Coaching HER HIM
I was interviewed recently “on camera” (not my preferred medium) by Fox News about the “educational” program aimed at girls’ coaches, Coaching HER, that I investigated in three long articles in 2024. I may not have made my point in this interview. I may, instead, have inadvertently created a training tool for the assessment of autism by oddly, distractingly, never once making eye contact with the interviewer.
This is my third chance, in my preferred medium, to try to explain that Coaching HER, like all things gender ideology, is the opposite of what it purports. Distilled to basic-level X character count:
Knowing that boys are not girls and do not belong in girls' sports IS NOT GENDER BIAS. It's sex recognition. Coaching HER says coaches should expunge that “bias.” Coaching HER is indoctrination not education
That’s the short of it. If you’re pressed for time, you can stop here.
But I want to explain how I know that Coaching HER is an indoctrination program. What I really want you to do is click on those links, above, right now and read those three articles. All of them. All the way through. If you have to neglect your family, your job, indulge in recreational drugs or alcohol to do so—whatever it takes. Know that I will not be happy unless you read and digest the lie, the fraud, the straight up abuse of girls that Nike and the Tucker Center for Research on Girls and Women in Sports are currently perpetrating.
Then you can disregard the rest of this. Including the Fox News video, for the love of god.
Let me not be ungrateful. Bless their Fox News hearts for trotting the insidious online re-education tool that is Coaching HER out into the light again, and allowing me to blab about it. Even if their interest was much more in Nike’s involvement, and much less on the dangerous lie that Coaching HER is “helping to keep girls in sports” when, in fact, its purpose is to teach coaches to accept boys in girls’ sports, WHICH ELIMINATES GIRLS SPORTS.
Just a reminder: Mostly Girls Sports is not a thing. Girls’ sports, like any category, only exists as 100%, pure, genuine, only, exclusively, Girls’ Sports. If it’s not 100%, only, exclusively Girls’ Sports, it’s Mixed Sex Sports. There is no other option. Nike, the Tucker Center for Research on Girls and Women in Sports, and their Coaching HER program are advocating for Mixed Sex Sports, and therefore, the abolition of Girls’ Sports.
Coaching HER is not only still touting the obvious lie that it benefits girls, it is not only still actively advocating for boys in girls’ sports, but is expanding its indoctrination scam from middle and high school coaches to college and club coaches. This has to stop.
Now I’m wound up. What I failed to elucidate, did not have time to explain, in my Fox News interview is how I know that Coaching HER is a harmful indoctrination program. It’s the easiest thing in the world to hatch a lie—you just say it. Boys are girls. This program benefits girls. It takes about 176 times as much time and effort to reveal, with actual evidence, that lie. Let me have another stab at it. I don’t want to simply say Coaching HER is ideological indoctrination, I want to show you how I know that. Because it’s important.
The Tucker Center was established in 1993 and did legitimate scientific research based on the recognition of sex, that sex is real, and it matters for women’s sports. Sex, the Tucker Center knew back then, is the whole ball of wax in women’s sports. Along about 2014, they fell to the lie of gender ideology and redefined woman to be anyone who identified as a woman, and girls to be anyone who identified as a girl. Which is to say, they abandoned their core mission, and began working to include boys in girls sports, to therefore disempower girls, and by including boys, eliminate girls’ sports in favor of mixed sex sports. This is incest-level wrong, a complete betrayal of women and girls, and they know it, so they lied about it. And continue to do so. It’s infuriating that, given the opportunity to make their research publicly impactful, the Tucker Center and Nike have chosen to harm girls.
When Nike came along in 2019 with a blank check, both organizations were sympatico about eliminating girls’ sports, and practiced in calling it Empowering Girls. The Tucker Center was able to identify a legitimate problem—that girls age 11 to 17 drop out of sports at twice the rate of boys, and therefore miss out on a lifetime of benefits of sports. Both the Tucker Center’s and Nike’s research on this topic (done prior to ideological capture;it was a lot; I read it all) revealed why girls drop out of sports—cost, access, concern about skills, and the Number 1 most mentioned, concerns about body image—AND what girls said was the most important factor in keeping them in sports—single-sex sports and locker rooms. Both Nike and the Tucker Center knew how to keep girls in sports. They could have used Nike’s money to create an educational program aimed at athletic directors and policymakers and lawmakers that explained the importance of single sex teams and locker rooms to girls, and championed single sex sports and locker rooms.
But they didn’t do that. They did the opposite. They never intended to address the problem of keeping girls in sports. It was chosen as cover for their very unpopular, very anti-girl goal of including boys in girls’ sports. They not only ignored what girls wanted, single sex sports, they focused this program on achieving exactly the opposite, mixed sex sports, creating yet another reason girls drop out of sports, the coup de gras of a poisonously misogynistic campaign.
Another dead giveaway that Coaching HER is not about keeping girls in sports is that the Tucker Center blamed girls dropping out of sports on their coaches’ gender bias and lack of knowledge of gender identities. That is as incoherent and nonsensical as it sounds. Even the Tucker Center’s own research did not support this invented “culprit.” There is zero evidence from any of the literature out there that girls drop out of sports due to their coaches’ gender bias and lack of knowledge of gender identities, yet the Tucker Center and Nike built this entire “educational” program based on this unevidenced claim.
Blaming coaches “gender bias,” however, does make sense if you are seeking to destroy the female category by including those it was designed to exclude—males. Girls’ coaches are a major stumbling block to this goal. They are keenly aware of girls’ physiology, how girls’ develop, and the very real sex differences between boys and girls. They see it every day. Girls’ coaches, more than any other group on the planet, understand why girls’ sports exist, and as such this group is going to be reluctant to accept boys on their team and in the girls’ locker room. They’re going to need heavy duty re-education.
And that’s what Coaching HER provides. Throughout all the training modules, which I took, well documented scientific facts regarding sex differences—boys are faster and stronger than girls, boys throw faster, farther and more accurately than girls, there are two sexes—are framed as outdated stereotypes or gender bias that should be expunged. Pseudoscience and outright lies—there are three or maybe four sexes, separating sports based on sex is an arbitrary practice—are presented as fact. Throughout this barrage of purposeful misinformation, it was impossible to see how a girls’ coach thinking that there was no difference between girls and boys would make her a better coach, or that this knowledge would in any way keep girls’ from dropping out of sports. It was transparently ideological indoctrination meant to normalize boys in girls sports. It never had any relevance to girls dropping out of sports.
The module on bodies and body image was truly a marvel of smarmy, self-satisfied mendacity. When the Tucker Center redefined girl to include any boy who identified as a girl, then, see, every time they said girl in Coaching HER, they really meant boy. It was code for boy. Wink wink. The exhortation to ACCEPT ALL BODIES AND IDENTITIES, for example, makes sense in a single sex context, and is hardly new information to any girls’ coach. But remember, in Coaching HER, ALL BODIES includes BOYS’ bodies and identities. Buried way way down in their “research,” the Tucker Center said some special transgender people “feel female inside but were born with a body that appears male.” I.e. a body with a penis. You’re just stupid and biased if you think girls (nudge nudge) don’t have penises and if you think those girls with penises don’t belong on girls’ teams and in girls’ locker rooms. Educate yourself!
Throughout this assault on reality, I asked myself, How does accepting a body with a penis and a boy with a girl identity help me better coach girls? How does accepting a body with a penis on the team and in the locker room keep girls from dropping out of sports when girls specifically told Nike and the Tucker Center they wanted single sex sports and locker rooms?
The supporting “research,” suggested some activities that were “best practices” for “enforcing respect” of boys, among others. It is nothing short of sadistic. These activities did not make it into the public facing modules, but the recommendation of punishment and force against girls who point out truths, who object to boys on their team or in their locker room, is the “evidence” the Tucker Center “stands behind” in creating the entire Coaching HER program. That such tactics are recommended with children 18 and under is positively chilling:
“Athletes can develop team rules, such as if someone makes a comment that shames someone based on sex, sexual orientation, gender identity, race, et cetera, they have to sit out for 5 minutes or write an apology note to the teammate. Rules do not have to be highly punitive; they can be creative means to make the point to be respectful. Athletes also can create posters about inclusion and support for their locker rooms or develop a team mission statement that focuses on respect and inclusion.”
Let’s try to imagine how girls being forced to make posters welcoming boys into their locker rooms and on their teams will keep girls from dropping out of sports.
More than anything, it’s galling that this anti-girl program has been accepted so uncritically by athletic associations around the country and internationally. That’s what I wanted to tell the Fox News audience about Coaching HER.
So, exactly who are the people (or person) at Nike pushing this lie?
I'm boycotting Nike already.