I spent some time talking with our Tik Tok ad rep this week to better understand why we were banned from advertising on their platform. Much to my surprise, I got some honest answers. I explain here: In addition to being banned by Tik Tok, we are being
Thank you for lending your considerable expertise, experience and credibility to the struggle (that framing sounds melodramatic, but what else is it?) to keep men out of women-only athletic events. I can't wait for my XX-XY t-shirt to arrive so I can wear it proudly.
The defense of women's sports is just one front in a larger battle to protect society from the pernicious effects of gender identity ideology.
Anyone who has tried to push back against the excesses of trans activism has almost certainly experienced a phenomenon that is supposed to be unthinkable in our society: censorship in its many forms.
I routinely experience censorship at the hands of the comment moderators at The Washington Post. The paper will run a piece about a trans person or a trans issue. I will submit a measured, well-reasoned comment in response to an error or omission and watch it appear in the comment section. When I return a short time later it will have disappeared. I know that if I persist in reposting I risk being banned without notice or an opportunity to appeal. In a variation on this theme, the Post's moderators will have approved my comment, but it will be followed by a string of ad hominem replies that never engage with the substance of my comment.
I never cease to be surprised by how readily the Post's liberal readers abandon critical thinking and engage in mob-like behavior when they encounter viewpoints that challenge their beliefs.
Trans activists and their allies have been so effective at upending norms that liberals respond to our defense of science and fairness on behalf of women and America's youth as if we were the moral monsters.
While it is not at all clear how we will be able to get our message through to the mainstream, what is certain is that if we stop trying the other side will prevail.
Why don't you flip the tables. XX-XY should start promoting that *y'all* have banned Tik Tok, Meta, Comcast, etc. 70% of Americans would approve of you *banning THEM*. Me included. Thank you for all that you are doing.
Change the product name, but keep the company name. I'd be more inclined to purchase your products if they were well-made, manufactured outside of China, and didn't feature the XX-XY logo. Consider hiring a branding company to develop a new name. I appreciate the people behind the product and your message, but let's be realistic - young boys and girls currently overlook your brand. My eleven-year-old twin boys prefer other brands for various reasons. However, with time, you could potentially turn the tide and even enlist high-profile athletes to endorse your brand and the new name. You can still use the same message about why you staryed thr company.
The general public doesn't want to showcase the XX-XY logo on their hats, T-shirts, and shorts. When I say the general public, I'm referring to the substantial portion of America that recognizes Biden voters are mentally ill.
You can still offer some products that have the promeninet XX-XY logos.
People like the name. Our logo products are our best selling items. We don't manufacture in China. We're only 3 months in. We've only just started. And it's going well. Ahead of our estimates. Thanks for the input. We're staying the course!
The XX-XY logo on your products is absolutely essential. It’s a novel differentiator that gets people thinking when it catches their eye, at least critical thinkers and anyone with a curiosity. True, it may trigger some nut job if they put 2 and 2 together, but we can’t cower in fear if we’re in this battle for keeps. Think of it as a pleasant conversation starter and stand up confidently.
I don't think you have conducted any polls. I really doubt that the name is well-liked from a broad marketing perspective. I understand why this is your decision, but it suggests that you will always be a small, niche business and will not have much impact in the broader market. That's okay if that's all you're aiming for.
I appreciate the input. I have 30+ years of experience in fashion and apparel. Not saying we'll succeed. It's always a crap shoot starting something new! But i do understand the landscape. i'm always open to input and yes we've done research. I'll say, you're pretty condescending... might want to watch that!
Nice reply to someone trying to tell you how to run your business! It's always a fine line where you need to hear what objective people think so you don't end up in a bubble, but where you also have to follow your instincts and do what you know is right. For what it's worth, I am an objective outsider and I think you have a great product and great marketing of that product. Stay strong and ignore the naysayers of whom there are always many.
My 15 year old athlete twin girls haven’t overlooked this brand, complete opposite in fact. They’ll be showing off their joggers and shirts when school starts in August. Fabric quality and cut is excellent and I say that as a mom who has spent many hours in lululemon while they examine everything!! We love the logo on the joggers; discrete but makes the point to anyone who cares to notice.
This issue crosses political lines. If you exclude Democrats, your brand is automatically irrelevant to half the population. Not sure what your issue is with the name, but it seems obvious that making the brand about politics will repel more people than it attracts.
If you believe that trans women (aka men) should be allowed to compete against biological women in most sports or that they belong in women's restrooms, locker rooms and prisons then you are either cognitively impaired or intellectually dishonest.
Yes, Ollie Parks , please share my comment. I stand behind my every word. Of course, Oregon is full steam ahead “ woke”, so the whining for the poor” mistreated “ trans people is to be expected! Nothing is ever said when women are attacked verbally and physically,because they want to speak up for their rights!
Here is the based, child development Part 1, Piaget concept, Object Permanence--a milestone usually achieved age 3-4. Even though you don't see something, it (like your parents, who dropped you off and went to work) is still there somewhere. This does not comport with "wrong body" education.
Not long ago, a boy who claims to be a girl won a high profile track-and-field event in Oregon. In the ensuing controversy, the bro who is the sports columnist at OregonLive/The Oregonian wrote a stinging piece that treated defenders of women's sports as if we were moral criminals.
In order to defeat one's opponents it is first necessary to know them. I am providing the column in full below because it comprises just about every pro-trans inclusion argument and counter-argument under the sun. The rhetoric may be difficult to stomach at times, but it is mandatory reading for anyone seeking to restore sanity to women's-only athletics.
Congrats to all. To the social media brayers who have it all figured out, to the adults who booed a teen from their privileged perch and to those who think the solution to a complex issue is to further ostracize and marginalize members of one of the most at-risk communities in our society.
You have achieved something spectacularly vile.
You have opened the door for the most bad-faith actors in American discourse to exploit a high schooler, a child, for nothing more than a belt notch in the ongoing culture wars. You have empowered the likes of Clay Travis and Piers Morgan and other ghoulish avatars of the lunatic fringe to mine our high schools for clicks and to use them as the backdrop for their continued fear-mongering of the belief that boys have infiltrated girls sports and are winning every track race in the country, every swim meet and golf tournament and that they are grooming your sons to become women.
They are dehumanizing the real people involved, stripping the conversation of nuance, and turning it into a cause rather than an isolated situation that deserves compassion, thoughtfulness and calm.
A teenager’s life is not your cause.
On Saturday at Hayward Field, a McDaniel High School sophomore won the 6A state championship in the 200 meters, breaking away in the final steps. The winning athlete was a transgender girl.
The Oregonian/OregonLive is not naming the runner in an effort to protect whatever privacy she has left. This is a kid in an extremely vulnerable position.
The boos that rained down at the end of the race echoed across the country, but especially on the internet, where the profiteers and alarm merchants eagerly pounced.
This one race catapulted the OSAA championships into the center of one of the most divisive issues we face as a country. Is it one of the most important?
Over homelessness, drugs, racism and violence? Really?
Sports are an incredibly powerful platform for women and girls. For many, it’s where they learn to recognize and harness their strength and forge their identities. And it’s a platform that was once withheld from them, too.
It wasn’t that long ago that women weren’t allowed to compete or were written off as masculine or somehow less woman-like if they did.
Yes, we need to protect women’s sports. But from whom?
Until you show me genuine evidence of someone abusing our moral obligation to be inclusive for their own athletic gain — inviting the stigmatization and abuse that trans people face in sole and desperate pursuit of a medal or a trophy, to record a time or a score that detractors will say deserves an asterisk anyway — I refuse to bite at your baited hook of hate.
Trans athletes deserve a place to compete, too. We should provide opportunities for kids to participate first and let the adults deal with matters of policy and procedure second.
And what has been lost in the days of mendacious manipulation is that what the athlete did, regardless of how you feel about her right to it, was a demonstration of courage that most of us will never experience for ourselves.
While it is grossly unfair to put the weight of this issue on her teenage shoulders, she certainly knew what awaited her when she crossed that finish line. With right-wing media eager to glom on to what they will say is another trans athlete stealing opportunities from girls, to stoke the division in a nation addicted to it, she ran and she ran fast.
That is brave. And I admire her for it.
Let me be very clear: I do not know what the answer is. I do not ultimately know if trans athletes should compete as their “consistently asserted gender,” as the OSAA rule currently states, regardless of where they are in their transition. I also do not know if it is reasonable to mandate that in order to compete as their asserted gender, teenagers — children — need to have received an arbitrary amount of hormone therapy or treatment. I don’t know that rules that work for the Olympics and NCAA work for participatory athletics at the high school level.
But what I do know, and I’m confident saying here, is that judgment cannot be handed down by a mob of people who are limited to the binary device of cheers and boos.
We don’t even know how her competitors felt about being thrust into this conversation. This seems to be the most accepting generation of kids ever, but it would be understandable if they are upset. They are caught in the same confusing web as all of us and trying to untangle issues that we haven’t fully faced as a society, despite the existence of people like tennis player Renee Richards in the 1970s.
The presence of a trans athlete led to additional security during the medal presentation.
Law enforcement wasn’t there to protect the rest of the competitors from the trans athlete. No, it was there to protect the athlete from adults who were so spun up by her existence and her athletic excellence that they might resort to violence.
Nobody deserves that. Certainly not a child.
She is no less a child because she is trans and she is certainly no less of a human.
Save me the argument that the boos were for the OSAA and its rules, not the teenager. The institution didn’t cross the finish line in first place.
I get if parents are mad. But we should remember that parents always want to see their kids do well and often look for excuses when they don’t. We’ve all heard rumors about the point guard who lives outside of school boundaries or laments about the Little League pitcher who looks like a high schooler.
And while those aren’t apples to apples comparisons, it’s also important to note that the McDaniel runner only narrowly won the 200 and finished second in her other event. I do not deny that boys and girls have biological differences, but to act like the event was reduced to a lopsided farce is also not accurate.
As for the suggestion that trans athletes should be directed to their own division: That should immediately be dismissed and called out for the bigotry it is. Such a move would only further single out those few trans athletes competing in high school sports and reduce them to a spectacle.
Imagine the state track meet taking a pause on Saturday so the McDaniel athlete could race her two events, against no one but herself, under the gaze of carnival gawkers.
Until someone has a solution that doesn’t feel like separation and isolation, then everyone needs to grow up and shut up.
As the comedian Bo Burnham once asked, “Is it necessary that every single person on this planet expresses every single opinion that they have on every single thing that occurs all at the same time?”
I value sports deeply and believe in the role of competition in the development of youth as much as anyone. But I can’t help but wonder if we are overvaluing the sanctity of competition at a cost of the sanctity of participation and inclusion.
I don’t know the answer.
I just know that Piers Freakin’ Morgan and the cretins of the internet aren’t going to be the ones to give it to us.
A boy does not have the right to run in a girls’ competition, period! Boys are stronger than girls . It is simply unfair to girls who have fought for the right to have a girls competition!
Your question about from whom to protect women’s sports? The answer is obvious! From men! No man should be competing in women’s sports ! We have rules about testosterone being used to cheat, and any boy or man who obviously has higher levels as well as stronger muscles , should be ineligible to compete with girls or women! And an overwhelming number of people know how unfair it is too, which is why it was fair to boo the boy! Nobody likes a cheater , whether he is a child or a teenager! So, Boo!
Boo? I’ll pass that along to the Oregonian’s sports columnist if I ever see him. For my part, I oppose allowing boys or men who claim to be female to compete against women in women’s-only athletic events.
Thank you for lending your considerable expertise, experience and credibility to the struggle (that framing sounds melodramatic, but what else is it?) to keep men out of women-only athletic events. I can't wait for my XX-XY t-shirt to arrive so I can wear it proudly.
The defense of women's sports is just one front in a larger battle to protect society from the pernicious effects of gender identity ideology.
Anyone who has tried to push back against the excesses of trans activism has almost certainly experienced a phenomenon that is supposed to be unthinkable in our society: censorship in its many forms.
I routinely experience censorship at the hands of the comment moderators at The Washington Post. The paper will run a piece about a trans person or a trans issue. I will submit a measured, well-reasoned comment in response to an error or omission and watch it appear in the comment section. When I return a short time later it will have disappeared. I know that if I persist in reposting I risk being banned without notice or an opportunity to appeal. In a variation on this theme, the Post's moderators will have approved my comment, but it will be followed by a string of ad hominem replies that never engage with the substance of my comment.
I never cease to be surprised by how readily the Post's liberal readers abandon critical thinking and engage in mob-like behavior when they encounter viewpoints that challenge their beliefs.
Trans activists and their allies have been so effective at upending norms that liberals respond to our defense of science and fairness on behalf of women and America's youth as if we were the moral monsters.
While it is not at all clear how we will be able to get our message through to the mainstream, what is certain is that if we stop trying the other side will prevail.
Why don't you flip the tables. XX-XY should start promoting that *y'all* have banned Tik Tok, Meta, Comcast, etc. 70% of Americans would approve of you *banning THEM*. Me included. Thank you for all that you are doing.
Change the product name, but keep the company name. I'd be more inclined to purchase your products if they were well-made, manufactured outside of China, and didn't feature the XX-XY logo. Consider hiring a branding company to develop a new name. I appreciate the people behind the product and your message, but let's be realistic - young boys and girls currently overlook your brand. My eleven-year-old twin boys prefer other brands for various reasons. However, with time, you could potentially turn the tide and even enlist high-profile athletes to endorse your brand and the new name. You can still use the same message about why you staryed thr company.
The general public doesn't want to showcase the XX-XY logo on their hats, T-shirts, and shorts. When I say the general public, I'm referring to the substantial portion of America that recognizes Biden voters are mentally ill.
You can still offer some products that have the promeninet XX-XY logos.
People like the name. Our logo products are our best selling items. We don't manufacture in China. We're only 3 months in. We've only just started. And it's going well. Ahead of our estimates. Thanks for the input. We're staying the course!
The XX-XY logo on your products is absolutely essential. It’s a novel differentiator that gets people thinking when it catches their eye, at least critical thinkers and anyone with a curiosity. True, it may trigger some nut job if they put 2 and 2 together, but we can’t cower in fear if we’re in this battle for keeps. Think of it as a pleasant conversation starter and stand up confidently.
I don't think you have conducted any polls. I really doubt that the name is well-liked from a broad marketing perspective. I understand why this is your decision, but it suggests that you will always be a small, niche business and will not have much impact in the broader market. That's okay if that's all you're aiming for.
I appreciate the input. I have 30+ years of experience in fashion and apparel. Not saying we'll succeed. It's always a crap shoot starting something new! But i do understand the landscape. i'm always open to input and yes we've done research. I'll say, you're pretty condescending... might want to watch that!
Nice reply to someone trying to tell you how to run your business! It's always a fine line where you need to hear what objective people think so you don't end up in a bubble, but where you also have to follow your instincts and do what you know is right. For what it's worth, I am an objective outsider and I think you have a great product and great marketing of that product. Stay strong and ignore the naysayers of whom there are always many.
Appreciate the input but I’m condescending. Okay “Karen” good luck with your hobby.
My 15 year old athlete twin girls haven’t overlooked this brand, complete opposite in fact. They’ll be showing off their joggers and shirts when school starts in August. Fabric quality and cut is excellent and I say that as a mom who has spent many hours in lululemon while they examine everything!! We love the logo on the joggers; discrete but makes the point to anyone who cares to notice.
Proud to support this brand !
Some people will be afraid of being attacked , a real possibility, when they’re wearing your logo. The TRA’s are violent jerks !
Violent jerks and Mentally ill!
This issue crosses political lines. If you exclude Democrats, your brand is automatically irrelevant to half the population. Not sure what your issue is with the name, but it seems obvious that making the brand about politics will repel more people than it attracts.
These platforms are far too powerful, with the consent of the masses of course.
So happy to see Chloe Cole modeling for your brand! She is a rockstar!
Keep FIGHTING Jenn. You are on the right side if this.
If you believe that trans women (aka men) should be allowed to compete against biological women in most sports or that they belong in women's restrooms, locker rooms and prisons then you are either cognitively impaired or intellectually dishonest.
Yes, Ollie Parks , please share my comment. I stand behind my every word. Of course, Oregon is full steam ahead “ woke”, so the whining for the poor” mistreated “ trans people is to be expected! Nothing is ever said when women are attacked verbally and physically,because they want to speak up for their rights!
Welcome to the world of conservatism. Where being shadow banned is normal.
Here is the based, child development Part 1, Piaget concept, Object Permanence--a milestone usually achieved age 3-4. Even though you don't see something, it (like your parents, who dropped you off and went to work) is still there somewhere. This does not comport with "wrong body" education.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DqUNy1Vcxa0&t=21s
Not long ago, a boy who claims to be a girl won a high profile track-and-field event in Oregon. In the ensuing controversy, the bro who is the sports columnist at OregonLive/The Oregonian wrote a stinging piece that treated defenders of women's sports as if we were moral criminals.
In order to defeat one's opponents it is first necessary to know them. I am providing the column in full below because it comprises just about every pro-trans inclusion argument and counter-argument under the sun. The rhetoric may be difficult to stomach at times, but it is mandatory reading for anyone seeking to restore sanity to women's-only athletics.
---------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Bill Oram: A transgender teen athlete’s life is not your cause
Updated: May. 24, 2024, 11:49 a.m.|Published: May. 21, 2024, 4:23 p.m.
https://www.oregonlive.com/highschoolsports/2024/05/bill-oram-a-transgender-teen-athletes-life-is-not-your-cause.html
Congrats to all. To the social media brayers who have it all figured out, to the adults who booed a teen from their privileged perch and to those who think the solution to a complex issue is to further ostracize and marginalize members of one of the most at-risk communities in our society.
You have achieved something spectacularly vile.
You have opened the door for the most bad-faith actors in American discourse to exploit a high schooler, a child, for nothing more than a belt notch in the ongoing culture wars. You have empowered the likes of Clay Travis and Piers Morgan and other ghoulish avatars of the lunatic fringe to mine our high schools for clicks and to use them as the backdrop for their continued fear-mongering of the belief that boys have infiltrated girls sports and are winning every track race in the country, every swim meet and golf tournament and that they are grooming your sons to become women.
They are dehumanizing the real people involved, stripping the conversation of nuance, and turning it into a cause rather than an isolated situation that deserves compassion, thoughtfulness and calm.
A teenager’s life is not your cause.
On Saturday at Hayward Field, a McDaniel High School sophomore won the 6A state championship in the 200 meters, breaking away in the final steps. The winning athlete was a transgender girl.
The Oregonian/OregonLive is not naming the runner in an effort to protect whatever privacy she has left. This is a kid in an extremely vulnerable position.
The boos that rained down at the end of the race echoed across the country, but especially on the internet, where the profiteers and alarm merchants eagerly pounced.
This one race catapulted the OSAA championships into the center of one of the most divisive issues we face as a country. Is it one of the most important?
Over homelessness, drugs, racism and violence? Really?
Sports are an incredibly powerful platform for women and girls. For many, it’s where they learn to recognize and harness their strength and forge their identities. And it’s a platform that was once withheld from them, too.
It wasn’t that long ago that women weren’t allowed to compete or were written off as masculine or somehow less woman-like if they did.
Yes, we need to protect women’s sports. But from whom?
Until you show me genuine evidence of someone abusing our moral obligation to be inclusive for their own athletic gain — inviting the stigmatization and abuse that trans people face in sole and desperate pursuit of a medal or a trophy, to record a time or a score that detractors will say deserves an asterisk anyway — I refuse to bite at your baited hook of hate.
Trans athletes deserve a place to compete, too. We should provide opportunities for kids to participate first and let the adults deal with matters of policy and procedure second.
And what has been lost in the days of mendacious manipulation is that what the athlete did, regardless of how you feel about her right to it, was a demonstration of courage that most of us will never experience for ourselves.
While it is grossly unfair to put the weight of this issue on her teenage shoulders, she certainly knew what awaited her when she crossed that finish line. With right-wing media eager to glom on to what they will say is another trans athlete stealing opportunities from girls, to stoke the division in a nation addicted to it, she ran and she ran fast.
That is brave. And I admire her for it.
Let me be very clear: I do not know what the answer is. I do not ultimately know if trans athletes should compete as their “consistently asserted gender,” as the OSAA rule currently states, regardless of where they are in their transition. I also do not know if it is reasonable to mandate that in order to compete as their asserted gender, teenagers — children — need to have received an arbitrary amount of hormone therapy or treatment. I don’t know that rules that work for the Olympics and NCAA work for participatory athletics at the high school level.
But what I do know, and I’m confident saying here, is that judgment cannot be handed down by a mob of people who are limited to the binary device of cheers and boos.
We don’t even know how her competitors felt about being thrust into this conversation. This seems to be the most accepting generation of kids ever, but it would be understandable if they are upset. They are caught in the same confusing web as all of us and trying to untangle issues that we haven’t fully faced as a society, despite the existence of people like tennis player Renee Richards in the 1970s.
The presence of a trans athlete led to additional security during the medal presentation.
Law enforcement wasn’t there to protect the rest of the competitors from the trans athlete. No, it was there to protect the athlete from adults who were so spun up by her existence and her athletic excellence that they might resort to violence.
Nobody deserves that. Certainly not a child.
She is no less a child because she is trans and she is certainly no less of a human.
Save me the argument that the boos were for the OSAA and its rules, not the teenager. The institution didn’t cross the finish line in first place.
I get if parents are mad. But we should remember that parents always want to see their kids do well and often look for excuses when they don’t. We’ve all heard rumors about the point guard who lives outside of school boundaries or laments about the Little League pitcher who looks like a high schooler.
And while those aren’t apples to apples comparisons, it’s also important to note that the McDaniel runner only narrowly won the 200 and finished second in her other event. I do not deny that boys and girls have biological differences, but to act like the event was reduced to a lopsided farce is also not accurate.
As for the suggestion that trans athletes should be directed to their own division: That should immediately be dismissed and called out for the bigotry it is. Such a move would only further single out those few trans athletes competing in high school sports and reduce them to a spectacle.
Imagine the state track meet taking a pause on Saturday so the McDaniel athlete could race her two events, against no one but herself, under the gaze of carnival gawkers.
Until someone has a solution that doesn’t feel like separation and isolation, then everyone needs to grow up and shut up.
As the comedian Bo Burnham once asked, “Is it necessary that every single person on this planet expresses every single opinion that they have on every single thing that occurs all at the same time?”
I value sports deeply and believe in the role of competition in the development of youth as much as anyone. But I can’t help but wonder if we are overvaluing the sanctity of competition at a cost of the sanctity of participation and inclusion.
I don’t know the answer.
I just know that Piers Freakin’ Morgan and the cretins of the internet aren’t going to be the ones to give it to us.
-- Bill Oram
A boy does not have the right to run in a girls’ competition, period! Boys are stronger than girls . It is simply unfair to girls who have fought for the right to have a girls competition!
Your question about from whom to protect women’s sports? The answer is obvious! From men! No man should be competing in women’s sports ! We have rules about testosterone being used to cheat, and any boy or man who obviously has higher levels as well as stronger muscles , should be ineligible to compete with girls or women! And an overwhelming number of people know how unfair it is too, which is why it was fair to boo the boy! Nobody likes a cheater , whether he is a child or a teenager! So, Boo!
Boo? I’ll pass that along to the Oregonian’s sports columnist if I ever see him. For my part, I oppose allowing boys or men who claim to be female to compete against women in women’s-only athletic events.