When Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez tweeted at former collegiate swimmer Riley Gaines, “Maybe if you channeled all this anger into swimming faster you wouldn’t have come in fifth,” it was more than a cheap shot. It was a window into what passes for feminism on the Left in 2025.
In a post that went viral, I responded, “Imagine hating another woman for defending women, then mocking her for not beating a man.”
That single sentence, my response on X, reached more than 62,000 likes in just a few hours. People are fed up. Ordinary Americans, men and women alike, can see the absurdity. You cannot claim to support women while ridiculing one who stands up for fair competition and biological truth.
AOC later doubled down, tweeting, “And I would like to challenge this person to get a real job.” She could not even bring herself to refer to Riley Gaines as a woman, depersonalizing her into “person.” That is not leadership. It is condescension. It is also a reminder that too many of today’s political elites have forgotten over an issue that has about 80% of Americans supporting science and biological truth.
Riley Gaines has been relentlessly targeted for speaking out about having to compete against a biological male in women’s swimming. She never asked for special treatment. She asked for the same fairness every female athlete deserves. Instead of listening, prominent voices on the Left, like AOC, choose to belittle her. That is not tolerance, it is not elevating women, and it certainly is not female empowerment.
As a woman who grew up at a time when female empowerment meant equal pay and opportunity, not identity politics, I cannot help but see how far we have fallen. The same people who once said, “Believe women,” now tell women to sit down and be quiet if their experience challenges the narrative. They say, “Trust women,” unless those women are conservative or dare to speak inconvenient truths.
Truth be told, I was a feminist in the 1980s for about five minutes. While attending the University of California, Santa Barbara, I eagerly went to a lecture by Betty Friedan, one of the most influential figures in modern American feminism. Before it began, I chatted with a self-proclaimed feminist sitting next to me. She was so mean-spirited toward both men and women that I stopped calling myself a feminist after that.
Since the 1980s, the feminist movement has come full circle to the point that it no longer supports biological women. It now centers on protecting biological men’s rights. It is no longer about equal rights. It is about enforcing pronouns. If you do not agree that men can become women by declaration, you are labeled hateful. If you insist that biology still matters, you are “transphobic.” Yet when biological men win women’s titles, scholarships, and opportunities, silence is demanded in the name of inclusion.
What happened to sisterhood? What happened to solidarity? We are watching a generation of young women told to smile and applaud while their own spaces and records are erased. And if they object, even politely, they are mocked by members of Congress.
Rooms that did not welcome strong women have never intimidated me. As a state-licensed private investigator, I work in a field where women are rare. My days have been spent raising sons, working hard, serving my community, and fighting for fairness. So I do not need lectures from politicians about “inclusivity,” especially when registered sex offenders who identify as female are being placed in women’s prisons. In California, one out of every three men identifying as women and asking to be moved into women’s prisons is a registered sex offender.
Riley Gaines is brave. She represents every woman who worked for years to earn her place in sports, only to see it taken by a man. She represents every mother who sees what is happening in her daughter’s California public schools locker room and knows it is wrong. And she represents the millions of women who are told to stay silent but refuse to do so.
AOC’s tweets were not just about one swimmer or what place she finished. The message to every woman watching was clear: fall in line or we will humiliate you too. But here is the problem with trying to shame women into silence. We have been underestimated before, and we will protect our God given rights.
Real women’s rights should not demand that women deny reality. It demands that women be treated with dignity, fairness, and respect. That includes protecting women’s sports, not redefining them out of existence.
AOC’s comments were cruel, but they were also clarifying. They showed us exactly who today’s Left stands with, and it is not women.
Amy Reichert is a San Diego-based parent advocate and the chairwoman of Restore San Diego.
