Enough.
Nike’s decision to hire trans influencer Dylan Mulvaney to promote women’s sports bras is an insult to organic women everywhere — and especially to organic female athletes, who are fighting for their own hard-won spot on elite and professional level. level.
Before we go any further, let’s be clear: of course, everyone should have the right to identify themselves and live as they please.
The trans community has made incredible strides in recent years. And that’s a good thing.
That said, I’m sure I’ll be called a TERF – a trans-exclusive radical feminist. And that very blemish, which often gets you canceled, is the main reason why most cisgender women keep their mouths shut.
But it can’t go on. Biological females are erased from culture with enthusiasm. I defy anyone to name another cohort on the planet for whom this would be considered acceptable. Praiseworthy even. valorised.
Choose a gender or ethnicity or nationality or religion and ask yourself: Would corporations, governments and global athletic organizations stand by and allow another group to be so minimized and marginalized? Or that that group feels mocked?
Nike’s decision to hire trans influencer Dylan Mulvaney to promote women’s sports bras is an insult to biological women everywhere.
Because that’s what it feels like to see someone who was born without female chromosomes, and who has no breasts, modeling a piece of clothing specifically designed and needed for women.
But we are now in a world where the very things that are unique to biological women, good and bad, are no longer ours. We have become ‘people in labour’, ‘menstruators’, ‘people with breast cancer’, ‘people with vaginas’.
Planned Parenthood removed the word “women” from the website’s homepage! An ACLU tweet about the overturn of Roe v. Wade called the most vulnerable “black, native, and other people of color, the LGBTQ community, immigrants, young people” — everyone except, you know, women.
Let me ask you: When was the last time you heard biological males suffer from this kind of gender-denying nomenclature? When was the last time guys were asked to look to transitioning girls as role models? As guides to the often frightening hormonal and physical changes that come their way?
Girls develop in obvious ways that guys just don’t. They run dangers that boys don’t run. They suddenly shift to being viewed by the world – and men in particular – as sexual objects in a way boys don’t. But we would never ask biological men to identify as “people with erectile dysfunction’ or ‘people with prostate cancer’.
When was the last time you heard of a female-to-male trans athlete demanding to compete in men’s sports? Or hired to advertise AX Body Spray or power tools or Rogaine? Should we rename male pattern baldness?
None of this will happen. It is clearly considered unthinkable. It would be a mockery of manhood.
But the opposite has always been good for a punch line. Whether it’s Jack Lemmon and Tony Curtis in “Some Like it Hot,” or John Goodman as Linda Tripp, or Tyler Perry as Medea, the subtext is, look how lame and funny it is to be a woman.
What intrinsically foolish creatures we women are. Of course, we should just shut up and smile while being systematically erased! Isn’t that what we’ve been programmed from childhood: polite, respectful, happy to put the needs of others before our own?
Budweiser has already faced its own backlash over partnering with Mulvaney, who is celebrating “365-Days of Girlhood” at age 26.
Biological females are erased from culture with enthusiasm. I defy anyone to name another cohort on the planet for whom this would be considered acceptable.
Here’s an idea: If Nike really wanted to reach female consumers, how about signing someone like Riley Gaines? At 23, Gaines is one of the few top swimmers to speak out against forced competition with trans athlete Lia Thomas — and she’s largely alone there.
“During the NCAA Championships,” Gaines told Thomas, “I saw a 6’4-inch man expose male parts in our women’s locker room.”
When Gaines asked for an area where she could undress in private, she claimed that the NCAA “informed me that there was no protection for me to change in an area that Thomas could not access … the NCAA placed the responsibility on the woman to avoid undressing in front of a biological man with biological parts who is sexually attracted to women. Let that sink in for a moment.’
Her response to Mulvaney for Nike sports bras is equally courageous and necessary.
“Nike joins the growing list of companies that find it acceptable to disrespect women by making a sad mockery of what it means to be a woman,” she told DailyMail.com. “The message Nike sends to all girls and women is that men can do everything better.”
Olympian Nancy Hogshead-Makar is also angry. Nike, she told DailyMail.com, “markets their products by obliterating women…there are plenty of women — phenomenal athletes, great spokespersons, really smart, hardworking — so many people who could have had them.” It’s a male takeover.’
Gaines has said in the past that many elite and pro athletes, men and women, have reached out privately to thank her — but are too afraid of our current climate to go public.
This is madness. What will the future hold for our young women and girls when even the rich, famous and powerful feel bullied into silence? It is heartbreaking to watch these biological female athletes, who sacrificed everything to get where they are today, lose and lose to trans athletes who retain all the biological advantages of being born male.
Obvious: There’s the reason we have male and female sports in the first place. Biological women simply cannot compete with biological men.
Controversial trans swimmer Lia Thomas last year
Nike has its own problematic history with female athletes, from allegedly denying pregnancy protection and equal pay to their pregnant female spokespersons, to disputed claims that female track stars under their Oregon Project were bullied into eating disorders.
You would think they are proceeding with caution here, not least because many believe there is an element of social contagion at work, especially among young people.
From kindergartens to college campuses to C-suites, the prevailing wake orthodoxy holds that there’s nothing more cool or glamorous than being trans. The White House has said all children should be “confirmed.”
Discussing medicalizing treatments for children and teens, who cannot understand the irreversible effects that mean they can never experience an orgasm again, for example, is considered the domain of transphobes and bigots – not reasonable people who understand that the human brain only reaches adulthood at the age of 25.
Budweiser has already faced its own backlash over partnering with Mulvaney, who is celebrating “365-Days of Girlhood” at age 26. There is something about appropriating pre-pubescent femininity and turning it into performance art that detracts from what it is to be a woman.
The culture clearly agrees. It feels like we are approaching a tipping point, a backlash against trans-orthodoxy that affects every aspect of commerce and culture. It is gaining momentum in the sphere where only one thing is more important, and that is corporate profit margins.
I can’t think of a better place to start.