this post was submitted on 28 Oct 2025
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Her whole schtick was how a trans athlete made her a victim by usurping her natural, deserved finish position. AOC's dig lays bare that she wasn't even destined for the podium and that her elevated position in the speaking circuit is predicated on obfuscation, omissions, and willful ignorance.
This very well could've been the first time someone learned the underlying truth about this grifter.
shes mad that she was beaten by a trans person at 5th place, and not the other 4 cis woman.
I admit I'd never heard of this person before this post, but I still feel like going after their physical performance was sinking to their level. Even if they did do it first, it just doesn't feel right.
Maybe it's just me.
I'm sorry since when is athletic performance something we can't criticize? That's such a bizarre statement. I can't imagine how on Earth you came to the conclusion that someone's actions cannot be criticized.
It's understandable to not criticise or rank the athletic performance of someone just going to the gym for their own health, but in this situation we're straight up talking about a person who specifically chose that their whole career is to have their athletic performance ranked and criticised.
Seriously? We're in a trans community, and you're saying it's cool to criticize physical aspects of a person over which they only have so much control? You're conflating someone's choice of actions with their physical limitations. Sickening.
Mind blown. I'm done here for now. Good night.
Again you keep saying physical aspects as if someone's athletic performance is something they're born with. A person's performance on a field of play or what have you is not something they're given at Birth. It's an extremely ignorant thing to say. Those four swimmers that beat her didn't beat her because they were predestined to, they beat her because they put in the work. They beat her because they had the mental drive and physical dedication to work harder than she did. Maybe if she didn't spend so much time thinking about how much she hated transsexual people how much she wanted them exterminated and how easy it would be to grift conservative morons she would have done better. Although to be fair I thought about that last for a few times myself.
I've seen some lazy sea lion performances in my day, but this is might take the cake.
Nowhere did I defend any of their crap takes, i simply felt AOC's comment came off more about their athletic performance than their bullshit. I'm all for attacking the bullshit, but don't want to give the opposition an opening to be dismissive of our arguments because we were unfair in our own attacks.
I acknowledge that's a fine line to walk here, and that it's a matter of perspective that I felt AOC may have crossed it, but if I did then others are likely to have, too. As such, I'd rather minimize any opportunities for our arguments to be diminished as bad faith themselves.
When that person's famous for actively pushing transphobic policies by pretending they're a top athlete? Yes. Nothing wrong with not being the very best. I certainly am not at anything.
I can see that logic to a point, I'm just not comfortable using it to justify attacking them. Attack their shitty takes all you can, not the things they only can do so much about because that line of attack is not entirely fair, and thus detracts from the validity of the part of your argument that is fair.
That's such a dumb assertion. Sure there are some athletes that have inborn physical advantages in some sports but the vast majority of athletes are just regular people that train very hard. Also even those innate physical advantages will not make it a guarantee that someone wins in that sport, they still need to put in the work in training before they can take advantage of them.
For example, even though Michael Phelps has a longer than average arm span that doesn't mean he can jump in the water with no training and win the Olympics. The man wouldn't have gotten all those medals if he didn't train constantly since he was 11.
And yet again, my issue was with attacking them for the athletic showing, not for their shitty attitude and blame shifting - feel free to go off on that bullshit. You're right in almost everything you said, you just misinterpreted what I was trying to say.
Look, you're in the wrong. Learn and grow from it. Or at least try.
No, I'm not. Mob mentality doesn't make right, just might.
Riley Gaines came equal fifth with a trans woman, and then spun that into a narrative where competing with trans women is unfair on cis women. The top four finishers were cis women. She lies, constantly, about how the system was stacked against her, when she's just not a very good swimmer. She brought the conversation onto this topic, that she would actually be able to excel if the playing field were "fair". Pointing out that she wouldn't is not only reasonable, but it's important to do, because it lays bare the fact that both her and the trans woman that's caused her to feel so disaffected are equally not that good compared to their peers.
It's really bold of you, a cis person, to come into a trans space, and tell us all off for 'being mean to' someone who you admitted you had never heard of, when she is a TERF who has used her platform to help pass trans sports bans in a number of states. It has a real "you must be tolerant of the intolerant" vibe to it. I think you should try and be introspective about the privilege that you have, that's led you to have this opinion.
I didn't "come in here & tell [you] all off," I simply said I felt AOC shouldn't have involved their performance in her rebuttal because it was sinking to their level. The fact you took that as a personal attack is maybe something you should be the one reflecting upon. Nowhere did I say the shitty attitude should be tolerated - just that we should make sure that's all we are attacking in response, lest we open ourselves up to being dismissed for illegitimate or unfair attacks of our own.
Riley Gaines is a hate monger and a grifter. She is a disgusting and vile creature! (ie. A typical republikkklan) She deserves all the vitriol she receives, plus a lot more. I'd be good mocking her for her obvious lack of intelligence, too, as well as her loser attempt to blame another for her own life failures.
No. You just can't admit that you're wrong, or at least, well out of step with popular opinion, so you are doubling down. I'm just unsure whether you like the albeit negative attention, or whether you need to always be right. Neither of those are positive traits, although I'll grant you points for having a strong mind. A strong, SMART mind, however, would intuit when to back off.....
Popular opinion got us Trump. You're entitled to your opinion just as I am mine. Funnily enough, who's right or wrong here is also a matter of opinion. That fact you're triggered enough to fire off so many responses to me in so many threads tells me you probably aren't being terribly level-headed in your thinking, so with that in mind I'm taking your opinions with a grain of salt.
ETA: I'm merely vigorously arguing my opinion until proven wrong, as I would expect you to. I've even made some minor concessions in places despite your claims otherwise. Nobody has definitively proven my perspective invalid as of yet, IMHO.
You played your hand of being a shitty person. Please leave this space now.
Double down and don't learn anything? Of course you will ! I didn't expect anything else, tbh.
He didn't name himself something that it seems obvious he isn't......
Have you ever admitted to being wrong? Because you come across as a stuffy, egocentric idealogue, narcissist even.....
Duck and weave, and verbal diarrhea... It's the narcissist way....
Yep. Definitely strange.... Weird, even....
The point is that they wouldn't have won if there wasn't a trans person competing. They would, at most, get fourth place. AOC was considerably diminishing the feeling of injustice (in comparison to not getting first place).
It's even sillier than that. They tied for fifth place. If there wasn't a trans person competing, they would have gotten fifth place, anyway.
The left is always expected not to "sink to their level" and look where that has gotten us. The entire world is lied to, constantly, right-wing politicians are also constantly making claims about left-wing ones being nut jobs, being communist, being terrorists.
Right-wing people make claims like, being trans is a mental illness, or that trans people are dangerous, or that trans people are pretending to be trans to compete in womens sports.
The minute a left-wing politician stands up and says: "You are a fucking asshole" they are held to a higher standard. It HAS to stop. We HAVE to be able to talk back. If we keep being polite and taking the higher road, they will continue to RAILROAD us, because the forceful and outspoken seem to win the narrative.
Case in point: If AOC had said something nice and polite here, we wouldn't be reading it.
Nowhere did I say AOC had to be "nice and polite." My point has been to make sure we attack strictly the things that deserve attacking (i.e. the attitude & blame-shifting, not the physical performance), or our arguments will wind up being no better than theirs, and just as easily dismissed.
Why? Physical performance is not that limited, it's not like she's not capable of doing any better and she'd dunking on her, there is almost always more you can push yourself, she could spend more time in the gym, tweak her supplements, train harder, this is something elite athletes do. You know what elite athletes don't do? Blame other people.