Riley Gaines, a former collegiate swimmer who appeared in an anti-transgender video for the current presidential administration, has said that “the gender ideology movement as a whole really is an attempt to normalize pedophilia.”

Gaines, who became an anti-trans activist after she tied for fifth place with a trans woman at a swim meet three years ago, made her comment while speaking to MAGA influencer Charlie Kirk (founder of the young conservative group Turning Point USA) on the right-wing media outlet Real America’s Voice.

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Kirk said that transgender civil rights stem from society “appeasing a mental delusion, trying to accommodate a psychological condition, which then, of course, invades female privacy, female sports, so on and so forth.”

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Kirk is repeating right-wing talking points about trans identity being a type of mental illness or “insanity,” rhetoric that the current presidential administration has amplified.

Gender dysphoria, the state of severe distress caused by feeling that one’s gender identity does not match one’s sex as registered at birth, is recognized as a mental disorder, however, not all trans people experience severe dysphoria. Furthermore, trans identity itself is not considered a mental disorder by the World Health Organization, and studies have shown that trans identity is a “condition” but not a mental disease.

Nevertheless, Gaines told Kirk, “This is the most basic of truths: man and woman. It’s the sheer essence of humanity, a truth we have never struggled to understand in the nearly 250 years we’ve been established as a country and certainly much longer than that. Hate to break it to every single person listening to this, you are all here from man and woman, and that is what we’re being asked to deny.”

Gaines is factually incorrect here. Biologists and geneticists have long acknowledged that biological gender exists on a spectrum that can vary due to genetic, hormonal, reproductive, and other factors. Gender variant Americans have existed throughout history, though they have generally been erased from mainstream history by being misgendered.

“If we as a society will deny that, again, the most basic of truths, then I think the scarier thing here is there are no limits, right? We should be asking ourselves what’s next if we are willing to deny sex, okay? Are we willing to deny age? Which I personally believe this is the direction that it’s going. I believe the gender ideology movement as a whole really is an attempt to normalize pedophilia, across the board, and I think that’s what we’re seeing with this movement,” Gaines said.

Gaines recently appeared on a Department of Health and Human Services (HHS) “women’s health” webpage whose language echoes the president’s transphobic executive orders seeking to demonize trans people as a threat to women and kids.

In her video, Gaines said the president has helped “protect female athletes” with his executive order banning trans women from sports. Critics have noted that the president’s order doesn’t address the biggest threats facing female athletes, such as unequal access to funding and facilities, abuse, and wage inequality.

While it’s shocking that a presidential administration would platform an activist who accuses the 2.3 million estimated trans Americans and their allies of wanting to prey on children, right-wing commenters have long made similar claims against LGBTQ+ people. Gaines is merely the most modern iteration of a decades-old lie; rhetoric like hers empowers anti-trans violence from people who see it as a way to protect children.

Meanwhile, conservatives like Gaines never seem to point out the high rates of child predation in the Christian church, nor do they tend to partner with organizations that actually combat child sex abuse and trafficking.

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