"Mediocre swimmer turned conservative activist Riley Gaines (who rose to fame after loudly complaining about competing against Lia Thomas, a trans athlete at the University of Pennsylvania) gave up a key page of the current anti-transgender-rights playbook in a 2025 interview with the New York Times. "The gender ideology movement is a house of cards, and I believe it's lying on that sports issue," she said in August. "This will be the card that makes all of it crumble.""
"In 2026, it's fair for a well-meaning (and perhaps exhausted) trans ally to wonder how to best respond to these cynical tactics and arguments, particularly when it's clear that the real goal is not "fairness" but rather the larger conservative project of eliminating trans people from public life. That's exactly where the new book Fair Game: Trans Athletes and the Future of Sports comes in."
Riley Gaines rose to public prominence after loudly complaining about competing against Lia Thomas, a trans athlete at the University of Pennsylvania. Conservatives, aided by some centrists and progressives, have made gender eligibility in sports a central wedge issue to undermine trans rights. The narrative of a hypothetical "biological male" dominating women's sports has been effective despite the rarity of trans athletes. By 2025, legislators proposed far more anti-trans bans than the number of out trans athletes. Trans athletes now face bans at recreational, local, state, national, and international levels, creating legal and social barriers. The tactic aims less at fairness than at excluding trans people from public life.
Read at Slate Magazine
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