An activist researcher who said he was working on a study on “trans youth athletes” funded by Nike says the funding was cut by the world’s largest athletic gear company after “haters got wind of it.”
Reports that Nike was funding the study on children’s athletic abilities during so-called “gender-affirming” procedures first arose earlier this year, when one of the researchers, Joanna Harper, told the New York Times that they were running fitness tests on children as they underwent them. Harper, a man who ran marathons for years before identifying as a woman in the early 2000s, now tells OutSports, an LGBT sports website, that Nike walked away from the study after political pressure.
Specifically, pressure from Se. Tommy Tuberville (R-AL), who slammed Nike for their lack of support for women’s sports and their funding of a study on children’s athletic abilities during “gender-affirming” care. OutSports called Tuberville “one of the most vocal transphobes in elected office.”
Tuberville wasn’t the only person who blasted Nike for reportedly being part of the study. After OutKick questioned Nike on its involvement in this study, some of the biggest names in sports, including Charles Barkley, spoke out against studying kids under the influence of unnatural hormones. OutKick reported back in April that a Nike executive told the outlet the study “was never initialized” and wasn’t moving forward. Harper implied Nike had to make the “corporate decision” to move on from the study.
“I understand in the wake of what happened to Bud Light that Nike got nervous,” Harper said.
Harper, who is also a professor at Oregon Health & Science University, said he wishes Nike hadn’t pulled out of the study.
“It was a study of fitness test results in trans adolescents,” Harper told OutSports. “And while there’s limited data on trans adults, there’s no published data on trans adolescents and their athletic capabilities. This was an exciting study.”
Harper, however, appears to have already reached his conclusion before conducting the study.
“Trans women aren’t men,” Harper told the pro-transgenderism website, rejecting the idea that transgender-identifying men should compete against other men.
“They don’t compete like men, don’t look like men and that would bring trans women into an arena where they are not welcome, not wanted and in danger,” Harper said.
Harper first broke the news of this study when he was interviewed for a New York Times story on trans-identifying volleyball player, Blair Fleming. Harper told the outlet that the study, funded by Nike, would use a 10-step fitness test to measure kids’ skills before they start hormone therapy and after they medically transition. The study would repeat the fitness test every six months for five years.
The reported experimentations with children and their bodies was the latest push to justify men competing against women. Fleming was part of the International Olympic Committee’s decision to let men compete in the women’s category with testosterone suppression. The International Olympic Committee is now reportedly planning to ban men competing in women’s sports.
Nike did not respond to a request for comment on Harper’s claims.
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