An anthropology researcher at the University of Pittsburgh was incredulous after champion female collegiate swimmer Riley Gaines pinned him on a basic question about the biological differences between men and women, which prompted raucous laughter from students.
Gaines, a recent University of Kentucky graduate who tied for fifth place with transgender-identifying swimmer Lia Thomas at the NCAA Championship last year, recently delivered a talk at the University of Pittsburgh about men in women’s sports to a room packed with students. Gabby Yearwood, a senior lecturer at the school’s anthropology department, rejected the notion that researchers can use skeletal evidence to determine a deceased person’s sex.
“If you were to dig up two humans 100 years from now, both a man and a woman, would you be able to tell the difference strictly off of bones?” Gaines asked. “No,” Yearwood began to respond, prompting laughter from the audience as he asked why he was receiving mockery since he was purportedly “the expert in the room.” A frustrated Yearwood then challenged the attendees about their credentials in anthropology and exclaimed “I have a PhD!”
.@Riley_Gaines_ to anthropologist: "If you were to dig up… 2 humans… 100 years from now, both man and woman, could you tell the difference, strictly off of bones?"
"No."
*CHAOS*
"I'm not sure why I'm being laughed at if I'm the expert in the room. … I have a PhD!" pic.twitter.com/YYW76ISevI
— Vince Coglianese (@VinceCoglianese) March 30, 2023
Leftist activists in the anthropology field have recently exhorted their colleagues to no longer classify human remains as male or female, as well as ignore evidence related to racial ancestry, over concerns that researchers may thereby render “assumptions” about the deceased individuals’ professed gender identities.
Gaines told The Daily Wire about her exchange with Yearwood that she was purposefully “setting him up” because she had learned that skeletal remains are a primary piece of evidence that anthropologists consider when determining an individual’s sex.
“Every single rational person knows the answer: men have narrower hips, their skulls are different, they have an extra rib, their femurs are longer, their jaws are different,” Gaines noted. “When he said ‘No,’ it just highlighted that even someone with a PhD was willing to lie to virtue signal or to put off this perception that sex is a social construct, which we know is not the case.”
Gaines earned an undergraduate degree from the University of Kentucky last year in human health sciences and health law. “I took all of the biology courses, I took all of the chemistry courses, all of the organic chemistry courses,” she continued. “But truthfully, all you need is a fifth-grade biology education to understand that men and women are different.”
Gaines now works with the Independent Women’s Forum to raise awareness about the risks that the erosion of female spaces by radical gender theorists poses to women.
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“As a whole, we want to put off this farce that we’re inclusive, kind, accepting, loving, and tolerant, but in reality, to deny the truth of what a man and a woman is, and to allow men to infiltrate women’s spaces and our sports that were once sex-protected, that is not kind,” she added. “That’s actually exclusive: it’s excluding the very female athletes, and the very females in general, that these sex-protected spaces and categories were created to protect.”
Students who attended the University of Pittsburgh event were broadly supportive of Gaines, who credited the Pittsburgh Police Department with ensuring her talk could proceed with minimal disruption from protesters. “There were definitely some people there who were in opposition to me being there,” she said. “But the reception was great, and I think it was very well-received, and a lot of people’s eyes were opened to how horrible this is to women.”