Oliver Brown on Simone Biles and her show of contempt for women:

For Biles, the provocation, if you could call it that, was Gaines’ highlighting of the fact that a Minnesota girls’ softball team won a state title this month despite their dominant pitcher being male. “Your star player is a boy,” she said, prompting Biles, until that point a mute figure in the ferocious battle to compel sports to respect the reality of sex, to go off the deep end.

“You’re truly sick,” she raged at Gaines, who was infamously denied a United States collegiate trophy in 2022 by transgender opponent Lia Thomas. “Straight-up sore loser. You should be uplifting the trans community and perhaps finding a way to make sports inclusive, or creating a new avenue where trans [people] feel safe in sports. Maybe a transgender category in all sports. But instead, you bully them. One thing is for sure: no one in sports is safe with you around.”

…

It is a parable for our times, in many ways, where those preaching about kindness often reveal themselves as the least kind of all. For Biles, desperate to be seen as an ally of the trans community, going after Gaines was the logical extension of her activism, which has involved frequent promotions of LGBT Pride Month. Except the move has backfired horribly, with Biles’ stock falling faster than that of Bud Light, which lost its place in 2023 as America’s best-selling beer after a tone-deaf partnership with transgender influencer Dylan Mulvaney.

I have to wonder why Biles is desperate to be seen as an ally of the trans communniny. I have to wonder why anyone is, but especially people who are already seen as, shall we say, good at their jobs.

Biles has not responded to the comments [of critics of her outburst], although she has offered a carefully-scripted apology to Gaines, acknowledging: “It didn’t help for me to get personal with Riley.” She explained: “These are sensitive, complicated issues that I truly don’t have the answers to or solutions to, but I believe it starts with empathy and respect.”

Empathy and respect for whom?

What about empathy and respect for the girls and women cheated out of opportunities and wins by boys and men who pretend to be girls and women? What about them?

Biles’ mistake was to put the projection of virtue before even a fleeting consideration of fairness. 

It’s pretty much everyone’s mistake, among the trans-huggers. They all put the projection of [a grotesque parody of] virtue before fairness. They can’t do otherwise, because you can’t defend men invading and ruining women’s sports without putting fake virtue ahead of fairness.

None of her astounding distinctions – the 11 Olympic medals, the 30 world championship medals, 23 of them gold – would have been possible without the existence of the female category. 

But she’s got them now, so she can safely lean on other female gymnasts to “be kind.”