Nike, trans scientist conduct medical 'study' on trans teens to see if men are stronger than women

In a glamorous puff piece about trans college volley ball player Blair Fleming, The New York Times has revealed that Nike is funding a study to measure teenagers' fitness prior to taking drugs for a sex change and afterwards. Essentially, Nike is experimenting on teenagers.

The study is meant to determine if males have innate physical advantages over women. The Times notes that when the NCAA first created their trans inclusion policy in 2012 to say that athletes should compete on the team that aligns with their "gender identity" rather than their biological sex, the going belief was that males who were taking estrogen "were, physiologically, more athletically similar to women than to men."

Jennifer Sey, founder of XX-XY Athletics, asked "1. why is @Nike funding research (yes we knew this already but here it is in the @nytimes) about how to disfigure and sterilize little boys sufficiently such that they retain male advantage but not so much that it would be unfair to girls?"

Further study of the issue, through collected data, led scientists to believe that this perceived greater similarity to women than to men was a result of those men having undergone "hormone-suppression therapy either before puberty or very early in its onset."

The Times then makes the assertion that "in recent years, a growing body of evidence has indicated that differences in athletic performance exist between males and females even before puberty." Basically, testosterone gives an advantage whether it is currently in a male's body or is absent after having been present.

Oregon Health & Science University's Joanna Harper, who is trans, is cited as saying "The idea of retained advantage is something that has been postulated for maybe five years, and it's certainly true."

"The vast body of evidence suggests that men outperform women, but trans women aren't men," Harper said, per the Times. "And so the question isn't, do men outperform women? The question is, as a population group, do trans women outperform cis women, and is so, by how much?"

In this statement, Harper, a scienstist, refuses to acknowledge the reality that trans women are men. From a basic semantic point, if trans women aren't men, then what makes them trans?

Harper is "helping to lead" the Nike study. Per the Times, that is an "ambitious study of trans adolescents that measures their results on a 10-step fitness test before they start hormone therapy and then, after they have begun to medically transition, every six months for five years."

Harper's concern, however, is that with the Trump administration's executive order banning medical sex changes for minors, the study could be in jeopardy. Harper told the Times "the curent climate makes the study somewhat uncertain."

The Times author notes his belief that Harper was referring to funding cuts, but Harper clarified that "The study is being funded by Nike."

"If we can't perform gender-affirming care," Harper said, "then we can't bring people into the study."