An commercial launched by the brand new pro-women’s athletics model XX-XY Athletics went viral on TikTok final month for its advocacy of the rights of girls to compete in ladies’s-only sports activities and use single-sex areas. After the minute-long video garnered important consideration on TikTok, the model was notified that it was banned from the social media platform for not complying with its “promoting insurance policies.”
“Our evaluate signifies that your promoting content material might violate TikTok’s promoting insurance policies by that includes offensive content material,” the letter from TikTok said. The model was given the choice to “revise” their commercial or enchantment the ban.
Former Levi’s exec Jennifer Sey, the founder and CEO of XX-XY Athletics, spoke with Fox Information Digital in regards to the ban, noting the corporate didn’t say which pointers the model was in violation of, however stated the transfer by the social media big solely strengthened the corporate’s resolve to proceed advocating for ladies’s sports activities and female-only areas.
“No matter their [TikTok] intention was, it actually backfired for them as a result of our platform is greater, and our voice is louder,” Sey stated.
XX-XY Athletics, which launched in March forward of the newest Title IX adjustments put forth by the Biden administration and the 2024 Olympics, sells ladies’s and males’s athletics garments whereas advocating ladies’s rights.
“If we will do this and put out superb content material that helps it, it turns into normalized to face up for ladies and ladies and I believe for a lot too lengthy, folks on the non-far left have uncared for the instruments of tradition,” she stated. “That’s how concepts turn into embraced: via artwork and thru manufacturers. Politics are downstream from tradition. We have to win this within the cultural area and so I believe my model is usually a massive a part of that.”
“This is not nearly legal guidelines, that is about folks and altering hearts and minds and having them communicate up as a result of the legal guidelines will comply with that,” she added. “So, that is what I hope and that is actually what we’re experiencing. Ladies who’ve come out of the woodwork to assist their daughters and dads have come out of the woodwork to say, ‘I am not going to face by silently when my daughter is denied alternative.'”
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Sey described the advert as “very uplifting,” encouraging women and girls to face up for themselves, stating they deserve their very own sports activities, deserve their very own areas and deserve privateness and security with out being known as a bigot.
“I discover it fairly ironic that in operating an advert, encouraging ladies and ladies to face up for themselves and to not again down after they’re known as names, we then get known as names and are completely banned from promoting on TikTok for violating their promoting insurance policies, which they didn’t cite what coverage we violated, however they stated it was for offensive content material,” she stated. “So standing up for ladies and ladies is offensive now, apparently.”
“Within the wake of #MeToo, when a sideways look from a man at work may get him canceled, now ladies are being advised to close up, sit down and let these guys have what they need. It is simply form of mind-boggling to me. The misogyny is absolutely astonishing,” she added. “We won’t have a good combat if males are enabled and allowed to compete in our sports activities.”
Sey made headlines in 2022 when she resigned as the highest model chief at Levi Strauss & Co. after she had turn into vocal in her opposition to prolonged faculty closures throughout the COVID pandemic. She labored within the vogue and attire enterprise for near 30 years and had all the time been outspoken about her beliefs relating to ladies’s rights in sports activities as a former elite gymnast, however the free speech limits she confronted throughout COVID pushed her to her restrict.
Since her resignation – she says she was pressured out, whereas the corporate says she left voluntarily – Sey had been outspoken towards woke firms, authoring the memoir “Levi’s Unbuttoned: The Woke Mob Took My Job however Gave Me My Voice.”
However when she was on the lookout for a brand new job, Sey stated she grew annoyed whereas interviewing with giant, multi-billion greenback retail manufacturers the place she was often grilled by potential employers about whether or not she regretted talking out towards COVID-era faculty closures and the views she held amid the pandemic. She determined she may not be a part of the company C-suite.
“I used to be on this actually distinctive place as a former elite athlete,” she stated. “I used to be an elite gymnast, nationwide champion in 1986 and a really skilled chief inside vogue and any person prepared to talk about controversial and uncomfortable truths to start out a model and athletic attire model for ladies primarily, although, we do make males’s clothes, that stands up for ladies’s sports activities and areas. The thought was born and we really began working final October and we launched March 25.”
In April, the Biden administration finalized its updates to Title IX which many critics argue will erase developments organic ladies have achieved in at this time’s society via its broad interpretation of “intercourse” and whereas XX-XY Athletics was already underway, Sey stated the proposed adjustments have solely strengthened the model’s mission.
Title IX of the Training Amendments of 1972 was initially a 37-word provision barring colleges that obtain federal funding from discriminating towards college students on the premise of intercourse, guaranteeing equal alternative for ladies within the academic setting. The newest model of the regulation, which is on observe to enter impact Aug. 1, expands that attain to forestall discrimination and harassment based mostly on gender id and sexual orientation, which could have important implications for women-only areas, free speech and sports activities.
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“It really has generated extra curiosity in what we’re doing [and] extra urgency in what we’re doing,” she stated. “The Division of Training issued what I’d name an unlawful rewrite of Title IX. They form of smuggled in a change which utterly erases the unique that means of Title IX, and the unique that means was to guard ladies and ladies’ intercourse based mostly rights.”
She added that the brand new guidelines erase “the unique that means of Title IX.”
She stated that anybody who thinks it isn’t that many trans-identified male athletes competing in ladies’s sports activities ought to know that there are practically 600 reported situations of girls and ladies who’ve been beat out by transgender ladies.
“To inform us we have to simply sit down and be quiet as a result of a bunch of males inform us we have to simply appears, to me, probably the most sexist factor conceivable, and we’re not going to do it,” Sey stated.
Sey stated transgender figuring out females competing towards organic ladies is harmful and that by affirming that perception “we’re being requested to additional this lie that’s so basic, that women and men are totally different and that intercourse is binary.”
After the TikTok ban, Sey stated XX-XY Athletics had its finest gross sales day but, which she stated is indicative of the truth that individuals are not prepared to “deny fact.”
“They’ve pushed us too far, the ideologues who’re pushing this situation round gender ideology, which mainly states that intercourse just isn’t binary, and it is a spectrum and there isn’t any distinction between women and men,” she stated. “Individuals thought I used to be kooky earlier than, [because it] felt prefer it was a fringe situation… [but] when a platform like TikTok, the biggest, hottest platform for younger folks within the nation and the world is banning you for saying ladies and ladies, get up for your self, individuals are simply carried out.”
Fox Information Digital has reached out to TikTok for remark.
Fox Information’ Nora Moriarty contributed to this report.
