The Link Between Culture and Capitalism
Sometimes culture influences the direction that brands take. And sometimes brands contribute to driving the culture. It’s a circle not a line or a funnel, as marketers often like to say.
But to overlook the inextricable link between culture and capitalism would be to be willfully blind. Anyone leading a movement and attempting to influence culture would be remiss to ignore the role of brands.
Our movement for sanity needs strong brands. Without them, we are fighting a battle with at least one arm tied behind our backs.
When Brands Cement Cultural Change
Take note: It wasn’t until gay marriage became the law of the land that brands started their rainbow “Pride” efforts. In doing so, brands helped to cement support for gay marriage and gay rights in the public consciousness.
Enter TQIA “rights” and the culture has been ill-equipped to cite how this is any different than LGB equality. Liberals view it as exactly the same. And therefore view anyone against “gender affirming care” or self ID or boys in girls’ sports as bigots akin to those who were against gay marriage. They want to continue to be on “the right side of history.”
Except they aren’t. It’s different this time. TQIA is demanding more than equality. They are demanding we bend reality to their will. And we take women’s rights away to offer what they say is equality but is really denying women their sex-based rights. They are so afraid of being called “trans-phobes” that they will fight for the right of convicted male sex offenders to be in women’s prisons.
Why Culture Must Be Reclaimed
We need to wrest the culture back with the full force that it has been taken from us. We need legislation, yes. But politics and legislation are downstream from culture and we ceded that more than a decade ago.
We need to train the public’s eye on the girls and women who lose safety, privacy and fairness when men enter their private spaces and their sports. The activists demand we look at the boys, insisting they are discriminated against. They want us to feel sorry for the boys and only the boys.
But I want to elevate the stories of the girls. The ones who were injured, the ones who lost races and medals and trophies. The ones who had their privacy stolen. The ones who speak up at school board meetings across the country and lose friends when they do it.
I want to do for those girls what Nike did for Semenya back in 2018.
Where Athletic Brands Failed Women
All of the athletic brands are either silent or on the wrong side of the issue of protecting women’s sports. They profit off of championing female athletes while treating them with total disregard.
The Nike Example
Remember when Nike fired Allyson Felix because she was pregnant?
Did a single brand take a stand to support the army of survivors speaking out about abuse in gymnastics and Larry Nassar? No.
Has a single brand spoken out about males in women’s sports? Except us? No. In fact, Nike promoted Caster Semenya with a series of ads back in 2018-2019.
Here is some of the copy:
Would it be easier for you if I wasn’t so fast
Would it be simpler if I stopped winning
Would you be more comfortable if I was less proud.
To be clear: Nike and Semenya, our issue isn’t that this male athlete is proud. It is that he is male and competed in the women’s category, stealing opportunities and medals from actual women. And violating a basic tenet of reality. If you have XY chromosomes, you’re male.
But Nike decided to defend Semenya as just another kind of woman and in doing so, said outright that anyone who said otherwise was obviously a bigot and misogynist.
Nike’s Outsized Influence
Nike is the biggest athletic company / brand in the world.
Nike is larger than the NFL and the NBA combined. What they say has weight.
The press then carried the water of the sports behemoth further. Here are some of the headlines:
- Semenya: Proving that believe in yourself pays off
- Nike Spotlight’s Semenya’s Rise!
- Nike’s Latest Ad Features Another Athlete Taking a Stand.
And just like that, the idea cemented in the broad culture was that anyone who says they are a woman is one.
Nike didn’t start this. But they certainly carried it forward into the culture. And they haven’t stopped since. Long gone are the days when they ran an ad in 2011 called “If you let me play” defending girls’ participation in sports by citing all of the benefits that come along with that — better self-esteem, better body image, less depression, higher likelihood to graduate from high school.
Now Nike funds studies to get to the bottom of how much we can cripple young boys so that it might be considered kind of fair for them to compete in women’s sports. As if women and girls are just hampered boys and men.
Brands Influence Culture — Enter XX-XY Athletics
We don’t have Nike budgets, but we have virality and popular opinion and we’re feisty and not afraid to hit back. We’re athletes. And we’re not going to let other brands manufacture consensus and make the 80% too afraid to speak up. We have to change the cultural conversation in addition to the laws.
So that’s why I do it. Because brands matter. Like it or not. Capitalist or not. Brands influence the culture.
And I will not let the other side have all that influence without fighting back on the terms that they defined.
Be Brave. Join the Convo.
