She was a Levi’s exec on the fast track. Now she’s selling anti-trans sportswear

Former San Francisco resident Jennifer Sey was pushed out of her cushy job at Levi’s for protesting school closures and mask mandates during the Covid pandemic. Now she’s being welcomed at the White House thanks to another right-wing cause du jour: kicking transgender athletes out of women’s sports.

Sey, a former pro gymnast, made headlines in 2022 for leaving her role as brand president at Levi’s after the company took issue with her controversial — and highly public — takes on school closures, masking, and vaccines. She and her family decamped to Denver, where she continued protesting progressive policies while plotting her comeback: a line of activewear called XX-XY Athletics, the mission of which is to protest trans athletes’ participation in women’s and girls’ sports. 

The brand’s viral marketing efforts — and Sey’s knack for stirring up controversy — have propelled its profile in recent days, earning retweets from Harry Potter author J.K. Rowling and Wall Street investor Bill Ackman, as well as an invitation to watch President Donald Trump sign an executive order banning trans women and girls from organized sports.

“I think the culture is shifting underneath our feet at the moment,” Sey told The Standard on Thursday in a call from Denver. “And I think people who’ve been silent for the last eight to 10 years for fear of cancellation and name-calling and all that stuff that I endured — they feel that that has lost its power.”

Sey is a former Democrat who worked at Levi’s for more than two decades. She started attracting attention in 2021 for her posts on X, where she talked about the “harm of ongoing masking of small children” and said she would “die on a hill to protect bodily autonomy for those who choose not to or can’t vaxx.”

Sey claims she was in the running for CEO at the time, but Levi’s passed her over because of her provocative posts, telling her there was “not a viable path forward” for her at the company. Sey says she rejected a $1 million severance package in order to be able to speak out about the circumstances of her departure and quickly turned the experience into a memoir, “Levi’s Unbuttoned: The Woke Mob Took My Job but Gave Me My Voice.” (Levi’s has disputed her version of events.)

Sey also vocally campaigned to recall three San Francisco school board members for their refusal to reopen schools full time, telling The Standard in 2021 that the campaign was about “basically firing them for not doing their job for the last year.” She eventually left San Francisco for Denver to enroll her children in school in person.

Sey says the idea for XX-XY came when she went looking for her next job and found it harder than anticipated.

“I just started to think about, ‘What would a brand look like that pushed back a bit on the excesses of — for lack of a better word — woke capitalism?’” she said. “I feel like that’s what I’m good at, and that’s how I can contribute to influencing the culture and the conversation, is to start a brand.”

With the help of some deep-pocketed friends in Denver, Sey launched XX-XY, an online-only brand that features athletic gear emblazoned with messages like “Save girls sports” and “Real women rock.” Press releases refer to the company as “the only athletic brand to stand up for women’s sports.” (This is up to interpretation; Nike, Adidas, and Athleta, among others, have launched programs to encourage girls’ participation in sports and equal pay for women athletes.)

A recently released ad from XX-XY features former collegiate athletes Riley Gaines and Sia Liilii, who have protested trans women’s participation in their sports, dramatizing the response they received for their views. (In one scene, Liilii, who led her college volleyball team’s refusal to play against a trans player, walks by someone on a dark street who mutters, “Transphobe.”) The text on the ad reads: “Real strength. Real courage. Real girls rock.”

The ad drew the notice of Rowling, an outspoken opponent to trans rights, who tweeted it to her 14.3 million followers, writing: “This is the first and likely the last time I’ll retweet an ad, but I love it.” She later tweeted that her husband purchased four of the brand’s shirts. Hedge fund billionaire Ackman tweeted out another of the company’s ads, saying he was going to raise the issue with Nike CEO Elliott Hill in a meeting.

Sey says she received an email from the White House on Tuesday inviting her to participate in the signing of Trump’s executive order the next day. Sey flew out that night to make it in time and nabbed a seat directly behind the president, proudly sporting — what else? — an XX-XY T-shirt.

“[Trump] has really opened the door to have this cultural conversation, and more and more people who agree are willing to kind of stand up proudly and say, ‘I’m on the side of women and girls,’” she said. “I think he sort of busted the door down, and now we have to take it from here and change the culture.”

Trump’s order requires the federal government to “rescind all funds from educational programs that deprive women and girls of fair athletic opportunities,” and “oppose male competitive participation in women’s sports.”

The order drew backlash from Lambda Legal, an LGBTQ rights organization, which said it was “appalled, and in fact disgusted, at this administration’s insatiable appetite for fearmongering about and relentless targeting of this most vulnerable population.”

Advocates were similarly disturbed by XX-XY, which Sey claims made seven figures in its first seven months in business. Tony Hoang, executive director of Equality California, called it “disgraceful to see a company built entirely on the exclusion and dehumanization of transgender athletes.”

“XX-XY Athletics is trying to profit off division and hate — desperately grasping for relevance, unlike their designs, which are just as outdated as their mindset,” he told The Standard in a statement. “Tragic.”

While Sey has left California, she seems unable to leave it alone. She has frequently commented on a case in Riverside in which two students were forced to remove shirts with anti-trans messages, similar to the ones she produces. One of the plaintiff’s mothers even posted a shoutout on Instagram, thanking XX-XY for its support in the case.

Still, Sey told The Standard she is unlikely to ever return to San Francisco. “I can’t imagine myself ever moving back,” she said.

“I feel very disappointed in that city and the people that live there, and my former friends in particular, for how they behaved during Covid,” she said. “I’m not angry, but I don’t want to be around it.”