TWIBS: Jillian Michaels Hates Science!

Apr 26

Award-winning quack and lawsuit queen Jillian Michaels, formerly known for torturing fat people on “The Biggest Loser,” has thrown in her lot with the anti-trans activists! But it turns out she’s working from faulty knowledge…

by Alyssa Steinsiek

Aw, shucks, looks like some celebrity’s personal fitness trainer has escaped captivity again.

And she’s talking to Fox News!

Jillian Michaels, former “The Biggest Loser” trainer, recipient of the 2010 Most Outrageous Award by Quackwatch, and defendant in multiple lawsuits regarding fake diet pills she’s endorsed, has come out swinging against trans athletes in the ceaseless culture war debate about trans inclusion in sports.

On Tuesday, Michaels turned up on Fox & Friends dressed like an antebellum bank manager to talk about how much she hates transgenders and fatties. It’s an unsurprising move from a woman infamous for going full CIA torture master on her “The Biggest Loser” victims, pitiable people who Michaels fat shamed into fasting and dehydrating themselves until they were pissing blood. Michaels is a Grade A tormenter who brings to mind an angry child beating woodland creatures to death with a stick for fun, so it’s only natural that she would next turn her vicious and unslakeable ire towards a 13-year-old girl.

“You've got two competing goals in sports. … One is inclusion, which everybody can understand and get on board with. However, the second goal that's in direct opposition with inclusion in this instance is going to be a fair competition,” Michaels said. “And if that's your priority, if your overriding priority is going to be fairness over inclusion, you've got to turn to the data, and the data irrefutably shows that biological males are 10 to 30% stronger, faster, have better endurance, better aerobic capacity across the board.”

Michaels claimed to have “sent [several studies] to [Fox & Friends’] producers,” but mysteriously not a single one was linked in the Fox News web piece. That’s a shame, because I sure would love to see some of the hard evidence she so firmly believes in… particularly since one single day before Michaels flapped her gums on Fox & Friends, an International Olympic Committee-sponsored study revealed that trans women are measurably worse at common athletic activities than cisgender women or cisgender men.

Whoops!

One of the study’s authors, Yannis Pitsiladis, who is a member of the IOC’s medical and scientific commission, explicitly said, “Trans women are not biological men.”

True Twibsies (that’s you!) know that I detest the phrases “biological men” and “biological women.” Given the complexity of sexual dimorphism in humans, as well as the ease with which we can modify secondary sex characteristics via medicines and surgeries thanks to modern medical science, “biological sex” is an almost meaningless concept. At best, your anatomy at birth and chromosomal composition is private information shared between you and a physician strictly for medical purposes.

It is certainly not the catch-all bludgeon anti-trans activists think it is. I’m looking at you, Ms. Large Gametes.

The authors of the IOC-funded study outright warned against “precautionary bans and sport eligibility exclusions,” but it’s a bit late for that, I’m afraid. Multiple Olympic governing bodies have already passed flat bans against trans competitors, making it impossible for many cisgender women to compete, and twenty-four states have completely banned the participation of trans students on sports teams that align with their correct gender. This isn’t some terrible future we can avoid. We’re already staring down the barrel of “sport is a human right, except for trans people.”

Let’s circle back to Jillian Michaels. Do you, dear reader, think she went on Fox & Friends on a lark? For no good reason? She just decided, apropos of nothing, she hates trans people and needs to announce it on the least truthful news outlet on basic cable?

You know better.

If you roll those peepers up just a bit, you may recall I mentioned a 13-year-old girl earlier. This girl, a track & field athlete in West Virginia, recently made headlines when a federal appeals court announced that the state couldn’t bar her participation in school sports. Though the panel of judges failed to support every trans person in West Virginia, they decided that it would be unreasonable to ban this girl from her school’s track & field team because she’s known she was a girl and been on puberty blockers for years. She’s never endured a single moment of puberty, and simply cannot have any advantage against her cisgender competitors.

Hey, let’s take a look at her school’s mega racist mascot for no particular reason!

*image from* *Bridgeport Middle School website*

Goodness me.

Anyway, some other girls protested the trans girl’s participation—likely at the behest of their toothless slack jawed troglodyte mouth breathing country cracker local yokel coal minin’ ‘shine guzzlin’ backwater bumfuck weasel faced parents—and now Michaels and who else but Riley Gaines must jaw incessantly about the bravery of these mean ass kids.

Here’s the thing: Jillian Michaels is the last person who should be running her mouth about fairness, given her involvement with perhaps the cruelest, most toxic, most vile, most fucked up reality television show to ever exist. Every “The Biggest Loser” contestant should receive a multi-million dollar settlement from the people involved in that cancerous rot spectacle.

But, hey, maybe there’s hope for Michaels. In 2014, after her third departure from “The Biggest Loser,” she said, in an interview (apologies for citing “The Daily Mail”!) that she “actually felt pretty ashamed” about her involvement with the show. Feeling shame is the first step in reclaiming your soul, though I doubt she’s made any effort to make amends for that evil work.

If you want my advice, Jillian—and I know you do, girl—you should save yourself some time and headache and issue an apology now for the shame you’ll feel later about this ass backwards position you’ve taken regarding trans people in sports.

Alyssa Steinsiek is a professional writer and video games nerd who cohosts a podcast about trans news!