(LifeSiteNews) — Questions have emerged over whether iconic footwear brand Nike financed a transgender activist’s study on puberty blockers for minors and how they impact athletic performance.
OutKick reports that, in a recent New York Times article on gender-confused volleyball player “Blaire” Fleming, “transgender” researcher “Joanna” Harper is said to be “helping to lead an ambitious study of [so-called] trans adolescents that measures their results on a 10-step fitness test before they start hormone [use] and then, after they have begun to medically transition, every six months for five years.”
“But, she told me when we talked in February, ‘the current climate makes the study somewhat uncertain,’” the article continues, referring to Harper, a man who “identifies” as a woman, with female pronouns. “I assumed she was referring to the Trump administration’s cuts to National Institutes of Health research grants, but she said money was not a problem: The study is being funded by Nike. The problem was Trump’s separate order targeting medical care [i.e., surgical and chemical mutilation] for [gender-confused] youth.”
OutKick goes on to quote Harvard Professor Kathryn Ackerman, who is also involved in the study, as affirming in 2023 that “we got some money from Nike, who wanted to study this more.” However, despite openly declaring its “commitment to helping shape a strong culture of LGBTQIA+ belonging and visibility in sport” on its website, Nike has not publicly acknowledged its involvement in the study.
Jennifer Sey, founder of the women’s sports fairness group XX-XY Athletics, reacted to the story in a recent interview with OutKick’s Dan Dakich.
“But from a women’s and girls’ perspective, we are not impaired boys,” she said. “It’s so degrading to think of us that way. Would we do a study that says, ‘How many fingers can we cut off of a boy to make it OK for him to compete in tennis with a girl?’ That’s what we’re doing here. Outside of the fact that why is Nike incentivizing this kind of work? This experimental medical treatment of young boys that disfigures them and sterilizes them for life.”
“Senior executives probably didn’t know what was happening. This is something that happened deep in the organization,” Sey theorized. “And this Harper thought, he was proud of it, and he talked about it…. I believe Nike is like, ‘Oh, crap. Now we have to defend ourselves.’”
Allowing gender-confused individuals to compete in opposite-sex sports is promoted by leftists as a matter of “inclusivity,” but critics note that indulging “transgender” athletes undermines the original rational basis for having sex-specific athletics in the first place, thereby depriving female athletes of recognition and professional or academic opportunities.
There have been numerous high-profile examples in recent years of men winning women’s competitions, and research affirms that physiology gives males distinct athletic advantages that cannot be negated by hormone suppression.
In a 2019 paper published by the Journal of Medical Ethics, New Zealand researchers found that “healthy young men [do] not lose significant muscle mass (or power) when their circulating testosterone levels were reduced to (below International Olympic Committee guidelines) for 20 weeks,” and “indirect effects of testosterone” on factors such as bone structure, lung volume, and heart size “will not be altered by hormone [use];” therefore, “the advantage to [gender-confused men] afforded by the [International Olympic Committee] guidelines is an intolerable unfairness.”
Critics also warn that forcing girls to share intimate facilities such as bathrooms, showers, or changing areas with members of the opposite sex violates their privacy rights, subjects them to needless emotional stress, and gives male predators a viable pretext to enter female bathrooms or lockers by simply claiming transgender status. 
Polls show that the LGBT lobby’s protests of victimhood and insistence the issue is overblown is not resonating with the general public. Last month, Pew Research reported that 66 percent of Americans support limiting athletic participation to actual members of a team’s designated sex, with agreement among independents and Democrats also rising since 2022.
