Former NCAA swimmer Riley Gaines was reportedly assaulted during an attempt to speak at San Francisco State University. The attack followed another successful effort to shout down a speaker with opposing views on a campus. Gaines was rushed from the event and kept in a secure room for nearly three hours, according to her account on Twitter.
The former University of Kentucky (and All-American) swimmer was at the university to discuss her views on why women sports should be reserved to those who are biologically women. She believes that the effort to allow transgender athletes to compete is destroying the progress made in female sports since the start of Title IX. Like the author J.K. Rowling, Gaines has found herself under constant threat and attacked as a Trans Exclusionary Radical Feminist (TERF).
On Twitter, Gaines objected that “[t]he prisoners are running the asylum at SFSU…I was ambushed and physically hit twice by a man. This is proof that women need sex-protected spaces. Still only further assures me I’m doing something right. When they want you silent, speak louder.”
She videotaped herself being rushed by police officers to a safe location. Her husband, Louis Barker, is quoted as saying:
“She told me she was hit multiple times by a guy in a dress. I was shaking. It made me that mad. It makes me sick to feel so helpless about it. She was under police protection and was still hit by a man wearing a dress.”
The incident is all too familiar today. These activists have every right to protest. These are issues that go to the core identity of people on both sides. However, protesters do not have a right to disrupt a class or speech.
What is notable about this incident is that it appears that the shout down occurred just outside of the room. We have seen this tactic before. Indeed, at George Washington, I once debated law professor John Yoo, who is one of the authors of the controversial “torture memos” during the Bush Administration. We had disrupters opposed to Yoo in the debate who were removed. However, we had a large number of protesters who shouted down Yoo from just outside of the room and made it difficult for many to hear him. To its credit, the law school went outside and asked the protesters to move away from the windows and give some distance from the event. It was done without incident and the event continued.
That was clearly not done here. The university has to guarantee the safety of speakers as well as their ability to be heard. The protesters should not have been allowed to shout down the speaker from the hallway outside of the room in my view.
The Golden Gate Xpress, the school’s student-run newspaper, showed videotapes of how the protest grew in size and eventually became so large that the police removed Gaines for her own protection. A speaker should never have to fear for her physical safety in discussing contemporary issues on a campus.
There is no indication of an arrest in the case, which is also curious. If Gaines was struck, it occurred while she was being escorted by officers.
As for the successful canceling of the event, there remains the question of how the university will respond and whether it will hold any groups or individuals responsible for the disruption of this event. Equally important is the university addressing questions over its own actions before the cancelling of this event.
Yes, transgenderism is perverted, but let’s not forget who started it. It was the feminists who decided that women should leave the kitchen and the family that God assigned them and start playing sports and doing all the things that were once the domain of men only. Women wearing pants is just as perverted as men wearing dresses. What we are seeing now is just the natural resulting perversion that womens liberation started. No sympathy from me.
Absolutely disgusting what the mob does.
The demoncrats are going to take this nation to total violence, they are increasing it all the time.
SFSU administrators have now published a statement in effect excusing the violence. No one has been charged or otherwise disciplined.
We’all see if people remember all this crap on Election Day. Excuse me, during election season.
The transgender community has no sense of fairness when it comes to sports. The transgender community has no sense of decency or empathy when it comes to bathrooms and locker rooms. And the transgender community is pure evil when it comes to children. Instead of addressing those issues, the transgender community has decided to become violent. Not smart.
No. You have decided to allow the transgender community to exist.
Just like you allowed “Crazy Abe” to seize power, end American freedom after a mere 71 years, neutralize the American restricted-vote republic, forcibly impose martial law, ignore extant immigration law, kill 1 million Americans, conduct a savage campaign of terror against civilians, abrogate the Constitution and ensconce himself in the brutal, despotic dictator’s seat – taking tyranny and oppression lessons from Karl Marx, all while fully constitutional secession was and always will be not prohibited by the Constitution and fully constitutional (you bought the criminal misrepresentation, lies and fraud of the Supreme Court, 1869, just like you bought the misrepresentation, lies and fraud of the Supreme Court, 1973. Secession is constitutional, abortion is not a constitutional right – the communists heated the water slowly and boiled you, the unsuspecting frog, alive before you knew it was happening, and, oh, it was happening, Sweetheart!)
As you speak, you are enveloped and imprisoned by the principles of communism as central planning, control of the means of production (unconstitutional regulation), redistribution of wealth and social engineering. Have you noticed that the government dispenses unconstitutional taxation per Marx’s directive: “From each according to his ability, to each according to his needs?” Oh, did I forget the unconstitutional Federal Reserve Act establishing the communist central bank with multiple, various dominions – how’s that totally insane Quantitative Easing working for you – sell the bonds and buy the bonds, what!?
You didn’t notice, did you?
kimg – The “transgender community” mainly consists of male homosexuals who try to expiate the hatred they feel for themselves and the hatred they feel for the rest of humanity by humiliating and beating up young women.
Gaines “was hit multiple times by a guy in a dress.”
So now the Left has a third wing of political shock troops: BLM, Antifa, and Trans barbarians.
You know what all these outrages have in common? The “D” after their names. Strange how Republicans aren’t doing any of this and yet they are the ones sitting in jail for 3 years without trial, like Jake Lang, for walking through the Capitol. Be careful what you wish for, Professor Turley. You voted for this. It’s only going to get worse. Enjoy.
I correspond with a physician and academician who lives in San Diego who is constantly directing his arrows at what he perceives as censorship of all stripe in the State of Florida where I live. There’s been nary a word of the matters contained in this post and others of its ilk which treats of the Cancel Culture suppression of freedom of expression across the patchwork quilt of this nation, unless he sees it a manifestation of the political ‘Right’. As well, with two of the former showplace cities of his state now in the proverbial toilet, his wannabee Presidential hopeful Governor, touring the opposition, and telling them how it should be done. There isn’t anything my ‘penpal’ has to offer which isn’t moot at this point. This nation is on a highway to hell and one wonders what will yet be required to set the brakes.
Self-anointed Democrat elites have corrupted science by:
– Almost never acknowledging that, from the moment of conception, the womb of a pregnant woman contains a living, growing human being with its own, unique DNA.
– Stating, without presenting opposing scientific research, that a person’s feelings determine that person’s gender.
– Stating, without presenting opposing scientific research, that the benefits of restricting manmade CO2 outweigh the costs.
– Stating, without presenting opposing scientific research, that the benefits of COVID vaccines outweigh the costs.
– Ensuring that facts that run counter to their scientific narratives are underreported by the news media.
Oldman: “The whole trans ideology is profoundly anti-human.”
+++
If we all go trans there won’t be any more humans.
I keep wondering how this became a critical academic, legislative and national defense issue.
If most of us went insane would our society and government be very different?
RE: “If we all go trans there won’t be any more humans…” I’ve given thought to these matters and, drawing from the world of science,, it appears that ‘hybrid’ {“a thing made by combining two different elements] is an appropriate description of this lot. I am not beyond using this concept in my conversations going forward.
Brave New World or is it or more Same Ole Mustard & Bologna.
*****
Most people are compliant sheep who would abdicate their God given natural rights for a free bowl of soup and a hug.
*****
“A really efficient totalitarian state would be one in which the all-powerful executive of political bosses and their army of managers control a population of slaves who do not have to be coerced, because they love their servitude.”
-Aldous Huxley
I watched the video. It consists of officers escorting Riley Gaines through a hostile crowd, consisting of maniacal idiots screaming at the top of their lungs, “Trans rights are human rights!” over and over and over and over. Isn’t anyone on the left privately embarrassed by such a spectacle. These people seem to have no capacity for intelligent thought. All they do is come up with a ridiculous slogan, and scream it over and over at the top of their lungs. There’s literally no content to what they say.
Not to mention the slogan itself is 180 backwards. The whole trans ideology is profoundly anti-human.
RE: “I watched the video..” These and others of their kind, reflecting activism in a variety of issues, have led me to wonder how many in the crowd are hangers on, sympathetic to the cause, or capitalizing on the opportunity to advance another agenda. I am also impressed by the amount of ‘free time’ so many of these individuals appear to have on their hands.