Penna Dexter

During her senior year swimming for the University of Kentucky, Riley Gaines learned something about feminism’s identity crisis. She says she never considered herself a feminist. She told FOX News, “It almost goes against the co-dependency that I believe the sexes should have.”

Then, last spring, Riley tied for fifth place in the NCAA 200-meter freestyle finals with the University of Pennsylvania transgender swimmer Lia Thomas, who for 3 years, had been swimming, as William Thomas, for the men’s team. Riley and her teammates were also subjected to Thomas in all his undressed glory in the women’s locker room.

Riley told FOX News: “The feminist movement has gone two directions," She says she resonates with one of those branches and it’s not the one that’s “fighting for male inclusion in women's sports, women's spaces."

Lia Thomas says of the criticism from female teammates, “They’re using the guise of feminism to sort of push transphobic beliefs."

Laura Favaro is also a feminist and a sociologist at City University of London. Like Riley Gaines, she believes in just two biological sexes. She conducted research, she says, “to investigate the disputes around sex and gender that have escalated dramatically since the 2010’s.” Her plan, as described in The Telegraph and by Daily Signal writer Nicole Russell, was to conduct “the first taxpayer-funded study into ‘whether social scientists at universities feel censored over their views on transgender issues.’” Laura interviewed 50 feminists who worked in gender studies departments and surveyed 650 social scientists.

Scholars who were open about their traditional views of sex and gender reported they had experienced threats and smears from colleagues. They sometimes feared for their jobs. These findings were deemed “dangerous’ by Laura Favaro’s bosses at City. Eventually, administrators denied her access to her email account and demanded she give up her material and findings. She ultimately lost her job.

Riley and Laura are learning what it costs to be the wrong kind of feminist.