Actor Rob Schneider urged female athletes to band together and outright refuse compete against transgender women.
“This s*** has to stop… If the parents, coaches and ‘women’ athletes ALL REFUSE TO PLAY against these MEN… It ALL STOPS!” He tweeted on Thursday.
The conservative actor’s commentary was in response to a post by former NCAA athlete Riley Gaines, who attached a video of teenager Payton McNabb getting seriously injured during a volleyball game, when a transgender player spiked a ball in her face.
“Watch the clip of Payton McNabb getting spiked in the face by a male competing with the women. Then watch her testimony she gave today for the first time publicly,” Gaines captioned the video.
“I was honored to stand alongside her in NC to continue the fight to protect women’s sports.”
Her tweet also included a video of McNabb’s testimony to North Carolina lawmakers on Wednesday, who alongside Gaines, advocated for the state’s Fairness in Women’s Sports Act.
McNabb detailed that she is still suffering from repercussions of the neck injury and concussion she got when the volleyball was slammed into her face on September 1, 2022.
“Other injuries I still suffer from today include impaired vision, partial paralysis on my right side, constant headaches as well as anxiety and depression,” she detailed.
She was unable to play for the rest of the volleyball season, and though she is currently playing high school softball, her performance in the sport is admittedly worse than in years prior.
“My ability to learn, retain, comprehend has also been impaired and I require accommodations at school for testing because of this.”
McNabb said she could detail how the injury has affected her in length, but only cared about advocating for the next generation of female student athletes.
“I know that my time playing is coming to an end,” she continued. “I am here for every biological female athlete behind me. My little sister, my cousins, my teammates.
“Allowing biological males to compete against biological females is dangerous. I may be the first to come before you with an injury but if this doesn’t pass, I won’t be the last.”
Gaines, who also gave testimony in favor of North Carolina House Bill 574, which passed with a 73-39 vote on Wednesday, spoke about how she was defeated by transgender UPenn swimmer Lia Thomas during the 2022 NCAA Championship.
She described how she and her teammates watched as Thomas torched the competition in the 500 freestyle, easily defeating “the most impressive and accomplished female swimmers in the country, including many U.S. Olympians and American record holders by body lengths.”
Gaines pointed out that when competing against men the year prior, Thomas was a middling swimmer at best, with national rank of 462 among NCAA male college swimmers.
When she tied Thomas during the NCAA Championships, Gaines described how officials gave the trophy to Thomas and send her home empty-handed, because they needed the transgender swimmer to pose with the trophy in photos.
“I felt betrayed and belittled and like my efforts and sacrifices I had made had been reduced to a photo op to validate the identity and feelings of a male,” she recalled. “But my feelings did not matter.”
In addition to losing out to Thomas, Gaines said that female swimmers were forced to share a locker room with her, which exposed them to the transgender NCAA champ’s “male genitalia,” while they were “vulnerable” and undressed.
“Let me be clear: we were not forewarned about this arrangement; no one asked for our consent, and we did not give our consent,” she revealed.
Gaines said that she can “wholeheartedly attest to the extreme discomfort in the locker room from 18 to 22-year-old girls who were exposed to male body parts and having to undress in a room with a male watching.”
While she noted it was “impossible” to speak for every competitor at the competition, she can confirm that she witnessed tears from the “9th and 17th place finishers who missed out on being named an All American by one place.”
She also stated that the female athletes who protested Thomas’ inclusion in the competition were “threatened, intimidated, and emotionally blackmailed into silence and submission.”
Gaines has spent her first post-collegiate year visiting university campuses across the country to advocate for fairness in women’s sports.
Her most recent speaking engagement at San Francisco State University ended with Gaines being mobbed by protestors screaming “trans women are women,” and getting physically assaulted by a man in a dress.
Gaines was forced to hide out in a classroom for hours, until SFPD could safely escort her off the campus.
SFSU’s vice president of student affairs, Jamillah Moore, issued a statement thanked students who “participated peacefully” during the event, and lauded their actions against Gaines.
“It took tremendous bravery to stand in a challenging space,” Moore continued.
Gaines blasted the response on social media the same day. “I’m sorry did this just say PEACEFUL…. I was assaulted,” she tweeted on April 8.
“I was extorted and held for random [sic]. The protestors demanded I pay them if I wanted to make it home safely,” Gaines explained.
“I missed my flight home because I was barricaded in a classroom… We must have different definitions of peaceful.”