I'm not hateful, you are.

I’ve been called “hateful” more times than I can count. It used to really upset me. Especially given that I always take great care to try to be kind and respectful and not at all hateful even when — especially when? — I disagree with someone.

Which doesn’t mean I don’t stand up for myself. And it doesn’t mean I don’t advocate for women and children.

And it doesn’t mean I will carry lies forward into the world.

“You can resolve to live your life with integrity. Let your credo be this: Let the lie come into the world, let it even triumph. But not through me.”

―Alexander Solzhenitsyn

But I’m not into name-calling or getting into fights — physical (ha, imagine a 55 year old lady getting into a fist fight?) or verbal. It’s been a hard won personal battle to walk the line between standing up for myself and being respectful of other viewpoints, always.

As a child and teen, I did not do this. I allowed myself to be bullied, physically and emotionally abused, and ultimately silenced, in order to avoid hurting well-respected coaches’ feelings and reputations. And to avoid potential backlash — including even worse treatment by the coach in question, not getting selected for a team, etc.

No child should sacrifice themselves to avoid being called mean or a wimp or a liar or missing out on opportunities. That sort of manipulation on the part of actual abusers is what is hateful. And it has kept victims of all sorts of abuse silent since forever.

As an adult, I don’t allow myself to be manipulated by bullies. Or as this guy Dr. Glenn Patrick Doyle (whoever he is) says: You don’t owe anyone an apology for changing your behavior as you discover & develop your self-worth.

Ok this is getting a little too self-helpy now and I hate self-help.

Moving on . . .

Why did I let this trolling and name calling upset me in the past? These people don’t know me, why would I care? Many of them are anonymous social media trolls who wouldn’t be willing to say these things using their own name and likeness, let alone to my face. So who cares? After some self-coaching, those instances were fairly easy to brush off.

But, some of the folks calling me “hateful” (or worse) do know me. Some are related to me and have known me my entire life.

They KNOW the arc of my life and my actions and my intentions. And — not to put it too cornily — they know what is in my heart. But because my politics veered from theirs, and I stood up for truth when they were willing to further lies because the activist class told them to in order to be “good people/lefties,” I’m dead to these decades-long friends who now consider me a hateful murderer, a racist, an ableist, a bigot. It’s all bullshit, frankly. And you learn to live with it and carry on.

More recently the “hateful” accusation has focused on my supposed mass murder of trans-people. Below was in response to the announcement of my new brand, XX-XY Athletics.

I don’t know this guy. He’s as good as an anonymous social media troll but he uses his own name and apparently we worked together at some point, according to LinkedIn. Who knows.

Of course, this line of insult is not only dramatically over-the-top incendiary, but also patently and provably false (the part about me being a hateful person who is murdering trans people).

Despite the spewing of taglines issued by activist groups, protecting women’s sports and spaces is not trans-genocide. In fact, it’s not even exclusionary.

And though this person thinks I’m a hateful piece of shit, I’d argue that is her not me.

This past week the NAIA, which oversees intramural collegiate sports, declared that women’s sports in the NAIA are to be kept female, and the male category is open to all.

No one is being excluded. Everyone who wants to can play and compete. There is nothing hateful about this. Only fairness and safety are at play. And respect for women and their being deserving of equal opportunity.

But back to the hate accusations. I don’t know who Devon is to ask me “How much hate is inside of you, Jenn.” (It’s Jen, for the record.) I don’t know how I would measure the amount of hate inside of me if there was any. What is the unit of measure for hate? Pounds? Tablespoons? Miles? Centimeters? Cubic meters? Watts? Ergs?

But the only hateful people I’ve encountered are people like Devon and It’sMe The Dark Ages and those in my former friend group (some of whom are current on-line trolls of both me and my husband) who seem to think it’s normal to break up with lifelong friends because of “differences of opinion,” on matters of fact.

Now, if I were using slurs or killing people, fine, break up with me. But the irony is that if I did kill someone (accidentally — say in a car accident, one where I was negligent but not malicious, for instance), these same former friends would likely stand by me.

But because I think public schools should have opened during covid (like the privates) it means I wanted black children and teachers dead (or so the media and teachers’ unions told them and they repeated out loud or quietly in their brains). It means I am racist. And, to them, it means I am an actual murderer. It’s really silly and clearly not grounded in any actual fact base or logic.

And now, because I think women deserve their own sports and spaces for privacy, safety and fairness, I’m a trans genocider.

For the record:

I have never committed any act of violence.

I have never punched or kicked or scratched anyone.

I have never slapped anyone.

I’ve never spanked my children.

I’ve never been in a car accident where anyone was injured.

I’ve never called anyone a pejorative name, except my husband once or twice in the heat of anger, but I apologized and that doesn’t count anyway.

I’ve never targeted anyone for firing because of their views. I have never actually fired anyone because I didn’t like their views. Or because I didn’t like them as people.

I’ve never excluded anyone from anything — hiring, friendship, recommendations — because of their race, sex, sexual orientation, “gender identity.”

The only recommendations I’ve ever sidestepped are for someone who wasn’t very good at their job. Or perhaps was very bad. Maybe committed expense fraud, for instance (which is true for one my current critics chasing me around the internet calling me a bad and very difficult employee and a very terrible person overall). Even in that case where I was asked to be a reference for someone who literally stole from the company, I just declined to comment. I don’t want to be the person who ensures anyone isn’t able to ever work again.

Beyond this, I’ve always gone out of my way to build diverse teams. Even before it was a thing, let alone a requirement. Not because I wanted to check the boxes. But because people from different backgrounds and with different views, better understand the full range of consumers. And do better work, in my opinion. At least in the consumer goods space. Ideally they challenge each other’s thinking and that begets more innovation and creativity.

The problem now in corporate America is that this is not allowed — the challenging of ideas is viewed as “hateful.” Challenging anyone means it isn’t a “safe space” and you’ll be targeted by Human Resources. People are terrified to speak because they might say a word today that is banned or “problematic” that was perfectly fine yesterday. So they sit in silence, hoping to fly under the radar. This is not the recipe for creativity and innovation. And it is the opposite of the culture I’m trying to create in my new company, XX-XY Athletics.

My team at Levi’s was very diverse. Old and young and in between. Black and white and Latino and Asian and mixed race and American and global citizens of the world. Larger and smaller sized and able-bodied and some with physical disabilities. Veterans. College grads and non-college grads. Gay and straight and trans, including an adult transitioning while working on my team. Married and single. Religious and atheist. All the things. While I can’t vouch for everyone, I think anyone who worked for me would be hard pressed to say I didn’t treat everyone with respect. I’m 100% certain no one would have called me “hateful.” Except the guy running around the internet right now who I worked for, and covered for, and bolstered, and made seem not incompetent and crazy until he started stealing from the company. Now, he says I was “difficult.” Whatever. He’s cray.

Here’s my point. What’s hateful is smearing someone. Who is hateful are my friends who have unfriended me, blocked me, refuse to speak with me because I think the medical establishment royally screwed up during covid and harmed a generation of children who are now, still, suffering from learning loss, mental health impacts and record high chronic absenteeism. What is hateful was staying silent in the face of those restrictions while you sent your own children to cushy private schools. What is hateful was agreeing that it was ok to use children as human shields for the elderly. What is hateful was thinking that it was kind and necessary to do so, and feeling righteous and virtuous in having sacrificed the most vulnerable among us — poor children.

What was hateful, back in 2008, when I spoke out about abuse in gymnastics, was calling me a liar and a grifter and then pretending you never did that when the Nassar story broke. And then never apologizing and saying: “I’m sorry I didn’t have your back. I was wrong. I stand with you now.” (Kudos to my friend Jessica who called me and said just that. She’s a mensch if you can call women that, which you can’t, but I can’t think of a better word right now.)

I say all of this more gently than my friend Meghan Murphy does. But I agree with her, even though my personal style of saying what she says is . . . well . . . perhaps gentler. She might chide me for that and I see her point. Perhaps one day, I’ll unleash.

In the meantime, I do it my way. I suppose my long trained diplomatic corporate lady voice informs my approach. Not to mention my childhood spent in silence, with obedience drilled into me. I’ve come a long way. Perhaps I have further to go. Time will tell.

Here’s Murphy’s view in her latest Substack:

“Fuck the experts. The experts failed us. Fuck the science. We don’t need science to know what every human has known for all of humanity. Fuck the media. Fuck the New York Times [. . .] Fuck every single one of my friends who unfriended me on Facebook or told me they couldn’t hang out with me anymore or attacked me for being “mean” [. . .] I was not bad, I am not bad, you are bad.”

I often wish I had her chutzpah. I’ve got my own brand of it. And for now, I’ll leave you with this.

I was right about pedophile coaches and abuse being rampant in the sport of gymnastics. I was right that prolonged school closures were devastatingly harmful to a generation of children. And I’m right about the need to protect women’s sports and spaces and stand up for female athletes to protect Title IX. And I’m right that males cannot become females just because vibes.

If you think that’s mean and hateful, you are, in fact, the problem.