Nike sponsors a Smithsonian exhibit claiming there is no reliable way to test for sex

Fitness star Jillian Michaels criticized the exhibit on CNN and used it as an example to cite bias in the arts and in museums.

A few days ago, health and fitness star Jillian Michaels was on CNN arguing that there is a liberal/progressive bias in the arts. I did not see the entire segment but I’m guessing she was making this case amidst Trump speaking about the Kennedy Center awards and his saying that he rejected liberal artists for the awards show.

The media is losing their minds, claiming that Trump is exerting undue authority and influence over US cultural institutions. Maybe he is. Or maybe he’s trying to bring things back to the center.

Michaels’ point, I think, was that the cultural institutions and art museums are rotten to the core with “progressive” ideology and maybe a little balance is in order.

She made her case in speaking about an exhibit at the Smithsonian called “Change Your Game.” Here she is speaking about it:

Her co-panelists on CNN end up calling her a slavery defender. It was a whole thing.

But the exhibit she was speaking about is focused on making the case that 1) males have no advantage competing in women’s sports; 2) there is no reliable test for sex so we shouldn’t do it.

And guess what? Nike sponsors this exhibit.

Here are some photos from the exhibit:

The exhibit asks visitors to pick “fair or foul” on sports topics they’ve presented. Quite a few of the questions surround male athletes competing in the women’s category.

As of January (when these photos were taken), 60% of visitors said that males in women’s sports upset the competitive balance. And 58% said that testing for sex in sports is fair.

Despite the biased presentation, museum visitors voted on the side of common sense.

When I say biased, here is what I mean: Caster Semenya is presented as an intersex athlete with XY chromosomes who produces more testosterone than females who was forced to take medication “to suppress her body's naturally high testosterone levels.” Not that Semenya is male. XY equals male.

And this: It says that Lia Thomas “was assigned male at birth,” rather than saying: “Lia Thomas, formerly William Thomas, is a male who adopted the identity of a woman and went on to win titles in the women’s category at the NCAA Division I level.” Which is more accurate.

Now, what’s with Nike sponsoring the exhibit? Well, Nike seems quite invested in furthering the idea that males have no advantage in women’s sports and this is consistent with that. According to Outkick reporter Dan Zaksheske:

“We know that Nike appears to have funded a youth transgender athlete study. Although the main parties involved in the study — including the leading researcher, have refused to discuss the study — OutKick stands by its reporting that Nike was, at least at one time, financially invested in studying whether transitioning young males early enough could allow them to compete in girls’ and women's sports.”

If you recall this Nike research was reported in a New York Times article about San Jose State women’s volleyball a few months ago. Apparently the study’s aim was to understand “retained male advantage.” The study was designed to measure how much of a boy’s performance could be impaired with puberty blockers and wrong-sex hormones such that he could feasibly compete as a girl, without too much advantage.

[Joanna] Harper is currently helping to lead 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. But, she told me when we talked in February, “the current climate makes the study somewhat uncertain.”

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 for transgender youth. “If we can’t perform gender-affirming care,” she explained, “then we can’t bring people into the study.”

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I wrote about it here, a few days after The New York Times article came out.

Back to the Smithsonian exhibit. It falsely claims that there is no reliable test for sex. This is incorrect. It’s a simple non-invasive cheek swab or spit test. One could only believe that there is no reliable test if you thought or were furthering the idea that sex is not binary. That it is an unknowable thing inside a person’s head. It is what a person says he is. And therefore a test which states definitively that a person is XX or XY would not be correct. Which is a wrong-headed and utterly stupid idea.

It also seems to claim that males have no advantage in women’s sports. Also false. Hence the Nike backed study to better understand “retained male advantage.”

Despite all of this bias, respondents still voted that testing is fair and that men have advantage. Because they aren’t idiots.

While it isn’t surprising that two major American institutions — Nike and the Smithsonian — are pushing gender ideology it is still disappointing and evidence of the fact that the culture has not turned towards fairness for women, and common sense about sex. The institutions with broad public influence are still furthering gender ideology and framing those who oppose it as bigots.

We may have a Presidential executive order and we may have both the NCAA and the USOPC changing their rules to support keeping women’s sports female, but when The New York Times, the Smithsonian and Nike all support the opposing nonsensical position, we aren’t done. And the vast majority of American remain fearful of speaking up because of this institutional bias.

So Michaels is right. It is time for a bit of balance.

Here’s my video take on the whole affair: