Riley Gaines' Speech at Harvard on Oct. 26
Members of MA4Women attend The Speak Louder tour at Boylston Hall
Riley Gaines
Riley Gaines, captain of the University of Kentucky’s women’s swim team, competed in the NCAA’s Women’s Swimming and Diving Championships in 2021. In the 200-yard freestyle championship she tied for fifth place with University of Pennsylvania swimmer Lia Thomas, formerly William Thomas, a transgender-identified male. From 2017-2020 Thomas swam on UPenn’s men’s swimming team, but in 2021, after meeting the NCAA’s hormone requirements for trans athletes, the university allowed Thomas to swim for the women’s team. Riley was forced to share the fifth-place trophy with Thomas in pictures and the trophy ultimately went home with Thomas. Riley and all the other female swimmers competing at the NCAA championship that year were also forced to share the changing room with Thomas, an intact male.
Following the NCAA championship, Riley became outspoken about fairness in sports and the need to protect female-only spaces. In April 2023 she spoke at San Francisco State University. During her speech, students attempted to disrupt the event. While appearing as a witness at a Senate Subcommittee hearing in June of 2023, Riley claimed that after her speech concluded at San Francisco State she was assaulted by protestors and was trapped in a room for over three hours until police arrived to disperse the crowd.
Despite her experience at San Francisco State Riley scheduled the Speak Louder Campus Tour for the fall of 2023. The Harvard University stop was scheduled for Oct. 26, 2023.
Harvard University
Even before attendees arrived on campus for Riley’s event there was apprehension concerning protests or disruptions at the speech. In September 2023 Harvard made the news by coming in dead last on the Foundation for Individual Rights and Expression’s (FIRE) free speech survey. Every year FIRE surveys US college and university students about their experience with free speech on campus. According to the report, “58% of students say they are worried about damaging their reputation because someone misunderstands something they have said or done and 53% of students said they have self-censored on campus at least once or twice a month.”
While waiting for the speech to start, some members of MA4Women talked to a male Harvard undergraduate. He confirmed that free speech was hindered on campus and that there is no diversity of viewpoints. He said that the professors did not encourage or allow discussion regarding the claim that sex is binary. He shared that his girlfriend felt the need to hide her true beliefs from her friends and other students on campus.
Tensions among students were also heightened due to protests that had broken out over campus earlier in the month following the Oct. 7 attack on Israel by Hamas.
The Trans-Joy Party
On Oct 23, 2023, Riley Gaines tweeted an email sent by Erin West, an assistant director of athletics - diversity, inclusion, and student development at Harvard. A section of the email read as follows:
On Oct. 26th, an Anti-Trans Student Group is inviting Riley Gaines, an athlete-turned-activist to speak. In response and in solidarity with Trans Athletes and with Trans People everywhere, we are throwing a big trans party! We will be meeting outside Boylston Hall from 6:00-8:00pm on Thurday October 26th to celebrate trans+ joy, trans athletes, and our community.
When the members of MA4Women arrived to check into the event a group of pro-trans students had gathered on the right side of Boylston Hall. The group had also set up an information table and some of the students were writing slogans on the walkway in front of the building with chalk. The table had markers and construction paper for students to write statements and a flyer “fact-checking” some of Riley’s talking points.
Overall the students at the party were docile and mostly kept to themselves. There were a couple of posters hanging on the buildings behind Boylston Hall where the attendees were lined up. While people waited in line, a group of students came around to hand out a “fact-checking” flyer. The students handing out the flyer were polite and even took some pro-woman stickers that another attendee offered them. The flyer itself attempts to repute some of Riley’s talking points. For the arguments on the flyer that include a source (some of the arguments make uncited claims), the authors used a single scientific review published by the Canadian Center for Ethics in Sports and completed by E-Alliance, a knowledge-sharing hub made up of scholars and partners dedicated to gender+ equity in sport. A refutation of this review, written by an international group of scientists, was published in 2022, titled “When Ideology Trumps Science.”
The Speech
Riley’s Speak Louder Tour was hosted at Harvard by the Harvard Undergraduate Network of Enlightened Women (NEW), a conservative women’s group on campus. Attendees were required to register for the event, either through their student ID, or by filling out a Google form (for non-students).
Boylston Auditorium seats over 100 people and the room was at capacity when the talk commenced. Most of the attendees looked to be Harvard undergrads and there was a surprising amount of young men in attendance. Security and Harvard police manned the front and back entrances to the building and there was a security presence in the room.
Before the talk there was a notice about how the school was going to handle any disruption to the event. One of the members of NEW read a prepared statement that said that Harvard would allow a protest to disrupt the speech for up to 10 minutes and if the protestors were still being disruptive after the 10-minute warning, they would be escorted out of the building.
Riley entered after 7:00 pm with a security detail and she spoke for about an hour. She detailed her experience with Lia Thomas, about being forced to share the trophy and the changing room with a man. She said that she had to attend media training about Thomas before the NCAA championship. Her school, Kentucky State, also told the team that they shouldn’t speak out against Thomas because they were supposed to represent the university. Riley said that when she asked an official about why Thomas was allowed to use the women’s changing room she was told that they had turned the changing room into a “unisex” space. She said that when she started speaking out people were supportive in person, but were reluctant to sign their name to any sort of petition or to be on the record. When she reached out to liberal media outlets to tell her story she was told they were “not going to give you a platform to spread your hate.”
Near the end of the speech she said that although this journey for her started as a fairness in sports issue she recognizes that this issue has wide-reaching consequences, such as the erasure of language and the presence of men in women’s prisons and in domestic violence and rape shelters. She is also an advocate for The Women’s Bill of Rights.
Throughout the speech the audience was receptive and there were no protests or disruptions. Due to the speech running long there was only a short time for questions. The presenters asked that attendees use a website to submit questions. Most of the questions were supportive, however, there were one or two questions submitted to the website asking why Riley insisted on misgendering Thomas.
Throughout the speech Riley was eloquent and prepared. She is very comfortable talking about her own experiences. She is open about the fact that she is a conservative Christian and parts of her speech were tailored to a young conservative audience. While it could be argued that there is still room for refinement in the content and length of her speech, she is still young, only 23 years old at the time of this posting, and we at MA4Women are excited to watch her journey as she continues to fight for women’s fairness in sport and for the safety and privacy of women and girls everywhere.
Watch the Speech
We have provided the full video of Riley’s speech at Harvard University below.
Thank you for writing this!
Thank You! I'm glad that a repeat of San Francisco was not allowed.
But how is her being a Christian relevant?