the date of National Pizza Day.

Really selling it, Riley!

She claims to have gone to “all the websites and publications” to ask them to declare October 10th Real Women’s Day, but none of them agreed because it would be “too controversial.” I don’t know what websites or publications exert authority over made up holidays, but it seems they have spoken!

And, finally, Gaines plugs a petition on her website to declare 10/10 Real Women’s Day. I’m not sure who the petition is for, but I’m sure whoever it is will appreciate receiving it in their inbox. Deeply.

Here’s my take on Riley Gaines: I think she’s a dishonest conwoman who couldn’t care less about trans people, but who figured out that she could generate a whole lot of attention and money by pretending to champion “real women” saying silly, bigoted shit. [better than going to dental school -ed]

We already know she’s changed her story dramatically, and multiple times, since first making a splash (sorry) in the news. We know that her career pivot from aspiring dentist, apparently, to professional transphobe has been extremely lucrative.

So it would be a mistake to read this kind of goofy bullshit with any level of sincerety. Like most of the bile she’s spewed over the last year, Riley is just trying as hard as she can to remain relevant in the public eye, so she can keep that grift machine spinning.

That said, I’m a real woman, so I think I’ll celebrate myself and all of the other trans girlies on October 10th. It’s been pretty rough out here lately, and I think we all deserve another day in the calendar to talk about how cool and funny and hot we are.

Thanks for the idea, Riley!