Nana Akua got involved in a fiery debate with LGBTQ+ activist Sam Dowler as they discussed Nike’s decision to sponsor trans woman Dylan Mulvaney.
It comes as 26-year-old Mulvaney posed for a series of pictures and videos promoting the brand’s sports bra and leggings.
Mulvaney identifies as a woman and uses the pronouns ‘she/they’, but is yet to undergo gender reassignment surgery.
With the brand and Mulvaney now facing backlash, Sam Dowler said in their defence: “This person is a 26-year-old person, a trans person wearing leggings, everyone needs to calm the hell down.”
Nana Akua and Sam Dowler came to blows
GB News
Nana Akua said: “This is a trans person caricaturing a women, wearing sports bras.”
Dowler replied: “She has 12 million followers, most of them are women who may buy this. Nike see the amount of followers. All she does is talk about positivity and laughter and Nike want to get into that.”
Fellow panelist Lizzie Cundy interjected: “They’re erasing women!”
Dowler, in a feisty response, said: “The rest of Nike’s Instagram’s feed is all cis white women.”
Dylvan Mulvaney wears Nike leggings
Instagram / Dylan Mulvaney
Akua, angrily responding, said: “Do not come into the studio and call me a cis woman. Do not use that term otherwise I will eject you from that chair.
“A woman is a woman. I don’t want to hear that again from your mouth.”
Dowler continued to defend Mulvaney, saying she is “just doing her job”.
Despite receiving criticism over the move by notable figures such as Sharron Davies and Caitlyn Jenner, Nike have doubled down on using a transgender influencer to promote its female clothes, calling on customers to “be kind and inclusive”.
In a response to the backlash, Nike said: “You are an essential component to the success of your community.
“We welcome comments that contribute to a positive and constructive discussion.
“Be kind. Be inclusive. Encourage each other. Hate speech, bullying, or other behaviours that are not in the spirit of a diverse and inclusive community will be deleted.”
Nike have partnered with a trans star in the past, with their 2021 ‘Play New’ campaign, they used Mara Gomez, who plays in Argentina’s professional football league.
Speaking on GB News, Ex-Team GB athlete Sharron Davies said the move represents a “step back” after several sports bodies opted to give biological women their own protected category in competitions.
She said: “It’s so frustrating. We take two steps forward with World Athletics and Swim England protecting women’s sport and then Nike does this.
“The ad feels like a parody of what women are. In the past it was always seen as an insult to say, ‘run like a girl’ and here we’ve got someone behaving in a way that’s very un-sporty and very unathletic and it’s so frustrating when only one per cent of USA sponsorship dollar goes to females in sport.
“That Nike would do this feels like a kick in the teeth.”
