Riley Gaines Testifies Swimmers Who Felt ‘Violated’ Had to Change in ‘Janitor’s Closet’ To ‘Accommodate’ Lia Thomas

Women’s rights activist Riley Gaines testified that swimmers at the 2022 NCAA Championships “undressed in the janitor’s closet” to avoid being seen by Lia Thomas, a male-to-female transgender competitor for the University of Pennsylvania’s women’s team during a Senate Judiciary hearing on Wednesday, saying they felt “violated” by Thomas’s presence in the locker room.

The anecdote came up during an exchange with Senator Mike Lee (R-UT):

LEE: Did the NCAA embrace your diversity? Tell me what attempts that the NCAA made to accommodate you and other female swimmers who felt uncomfortable sharing an open locker room with a biological male?

GAINES: Nothing. They actually made us feel guilty for feeling as if we were uncomfortable. Time and time again that’s what we saw. There was even a group of girls who undressed in the janitor’s closet. They changed clothes in the janitor’s closet because they felt more comfortable undressing in that environment than they did undressing next to someone with male gaze.

LEE: And were they doing that because they were transphobic?

GAINES: They were doing it because they were violated.

LEE: Tell me how they were violated.

GAINES: I think two, three, four years ago, if a man claims the identity of simply saying they are a woman, walks into a locker room, a DA would follow this man into a locker room, arrest him, and he’s charged with sexual harassment, voyeurism, indecent exposure, and the list goes on. But this was celebrated. This was encouraged. Lia Thomas was then nominated for NCAA Woman of the Year, which is an award I was also nominated for. But when I saw the full list of nominees and saw that NCAA Woman of the Year was not exclusive to just women, the award was immediately devalued and meaningless to me. That’s how they honoring this rather than making us feel reassured in our feelings that this was wrong.

LEE: When you accommodate men time and time again, refusing to accommodate women, we call that misogyny.

Thomas was awarded the only available fifth place trophy when Thomas and Gaines tied in the 200 freestyle at the NCAA Championships. Gaines said a representative for the NCAA told her that she would be mailed a fifth-place trophy.

Watch above via C-SPAN.