Nebraska Stands With Women

Yesterday I was in Lincoln for the introduction of the Stand with Women Act. Here's what I said.

Yesterday I was in Lincoln, Nebraska for the introduction of the Stand with Women Act. Nebraska State Senator Kathleen Kauth (R-31) invited me to join her and Governor Jim Pillen to help defend and advance this legislation into law.

This law, if passed in the Nebraska legislature, would fortify the definitions of male and female terms in law in Nebraska (can you believe this needs to be done?) and codify an earlier Women’s Bill of Rights executive order by Governor Jim Pillen to protect the existence of single-sex spaces, such as rape crisis centers, domestic violence shelters, prisons, athletic teams, locker rooms, and sororities.

I was honored to speak along with Senator Kauth, University of Nebraska softball pitcher Jordy Bahl, University of Nebraska volleyball player Rebekah Allick and Independent Women Ambassador Hannah Holtmeier.

(Total side note: When I was an executive at Levi’s — for many years — I often traveled to places like Paris, Berlin, Shanghai and Tokyo. I’ve visited more cities and countries than I can count. My passport is exploding with stamps. I visited beautiful, amazing places that I am grateful I had the opportunity to visit many times. Now I travel to places like Lincoln, Nebraska and Scranton, Pennsylvania — less glamorous, to be sure — and I am having more fun and feel that the work I am doing to protect women’s rights is so much more meaningful. Life takes strange turns. I embrace them.)

Here’s what I said to the state senators, the press and other concerned citizens and attendees of the press conference, including a fair number of disruptive protesters.

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My name is Jennifer Sey. I’m the founder and CEO of XX-XY Athletics, the only brand standing up for women’s sports and the protection of female athletes. And I might be the only former Democrat here in the room. Which I think is relevant. Because this should not be a partisan issue. It is an issue of truth. Biology. Not politics. And we need to stand together — even if we disagree on other things — in defense of material reality.

We’ve had some wins of late. Right? Just yesterday a federal court in Kentucky vacated the Biden administration’s April 2024 Title IX rewrite, which essentially replaced women’s sex-based rights with gender identity.

It is big news. But we aren’t done yet.

And so I want to talk about moral courage today. The moral courage needed to continue this fight. Because we are no where near done. All that means — what happened yesterday in Kentucky — is that schools aren’t required to accept men on their women’s sports team, in their sororities and in women’s only spaces. They can still do it if they want to. And many will.

As I look around — at government leaders, leaders in education, corporate America, medicine and public health, sports governing bodies — basically everywhere I turn, I see none, no moral courage. Such a failure of leadership.

This is not surprising to me. I spent my childhood and adolescence as an elite gymnast in the 80s. This is a sport rife with abuse. Emotional, physical and sexual abuse. Twenty years after I left the sport I still suffered from it. And I wrote a book to make sense of it for myself in 2008. The gymnastics federation — U.S.A. Gymnastics (USAG) — and the U.S. Olympic Committee (USOPC) . . . they all came after me. Smeared me, tried to discredit the things that I said by claiming I was just a bitter ex-gymnast who never made the Olympics.

But everything I wrote was true and ten years later the case of Larry Nassar hit and suddenly everyone knew it.

The governing bodies could no longer hide the truth by smearing those who spoke it. They could no longer destroy evidence of abuse, as Steve Penny (the former head of USAG) had done. It took over a decade but the truth outed in the end. No thanks to “leaders” of the sports’ governing bodies. Thanks only to the brave athletes who stood up and said enough.

And so my experience is that the governing bodies will not do the right thing unless they are forced. And we have to force it. We the people have to screw up our courage to speak basic truths and we have to endure the slings and arrows that come from speaking truth early.

And while it should not take courage to say the obvious: men and women are different; women and girls deserve safety, privacy and fairness; it is compassionate to stand up for women and girls . . . it does right now. It takes real courage to stand up and say the obvious.

Because when you do, you will be attacked, vilified, called every name in the book. You will be smeared. The mob might come for your job. You might lose friends.

But we need to steel ourselves against the name-calling. Which is a tactic designed to shut us up. It is bullying with the sole intention of making us too afraid to say anything.

The bullying coerces us into using their language. Pronouns. And to use phrases like Trans women are women.

No they are not. They are males.

And if we let the bullies coerce us into using their language, we’ve already lost.

Do not do it.

Once you say trans women are women, how can we then say but they can’t compete in women’s sports? You can’t.

Don’t do it.

Screw up your courage and stand on the truth.

Politics and legislation are downstream from culture. And we’ve been losing the cultural battle. But we can start now. To push back. To refuse their terms. To reject the ideas smuggled into the culture through tricks of language.

I started XX-XY Athletics nine months ago and we are the only athletic brand standing up for the protection of women’s sports.

I started it to change the cultural conversation. When I wear this shirt to my kids’ soccer games every Saturday, every time a mom comes up to me, leans in and whispers “I agree with you.”

And I tell her — then say it. Out loud. Wear the shirt. Don’t be afraid. We are the majority. Stand up for your daughter.

Show some moral courage. To stand up in defense of material reality.

• Men and women are different.

• Sex is binary.

• Women deserve safety, privacy and fairness.

• It is compassionate — not bigoted — to stand up for women and girls.

Do not let your empathy be weaponized against you. Or your daughter.

Do not let males tell you to sit down, be nice, take the L.

This is garden variety misogyny. And it looks no better in a dress.

I’m honored to be here with all of you today. Thanks to Senator Kauth for inviting me. Thanks to these brave young women — Jordy, Rebekah, Hannah — who have more courage than grown men like Charlie Baker who “leads” the NCAA but somehow believes there is no science that says men are stronger and faster than women.

These young women are not afraid to stand up and do the right thing. To stand apart.

We are the majority. It doesn’t feel like it yet, but we are.

We need to bring others along.

To get the 70-80% of Americans who agree with us — who have basic common sense — to screw up their moral courage and stand up for women and girls.

Because when that happens we cannot lose.

Thank you.