The going rate for sports transphobia? $30K

It’s trans awareness week again, and this year has amplified something my friend and colleague Ken Schultz stated after the elections last year: “The stark reality is that at this point in our history, that kind of transphobia is not a deal breaker for most of the country.“

As if 2025 didn’t hammer this home enough, the IOC has made it official or at least they will at some point in 2026. I’m not surprised by this. Kirsty Coventry has stated this is the Brundage-style direction she wants go in. She’ll eagerly follow governing bodies to ensure that women’s sports are for certain women only.

Before that, there was last week’s op-ed by Angel City FC reserve defender Elizabeth Eddy calling for the National Women’s Soccer League to start sex verification testing.

That led Jennifer Sey, the CEO of anti-trans fashion label XX-XY Athletics, to an appearance on Fox News.

“There are several males in the National Women’s Soccer League,” Sey said. “They aren’t trans identified, they’re men with DSDs. In fact, one of the best players in the league is a male, Barbra Banda, who plays for Orlando Pride.”

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But that isn’t worst of it. Sey announced that week that her clothing label would offer $10,000 to the next NWSL player who would speak out the way Eddy did. An anonymous donor added $5,000 more to the offer, and then OutKick’s Clay Travis said he’d double it.

There is precedent for this. Earlier this year, XX-XY paid $5,000 to a fencer to engage in performative transphobia at a fencing tournament in Maryland.

Sey claims to want to “protect women’s sports,” but she’s standing with a chauvinist who only covers women’s sports to punch down on those he finds objectionable, like trans women or “angry Black lesbians”.

It’s on brand for a brand that’s about selling anti-trans slogans on activewear.

It’s in every ad they’ve run, and in every word their brand ambassadors say. Two of the college teams that forfeited games against San Jose State during that debacle last year wore XX-XY-made t-shirts with “BOYcott” across the chest.

They claim to be a brand “speaking out for women’s sports,” yet none of their ads talks about funding inequities in youth and school sports, improving pay, media coverage and growing opportunities for women in coaching and athletic administration.

I doubt that XX-XY has an opinion on the WNBA collective bargain agreement. Maybe they share Travis’ assessment that they believe the W is inferior to boys high school basketball.

Their attention isn’t on how everybody watches women’s sports, it’s on how much they don’t want transgender women, or anyone who doesn’t fit their narrow definition of women to play.

Their major efforts include fueling the lawsuit against the NCAA, led by perhaps their leading brand ambassador, former collegiate swimmer-turned anti-trans activist Riley Gaines. Never mind that the lawsuit at this point is about a petty attempt to rewrite history and take away awards from transgender women like Lia Thomas and CeCé Telfer.

The brand has taken a plunge into anti-trans political action beyond sports. When the U.S. Supreme Court upheld an Administration policy requiring sex at birth on passports, XX-XY roared their approval. Earlier this year, the company filed a lawsuit against the State of Colorado over a state law that prohibits intentional misgendering and deadnaming in public accommodations.

They are loud in their constant warbling about a “takeover” of women’s sports that has never happened, or about the “males” in women’s sports. Last week they yelled it in the hopes of selling some overpriced t-shirts thinking they are taking another swipe at Lia Thomas.

Yet they still haven’t learned that the people they are ridiculing aren’t Lia, or myself for that matter.

Professional transphobes like Jennifer Sey believe two things: Transgender women aren’t women, and cisgender women are inept at sports.

They’ll never put it on their activewear, but that’s their true slogan.

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