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Nike Continues To Fail Women With Alleged Study On Trans-Identifying Youth
Nike loves to market itself as a champion for women. The brand has launched entire campaigns celebrating female athletes — complete with inspirational slogans, slow-mo footage and narrations about “empowerment” and proving the naysayers wrong. But behind the polished ads and performative hashtags is a pattern that’s hard to ignore: Nike consistently fails to actually protect female athletes.
This alleged study on transgender-identifying youth is just the latest example.
The sports apparel giant is reportedly funding a five-year study on trans-identifying male children who are being given puberty blockers and hormone therapy — all to see whether suppressing male puberty early enough can make competition in girls’ and women’s sports more “fair.”
But let’s call this research what it is: disturbing.
The Very Existence Of The Alleged Nike-Funded Study Proves What We Already Know
The very premise of this study is an admission that biological males have an inherent advantage over females in sports. Of course, most sane people will admit that’s common sense. That’s why we have separate men’s and women’s divisions in the first place.
RELATED: Physicians Warn of Medical Risks In Trans Youth Study Allegedly Funded By Nike
Instead of acknowledging that boys shouldn’t be competing in girls’ sports, though, this study asks, “Okay, but what if we just chemically impair them first?” It’s like asking how many dizzy bat spins we need to give Aaron Judge before he starts hitting a baseball like a high school JV player.
Except much more insidious. Horrifying. Unethical.
(Photograph by Li Hongbo/VCG by way of Getty photos)
Let’s also point out what isn’t being studied. This research isn’t about female-to-male transgender athletes. Nike isn’t funding research on how girls who take testosterone fare in boys’ sports. Because they already know how that goes.
Girls aren’t taking over men’s sports and locker rooms — and no one’s pretending they are. The only group asked to compromise, accommodate and surrender safety and competitive fairness is female athletes.
And that’s been Nike’s playbook for years.
Nike Has A History Of Mistreating Female Athletes
Remember Mary Cain? An elite teenage runner, she was part of the Nike Oregon Project, founded in part by coach Alberto Salazar with the goal of making American distance runners competitive with the rest of the world.
Cain later filed a lawsuit, accusing Salazar of emotionally and physically abusing her, pushing her to become “thinner, and thinner and thinner.”
“I joined Nike because I wanted to be the best female athlete ever,” Cain told The New York Times in 2019. “Instead, I was emotionally and physically abused by a system designed by Alberto and endorsed by Nike.”
Cain says she was publicly shamed, underfed and ignored when she started breaking down — physically and mentally. In her words: “I was the fastest girl in America, until I joined Nike.” According to the lawsuit, the company was aware of the abuse but failed to intervene.
“Nike was letting Alberto weight-shame women, objectify their bodies, and ignore their health and wellbeing as part of its culture,” Cain’s lawyer, Kristen West McCall, said. “This was a systemic and pervasive issue. And they did it for their own gratification and profit.”
Sound familiar?
The Nike Oregon Project was disbanded in 2019 after the U.S. Anti-Doping Agency accused Salazar of three violations. The agency banned him from the sport for four years. The Nike-sponsored coach was later barred from the sport for life after multiple athletes accused him of sexual assault.
Nike never stepped in. Real champions for women.