Some of the top female athletes in the country, including swimmer Riley Gaines, attended and spoke at a protest Thursday outside the annual National Collegiate Athletic Association (NCAA) convention in downtown Phoenix. Organized by the Independent Women’s Forum (IWF) and numerous other groups, the athletes demanded that the NCAA stop allowing transgender females to compete against women in collegiate sports, and each one spoke about their own experiences.
Gaines opened the event, which took place at the Marvin A. Andrews Plaza outside Phoenix City Hall. Gaines is a 12-time All-American swimmer and IWF ambassador. She said allowing men who identify as women to compete against women “is not progressive, it is regressive. It’s taking us back in time at least half a century. … Title 9 was enacted and enforced to protect women and girls, not men who want to be like us.” She repeated a line featured on the signs the women held, “We have come too far to be erased.”
Gaines told of being spit on, having drinks thrown at her, and punched. In April 2023, protesters at San Francisco State University assaulted Gaines after speaking at a Turning Point USA event.
Nancy Hogshead-Makar, a 3-time Olympics gold medalist in swimming, spoke next. She runs Champion Women, which “is dedicated to advocating gender equality in sports for girls and women.” She said that science has now revealed that merely reducing testosterone levels isn’t enough to make it a “lateral move” from men’s to women’s sports.
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