Riley Gaines rips spelling bee contest for indulging ‘manufactured outrage’
Former collegiate swimmer Riley Gaines blasted the Scripps National Spelling Bee for incorporating an alternative spelling of the word “women” that she claims feeds into the “fabricated issues” of gender politics.
The anti-trans podcast host piled onto the outrage after an approved list of study words for the third-grade competition was released Thursday, revealing it would accept “womyn” as an alternative spelling to “women.”
“How lucky are we to live in the United States of America, where the spelling of women, never mind the definition, has become a national debate,” Gaines seethed during a Thursday appearance on Fox News’ “Hannity.”
“These are fabricated issues created by people who believe they’re marginalized or oppressed — who I believe, quite frankly, want to be oppressed, when, in reality, [they] live in the greatest nation in the entire world. So totally manufactured outrage.”
Gaines — who rose to fame after publicly criticizing her peer, trans athlete Lia Thomas — claimed the alternative accepted spelling was indicative of a national issue in the country.
She pointed to the 2023 Budweiser and Dylan Mulvaney fiasco, before referring to the trans influencer “a man who they dressed as Audrey Hepburn.”
“Imagine a kid getting the word ‘women’ and asking for the definition,” Gaines said about the spelling bee.
“It would be this beautiful full circle moment because those with little-to-no common sense have not been able to answer that question for years now.”
Scripps National Spelling Bee said the inclusion of the word, however, is far from nefarious.
All the words used in the annual contest are pulled from the Merriam-Webster Unabridged Dictionary, which lists the alternate spelling for women that is “used in some feminist contexts.”
Oxford Dictionary also lists the word womyn as a variant of the word woman — “with ‑myn replacing ‑men to avoid association with the plural of man.”
“During competition, our policy is to accept any correct spelling listed in our official dictionary that isn’t marked archaic or obsolete. The alternate spelling ‘womyn’ is therefore included on our study list because it is listed as an alternate spelling for ‘women’ in Merriam-Webster,” a spokesperson for Scripps said.
“In building our study lists, we aim to include alternate spellings for any words that have them listed in Merriam-Webster. The Merriam-Webster Unabridged Dictionary is the final authority and sole source for the spelling of all words offered in competition,” the statement continued.
