[00:00:00] Speaker A: Hey everyone, and welcome to the 251st episode of the Atlas Society Asks apologies. I'm in a hotel room and the Internet is, as usual, subpar. I'm drag. I'm the CEO of the Atlas Society. Interview. For a really long time, Jennifer Tse was among the very first and most fearless in advocating against school closures as a mom with kids in public schools in San Francisco. She wrote about that experience in her book Levi's Unbuttoned. The woke mom my job, but gave me my voice as a former gymnastics national champion for the safety of athletes, including in her first book Chalked up, as well as with her new company, XXXY Athletics, that she founded since leaving Levi. So, Jen, thanks for joining us.
[00:00:55] Speaker B: Thanks for having me, Jag.
[00:00:58] Speaker A: So, as someone who spent over a dozen years marketing at Corporate America at Dole Food Company, I was completely fascinated by your book Levi's Unbuttoned. You described the process of writing it as pouring out of you. Now, of course, if it had been me and I had been in that experience, I would have been fantasizing about writing it.
But tell me, when did the idea come to you? When did.
[00:01:28] Speaker B: Well, it was sort of like with my first book Chalked up, which I wrote many years after I left gymnastics, about 20 years.
And you know, with that book, which was really about my experience growing up as an elite gymnast and the abuse of coaching practices that I endured, I just had this moment where I was like, I need to write it all down.
And, and it, it poured out of me. That one too, it, you know, took, I think I wrote the whole thing in about three months and, and the same was, was true with Levi's Unbuttoned. And you know, so much of it is about, not even about COVID but about my professional life as a female executive in corporate America throughout the 90s and the 2000s and, you know, the challenges. And I just, I mean, I'd left my job, I guess I had time on my hands and I wanted to tell the story and I wanted to tell the story of COVID and what it was like in San Francisco. Such a far left leaning city that thinks of itself as welcoming of diversity and difference, but was anything but that during COVID I think the farthest left leaning places in the country were the most censorious and the most restrictive and the most harmful in terms of their policies for everyday citizens as well as children. And I just tracked it so closely. I read everything from February 2020 onward. I read medical studies, I read everything and yet continued to be accused of doing my own research. And so I wanted to paint a picture for people of what it was like to stand up in a city where everyone disagreed with you, in a culture, corporate America, where everyone disagreed with, and to do what you thought was right anyway. It's a really difficult thing. You know, everybody likes to think of themselves as, you know, outspoken and independent. But in my experience, my 56 years, I have found that most people would rather stand with the crowd than stand apart and do the right thing. And very few people have been in a room where they're the only ones standing up to say, you're wrong. You know, the emperor has no clothes. Very few people have done that. And I thought, if I can inspire just a few people who kind of see the truth but are too afraid to speak up, if I can inspire just a few people to do that with this book, then it's worth it.
[00:03:56] Speaker A: So I know we were talking right before we went live that you haven't read a lot of Ayn Rand, but remember reading the Fountainhead when you were a kid? And, I don't know, but, you know, that was also a book of somebody willing to put integrity above all else and willing to say his truth. And that the theme for me was, you know, you can be right even if everybody else in the world says you're wrong. Yeah. So one of the themes that I found really compelling in your book was the hypocrisy of corporations rather than being Brighton, from my perspective, even about wanting to sell a great product and provide returns for investors, and shareholders feel compelled to present themselves as advancing social justice and. Or saving the planet. And, you know, being in a hotel, it reminds me of how little signs in the room saying, well, the reason that we're not providing, you know, out there saving the plan, frankly, they win more points with me if they unabashedly said, look, we're a business, and part of running hotel business is making sure that we're not incurring unnecessary costs so we can offer better room rates and pay our employees to retain them. So is that kind of where you're coming from, is to just be honest.
[00:05:31] Speaker B: About what you're doing?
I mean, I think, look, my thoughts on it have evolved over the years, but I think Sometime around the mid 2010s woke, capitalism became very in vogue, and then it really exploded, I would say in 2020, in the summer of 2020, with, you know, in the aftermath of George Floyd's death and the riots in the streets and companies disavowing Their white privilege and pledging to do better and hiring chief diversity officers and tripling the sizes of their HR teams, which are not revenue driving functions in companies. And you know, I'd always been very proud. I worked at le Rise for 23 years and I was very proud of their practices in terms of how they treated employees. And I think that's very different than marketing, you know, through woke capitalism. I'll talk a little bit about how Nike is sort of the king of that, but there's so much hypocrisy embedded in that. But I practices in terms of how you treat your employees, I feel like that's really, you know, well within the bounds of how a business might operate and, you know, create community and get the best out of their employees and do the right thing. You know, Levi's integrated factories in the south before the law required them to do so. It was the first Fortune 500 company to offer same sex partner benefits at every step. They offered equality to their employees. They didn't take anything away from anybody else. And they weren't sort of using those practices to market the brand. They were very focused on what I would call normie capitalism. Making a great product and putting unifying marketing into the marketplace and operating with financial discipline. But this whole sort of notion of what I'm calling shorthand woke capitalism became really in vogue in the mid 2010s and like I said, exploded in 2020. And I think what's so disturbing about it is it's a lie. You know, it's marketing an idea that you are kind of social justice y as a brand that has nothing to do with your product as a way to make money, but then not behaving in any of those ways at all, it's completely deceptive. So, you know, if I use Nike as an example, and I think they do this more than any other brand out there.
You know, they market the idea of championing female athletes and supporting female athletes, but in reality, and this is well publicized, they treat women with astonishing disregard inside the company as well as their ambassadors. In 2018, there was a New York Times expose about the bullying and harassment of female executives.
They, you know, Allison Felix, a world champion, Olympic, Olympic champion runner, one of the best of all time.
You know, they didn't renew her contract when she became pregnant and they refused maternity protections in the contract. And then another young runner who was the best in the world at the age of 14 when she joined their Oregon running project, which is like a training club, they abused her emotionally and physically to the point of suicidality. So those are just a few examples of how they actually treat women. And so what I resent, I guess, and take issue with is if you're going to lead with that, if you're going to lead with this idea that you are this champion of women, then you better do it. It's just grotesque. I think companies need to get back to focusing on product and unifying marketing. I think they're alienating tons of consumers, as we saw with Bud Light, which was a real kind of violation, I think, of the trust of who their consumer base is. But the real issue I have with it is it's a lie and it sort of conceals the more unethical business practices that are actually at play. And I can't believe anybody falls for it really is the thing, maybe they don't.
[00:09:31] Speaker A: You know, I think as you wrote in your book, that people aren't necessarily buying Nike because they believe in all of its woke capitalism nonsense. They, you know, it's a good shoe and it's got cachet and that's maybe what consumers really care about at the end of the day. So another theme first was the hypocrisy. But another great theme of your book was that of quitting and being very honest about how you quit gymnastics. You later quit a marriage that wasn't working for you and finally quit at Levi's. And it reminds me of my favorite book, which is Atlas Shrugged. And I would say arguably theme of that book is also that of quitting. There's the famous scene where you have these two characters and one asks the other, if you saw there with down his chest, his knees buckling, what would you tell him to decide? What could he do? What would you tell him to do? And this character Francisco says, I would tell him to shrug. And in your book you describe particularly earlier on in your life feeling that you didn't have a lot of self esteem. But I kind of take a different view that it takes a certain amount of self esteem to say, you know, no, I don't live for the sake of the situation that isn't working for me. I deserve to live for myself. I deserve to pursue my own happiness. Do you see that?
[00:11:03] Speaker B: Yeah, you read the book very carefully. Quitting is definitely a theme and I've sort of come to view it differently. You know, arguably as a young person who trained for 16 years in a sport, you know, up to 10 hours a day, who, you know, walked away after, I mean, unraveling, I would say physically and emotionally that Was a, that was self protection. That was a decision that I was going to do something else in my life and that I was capable of more. At the time it felt like failure, though.
I only sort of came to understand that, you know, that later that. It sounds so corny. I'll just say it though. You know, you close one door and you open another and I didn't understand. I was so young, you know, I was 19 years old that I had my whole life ahead of me. I felt like I was going to the retirement home when I went to college. It was a very difficult transition for me. And you know, for a long time I thought my unwillingness to stop something that was hurting me was a weakness.
You know, I stayed in the sport long after, you know, arguably I should have. I trained on a broken ankle for two years. I was really coming apart at the seams emotionally. I, you know, to the point of contemplating taking my own life, you know, because this sport was just destroying me. And, you know, I felt similarly when I left my first marriage. It had, I was married 10 years, we were together for 16. It became very destructive for both me and my partner. It was not good for either of us.
And, you know, I've come to see it differently now. That was me as you articulate, kind of preserving my own mental health, my own dignity and believing and very optimistically believing that there was something better, better for me. But I find those transitions are very difficult. You know, I also resigned from Levi's after 23 years. It was a company I love, loved, and I wear the product still. I'd loved it since I was a child. It was very hard to let go and walk away and give up the future that you saw for yourself.
And so I try to kind of balance these things in my mind because I really, I think my greatest strength is. It's sort of an overused word at this point, but my grit, you know, I can find another gear when things get hard. I can keep pushing, I can keep trying, and I can usually achieve some measure of success. But I think there's a at which that does become harmful to oneself. And I, you know, those are the three times when I sort of identified that it was too much self sacrifice to keep going and that if I wanted something better for myself, I was going to have to walk away and kind of endure that transition of, you know, sadness, disappointment in order to find a new path. It's, it's a, it's a hard one. I wish I could walk away a little sooner like before. I was bloody and bleeding on the ground, but I tend to keep trying until I just can't do it anymore.
[00:14:11] Speaker A: Well, I. I sometimes think that often our greatest strengths can also be the source of our weaknesses. When you talk about, you know, grit, I think of Dagny Taggart trying so hard to save company and try to save, you know, and finally. And too late, but finally realizing that she had to. To quit, to shrug, and not to be a sacrificial victim. So in your book, you had a quote from Leah Leibovitz, who was also a previous guest on this podcast from a article that he wrote in the Tablet called the Turn. Yes, and I'm curious about what that process was for you because you describe yourself again as a, you know, early champion of some of these more social, Social justice oriented of things. Was this that. Did the Turn for you happen basically during the lockdowns and closures, or were there earlier inklings?
[00:15:17] Speaker B: There were earlier inklings, but I was not at all prepared to walk away from any of it. It was definitely.
It was March 2020 and Covid, I had been a Democrat my whole life. The reason I had been a Democrat, I think primarily was I saw the left as the party of free speech. And I think at one time that was actually true. I don't think it's true anymore. I saw them as the anti war party. I saw them as the party that was for women's rights. People can laugh. I think a lot of this was actually true at one time. And for the vulnerable, which I include children in that group, you know, children are probably the most vulnerable. And Covid was such a trespass of all of their stated values that I could no longer be a part of that party. And then of course, once you see it there, you sort of see it everywhere. And, you know, I don't know, I don't spend a lot of time thinking about whether it was always true.
It doesn't matter. It was true for me as of March 2020. And I have not looked back. And I can't forgive the people of San Francisco for the way they treated children, working women, small business owners.
I mean, people's lives were destroyed. And it wasn't just that the restrictions and the lockdowns and all of that were so completely illiberal and damaging and harmful and did absolutely no good. It's that that community came after anyone who dared to challenge or ask a question. I mean, I was chased down the street by insane people. They recognized me as I built somewhat of a, you know, some notoriety On Twitter and other social platforms, and I was interviewed on local news and stuff like that. I mean, they chased me down the street. They didn't tell me if they. They care if my children died. People posted my address online.
You know, for what purpose? I'll let you decide.
I mean, it was insane. My family had the police called on us because we are a large family. I have four children. Two of them are mixed, raised from my first marriage, and the two younger ones are not. And so we didn't look like one household. And you were only allowed to gather as one household out.
So people would call the police on us and we would have to prove that we all live together.
So, you know, this is the left. It's, you know, I mean, it's like the Stasi in East Germany. It's just so astonishing to me that we live through that and everybody wants to forget about it. And I'm not ever going to forget about it. My life was forever altered. I left the city that I loved and lived in for over 30 years, a job that I loved, and, you know, a company I worked in for 23 years. I don't have a. I have almost zero friends from, you know, before COVID times because they viewed my behavior and my views and the things that I said is so egregious that I was, you know, not worthy of their time and attention anymore. I mean, these are. People say, oh, they weren't your real friends. They were friends for 30 years. We were in each other's weddings there for child, children being born there. When people went through divorces and tough times, these weren't real friends. I don't accept that. But somehow my disagreeing with the Democratic party on basically everything having to do with COVID was such a violation to them that they could no longer, you know, be my. Be my friend anymore. And certainly now with this brand XXXY athletics that I've started, you know, that really put the nail in my coffin, because I think men can't be women and girls deserve their own sports and spaces. You know, so the Democratic Party has just become so intolerant, and you cannot disagree on one single tenant of the platform and you're ousted forever. But the crazy part is, at least as it pertains to gender ideology, you know, 80% of Americans agree that girls and women deserve their own sports and spaces. And yet the counselors are still very loud and punishing. They're losing their power, but they still have it. And so most people remain quiet. And I'm just hoping that you Know, the louder I get, the more people I can help bring along.
[00:19:43] Speaker A: Right. Well, you know, the Democrat party in this right now. And so, you know, sometimes you have to hit bottom and have an evaluate and hopefully as another former Democrat, I certainly hope that they will. So another very recent guest on this show was Anson Freirex. He's author of Last Call for Bud Light, the Ball and Future of America's Favorite Beer. And one could argue that there are some similarities between the brands. America's Favorite Beer, America's Favorite Beans. And the biggest surprise for me in reading that book was I had always assumed that the Dylan Mulvaney fiasco was some kind of one off, right. Somebody took their eye off the ball. But he argued that it was the result of changes in the company culture after Bush was bought by this global conglomerate, InBev, which was very much more bought into things like DEI, AI and ESG. And as we know, obviously Bud Light, you know, they paid a big price for straying into progressive politics. Now today we're seeing news reports that Nike not only featured Dylan Mulvaney in its marketing, but also funded gender research. Is Nike paying a similar price or any price, or do consumers not?
[00:21:12] Speaker B: Yeah, these are great questions. I know, Anson, I have not read the book yet, but I would, you know, from the way you describe it, I would concur. It's that the culture shifts and these aren't one offs. The sort of, the mid level, the high level, the junior employees, they sort of sense the culture. And you know, quite frankly, the young people who enter this culture who just came out of, you know, colleges and universities where, you know, that furthered the ideas of speech codes and safe spaces and all of this stuff. And they're, you know, they're, they're setting an agenda to some extent. I wouldn't underestimate the influence that young people have in these, in these companies because the old people are afraid of them. The old people are afraid they can get canceled with the, you know, tap of a button and a post on social media. And so they live in fear of the young employees and there's really no adults in the room. But you have these, it's like it infiltrates the culture, you know, and everybody feels free to kind of move in that direction.
You know, I'm not such a believer that there's a mustache twirling bad guy in a back room who's moving the pieces on the board. I believe that it's more of a kind of mass formation psychosis and it's in the ether. And everybody starts moving in one direction. And employees like Alyssa, whatever her name was, the VP of marketing there just feels like, well, yeah, everybody's going to agree with this. Yeah, it's fine if I talk about our consumer in really demeaning terms, which is like the first rule of marketing, you don't do that as far as Nike goes. So I think Anson's analysis, without having read the book is, is correct. And that's what has happened. And these ideas seep so deep into these, into the culture at various companies that you can't turn that ship right away. Like, even if the senior leaders decide like, okay, this has gone too far, we need to back up, we need to get focused on product, etceter.
It's hard to turn a ship. Look, Nike's a $50 billion company plus I think, I don't know how many tens of thousands of employees. It's very hard for the message to get from the head to the tail. And so, you know, all these young people are still doing all this crazy stuff. So the Nike issue that you're referring to, there was a piece about a week and a half ago in the New York Times that was not about Nike. It was about the San Jose State women's volleyball team fielding a male player named Blair Fleming. And the subsequent kind dust up over that and all the Mountain west teams that refuse to play against a team with a male. Deep in the article, the reporter started to talk about this thing that's called retained male advantage, which is what you think it is, which is basically if you take a male and you put them on wrong sex hormones, they still retain male advantage. They stay bigger and stronger, they might get a little bit weaker, but they still have an advantage over women in terms of speed and strength, et cetera. So Nike, it's like buried deep in the article, a researcher by the name of Joanna Harper, who is a trans identified male, is very proudly talking about this study to better understand retained male advantage. So in this study, Nike is tracking the decline, the physical decline of young boys who are given puberty blockers and wrong sex hormones to understand how much they can be weakened for it to be viable for them to compete with girls. I mean, that's not how it's described, but that's what was going on. Now Harper doesn't work for Nike. Harper's very proud of the study, probably was not aware that, you know, Nike would probably prefer that he not talk about the study publicly. And I think it's very likely the senior leaders there, the CEO Even didn't know about it. He's a new CEO. It's not a ton of money in Nike terms that they're putting towards this, you know, $1 or $2 million. The CEO is not aware of every line item, but I'm sure when he read that and some of us started talking about it, he went, oh, goodness gracious. Because their business is not good. Their stock is down over 40% on the year. Now, I don't think it's because of stuff like this, but I think the stuff like this is a huge distraction and they've taken their eye off the ball.
You know, they're not making that world class product and unifying marketing and operating with the financial discipline that they have for the last, you know, four or five decades. And so they've lost their focus and, you know, the last CEO wasn't the right guy. All this stuff, and I do think ultimately this stuff should impact their business. I mean, I think this, the fact they're stunning, funding medical experiments on children is so much worse than Bud Light putting Dylan Mulvaney on a can. To me, it's like the worst, most egregious Dr. Mengele style stuff. And I, I don't understand not rejecting the brand outright when you learn this.
[00:26:07] Speaker A: Yeah, I agree with you. All right, we've got a lot of fans of Jen in our audience and so I'm going to get to a few of their questions. Jackson Sinclair asks, where do you think most pushback came against you when you started speaking out against the abusive coaching, the people high or fellow gymnasts?
[00:26:31] Speaker B: Oh, that's interesting. That's a good question. So the book came out in 2008 and it kind of came from all angles. I will say I definitely got it from my private club teammates, from my Team USA teammates. And the thing that was so crazy about that is I was like, you guys know this is true. You were there too.
But I think there's a degree of Stockholm syndrome in the sport. And even grown women are still sort of seeking the approval of their coaches. You know, think of it as, you know, if you, an abused child, you know, still wants, if their mother is abused, they still want their mother's love and approval. And I find a lot of my peers in the sport were still seeking that. I also think a lot of them just sort of block it out. It was so awful that it's better to remember it as kind of nice, even though it wasn't. Because once you really contend with it, I just fell in such a hole. And that had to crawl back out of. And I think it's easier to gloss over it. So certainly my teammates, definitely USA Gymnastics, I mean, I received threatening voicemails at my work to stop talking about it, that it wasn't the 80s anymore, that everything had changed. We know that's not true.
We know because of the story of Larry Nassar, the team doctor for USA Gymnastics, who's in prison for life and sexually assaulted over 500 athletes. We know that was going on right after in 2016.
So USA Gymnastics, you know, was definitely issuing thinly veiled threats. I mean, the thing that was. The thing about that instance which differed from COVID it was the sport community, it was the gymnastics community, it was the US Olympic movement that came after me. But the rest of the world, like normal people, understood it to be true. You know, I think they. They read what I wrote and they looked at the sport and they're like, yeah, that's. That checks. You know, those girls look, you know, starved and terrified. And, you know, there were images in their mind of, you know, Carrie Strugg competing and very injured at the Olympics, and they could sort of buy it all. So normies bought it. But the sport itself really came after me. I mean, the head of Gymnastics Australia just tore me apart. She ended up being the head of UK gymnastics and getting fired in 2010 for overseeing years and years of abuse. So it was kind of everyone in the sport, and that was really hard for me because that was my community. These are the people I'd known for, gosh, you know, 30 years. And I might reject the practices on behalf of the coaches, but those were my friends.
So that was. That was really difficult. I also was unaccustomed to how cruel social media could be. You know, it was 2008. It was all kind of new. So that was hard. And I had to make a conscious decision to keep going. And I think the harder they came after me, the gymnastics officials and particular, I remember thinking in my head, it's worse than I imagined. They're hiding something. And that was. That was true. And we learned that with the case of Larry Nassar.
[00:29:42] Speaker A: Interesting. All right. Candice Morena says, number one, Jennifer say is a superstar. We know that. And she also asks, do you worry that what happened in San Francisco might happen elsewhere in the country again, or have we kind of closed the book on that chapter?
[00:30:01] Speaker B: Oh, my goodness. I worry about it every single day. I think it inevitably will happen again until we do a thorough assessment of what went wrong. I mean, look at.
Look at it. This way, first of all, everybody wants to kind of put it behind and just sort of memory hole. It was so. It was so horrible. But not a single person, not a single governor or public health official who set these horrific policies that harm children and just regular people, not a single one of them has been.
I mean, I'll use the term punished, but, like, lost their job.
Not a single one.
[00:30:41] Speaker A: Accountability.
[00:30:43] Speaker B: And so it could absolutely happen again. I mean, you sort of hear it all the time. Schools close for no reason. They close for eclipses and hot weather and, you know, clear the air days. You know, it's a tool in the. In the toolbox at this point. You hear it with bird flu and, you know, you watch the panic on CNN and New York Times over all these things that I just roll my eyes at at this point. But I think people would fall for it all over again. I really do. And that's what terrifies me, and that's why I won't stop talking about it. And, you know, there's a lot of talk from the, you know, the people that are like, oh, we just have to put it behind us. We have to just focus on the future, focus on how we can help kids. But. But I think unless people, the ones who set these policies that were so damaging and harmful, unless they are removed from their jobs, I think it's a tacit endorsement that we would do it again.
The only people who've been canceled are the people who were right. People like me. I'm still banished. I'm still not allowed back into corporate America. I have to make my own way and build my own brand and my own business, which is not what I had planned at 55 years old. I definitely had different plans for myself.
And so, you know, there's certainly no amnesty for me. There's no forgiveness there. And I was right about every single thing.
[00:32:06] Speaker A: Well, as a matter of fact, we took one of your quotes and we made it into a meme which we'll send to you after the show, which is basically, no, no amnesty. No. No forgiveness. Because no one has apologized or even said, you know what, I was wrong. And if you. I'm sorry.
[00:32:25] Speaker B: Yeah, if you want to be forgiven, apologize.
[00:32:28] Speaker A: Yeah.
[00:32:29] Speaker B: I mean, but they're defending their position still. We didn't know. Sorry, I'm interrupting. I get very heated on this one, you know, that we didn't know. We did the best we could. No, you did know. You didn't do the best you could. You knew it wouldn't work. You knew it would be Harmful and you did it anyway for two and a half years.
Sorry.
[00:32:48] Speaker A: All right. Alan Turner asks, do you think young people are starting to turn away from wokeness? We are seeing more young women in athletics calling out the trans agenda in schools.
[00:33:00] Speaker B: I hear that they are.
I hear young men in particular are moving away from the left.
I don't know that young women are. I have a 21 and a 24 year old in addition to too much younger children and they certainly are very much on board with very left leaning policies. Still, we all get along fine. We agree to disagree. So I don't know, I can't say for sure. I mean the data would suggest that men are certainly moving away and certainly in the last election, I think it was the biggest swing of young people towards voting Republican that we've seen ever. I think it was a 10 point swing.
And more young women are standing up, but it is still a small minority. And you know, I'll just say this, not a single Olympic level or, you know, internationally competitive top female athlete has stood up and said anything. You know, you've got Martina Navratilova, who's long retired, obviously one of the best tennis players of all time, but not a single currently competing top level athlete has spoken out. To me, that's just such an astonishing fact and that says to me we have a long way to go.
But here, you know, here there's a reason why they don't.
You will still get dragged through the mud for it. You know, we've been working at my brand XXXY Athletics with a runner named Natalie Daniels who just ran the Boston Marathon. We did a series of interviews with her. Just supposed to be like a fun little social media thing about the protection of women's sports. She was outraged that there were males running in the women's division at Bost and she was kicked out of her running club. She was told not to wear the jersey in the race.
You know, leading up to the race, during her training, people were, you know, talking on social media about how to track her location and whereabouts on Strava. Why do they need to do that? So, you know, this woman has really gone through it for just saying, yeah, I think the women's category should be protected. And this isn't someone who makes her living off of running an endorsement deal. So, you know, if you are, you're afraid to risk it. But I think slowly but surely we are building momentum and more and more it's going to happen slowly and then all at once, I think. And we just have to Keep pushing.
[00:35:21] Speaker A: Ann M. Asks, do you see them creating a third category in some sports? Maybe for any gender?
[00:35:29] Speaker B: That's a, that's a good question.
I'm not supportive of that idea because there's two categories. There's two sexes compete to the category to which you were born in races where there's prize money that just splits the prize money three ways and that means men will get two thirds of it. Because let's be clear, if there is an open category for non binary trans identified men will win that every time. So I'm not a huge fan of the third category. It already exists in some races. So for instance, Boston Marathon, which is governed by a private board, they have three categories. They have men's, they have non binary and they have women's. And what do you know for the last three years that it's been a category? Men have won the non binary category. So now you have two ways for men to win and only one for one way for women to win. The other thing I would say is some sports have tried it at the higher levels and the trans identified males don't want to compete in that category. You know, part of it is it's this identity validation insistence. They don't want their own category, they want, want to be in women's. They want us to say you are a woman. And I won't say it. So I don't think in the end that's going to be the answer. I think in the end the answer is going to be a return to biological reality and common sense.
[00:36:50] Speaker A: So California has the dubious honor of being the state that had kids locked out of schools for the longest. I think Los Angeles had the longest closures probably with San Francisco. I, you know, A lot of 2020 in San Francisco with my parents.
You were very early advocating that this was going to cause a lot of harm. That you see it clearly that this was going to lead to learning loss, to health losses, to increased abuse, hunger for, for kids reliant on school lunch program. I guess the question is, you know, why were these harms apparent to people like you, like me, to a handful of others and yet they seemed so opaque to others. Is it because of what's your.
[00:37:57] Speaker B: Well, I think look, the news cycle. Everybody was locked at home. You're on your phone, you're on social media trying to figure out what's going on. You're watching the, a death ticker scrolling. I mean the fear campaign worked. You know, I mean it was very effective.
In the early days there weren't Even people on the right who were, I mean, everybody was on board that this was, everybody was going to die and you need to stay home and you were a bad person if you didn't do it.
And then slowly but surely, I think the right sort of peeled off, but the libertarians dropped the ball. You know, I just, I don't know, it was like this complete mania that took hold. And I think from the very outset, my husband and I, you know, we were reading details, we were reading about what was happening in Italy, for instance, where I think the median age of death was in the early 80s. And that just caused us pause to say, like, is this harmful to anyone that isn't already on death's door? And I think very early on even realizing even we weren't afraid because we had that data which was available to everybody but not commonly cited on shows on cnn. I think we both just felt like it was such an egregious violation of our civil liberties that there can be no point at which it's okay to lock people in their homes and tell them they can't go to church or school or run their business. If it's that dangerous, people are going to, to do those things, but it's got to be their own choice. Because if you say there's a point at which, okay, it's this dangerous, we have to lock down, then that will be manufactured, which it essentially was, by, by the government.
Now, I forgot the beginning of your question. I apologize.
[00:39:50] Speaker A: No, no, I was just wondering. That was so opaque to, to others.
[00:39:53] Speaker B: Yeah.
[00:39:54] Speaker A: So I think my family.
[00:39:57] Speaker B: Yeah, I think it was the, the constant fear campaign. I mean, it was hard to find any information in the media that wasn't just, we're all going to die and you're a terrible person if you don't stay home and put, you know, paper over your two year old's face. That's the only way you can be a good person. And I think I said it earlier, I think just the vast majority of people with the crowd and go with what they hear and they don't question and they, you know, even the people I knew that weren't afraid and didn't really buy into any of it, the pressure was so intense, they didn't want to fight back. You know, they're like, oh, we'll just go along and it'll pass and it'll be fine. And my husband and I were like, absolutely not. I mean, if they can get you to spew these lies and lock down, they can get you to do anything in the future. So I just think most people, they either bought in, and I think in the beginning, most people bought in, but even those that didn't, it just seemed like too much trouble to push back. And I don't know. I don't think in the beginning days, I was very disappointed. That's a light word for what I was in my fellow San Franciscans and my friends and my family. And then I realized this is just people. This is how they are. This is true from the beginning of time across. Geographies and. And, you know, eras, we kind of fall into these manias from time to time, and we all move in one direction and, you know, evidence not required. It's just happened and it's been proven time and time again with studies, whether it's the Stanford Prison experiments, you know, on and on and on and. Or Milgram. The Milgram experiment. And I think if people are given the opportunity to feel righteous while they're standing with the crowd, which Covid did, you were the good people. If you wore two masks, if you wore one in your car and you masked your child and you stayed home, well, that's even more reason and incentive to enforce these rules. So, I don't know. I don't think human nature is going to change anytime soon. And I just think there's very few people who sit back and go, wait a minute. And I think just because you do it once doesn't mean you're going to do it again. You know, I'm not giving myself such credit that, you know, I couldn't fall for. For it again. But, like, you know, when it comes to gender ideology, like, I wrote something about it this morning, I'm constantly baffled that people I know, that I know are smart and thoughtful and think of themselves as independent thinkers, that they buy into this idea that men can become women, that, you know, putting young children on wrong sex hormones and performing mutilating surgeries is constant and allows a child to become their authentic self. How do people believe this? It's a mania. It's insanity. And yet they do. And there will be something else that astonishes me in the future as well.
[00:42:59] Speaker A: So in addition to your book, you also have a documentary film project which focuses on the harms to children from school closures and other pandemic restrictions. How did that project get started, and what have you learned along the way?
[00:43:20] Speaker B: Sorry, you cut out a little. You're asking about the film generation, Covid? Is that what you asked? Yeah, so I started that literally. I think the Day I resigned from Levi's, I went and I opened my own company, a production company called say Everything. Because I was like, I'm going to make this movie. I don't know how I'm going to do it, but I'm going to do it. I'm going to tell the stories of these kids. No one has listened to the kids and the moms and the families. And even, even still there's data that's cited about learning loss, but people aren't moved by data. People are moved by stories. And I made the film Athlete A, which came out in 2020, which was really about the abuse and gymnastics and the Larry Nassar case in particular.
And I remember when I made it and it came out in 2020, I thought, doesn't everybody know this by now? You know, the Larry Nassar story had been in the headlines, but they didn't. And it was told in, I think, a really deeply emotionally resonant way. And I. I think athletes and former athletes who, they realized that the training environment that they grew up in was abusive, and they started their own campaign telling their stories. And I just, I believe in the medium of film and writing and books and storytelling to influence change. And so I just really wanted to make the film.
It's close to done. It's not quite done, as you might guess.
Distributors aren't. Aren't super on board just yet, so we're still looking for distribution, but we follow kids and families. I found stories of kids across the country. I want a range of stories, you know, from, you know, we have a child with a developmental disability. We have a child, you know, from a low income family who was counting on a scholarship in sports. But then sports shut down for two years, so he didn't get to go to college, at least not in the way that he had planned.
We spoke to a family who lost a child to suicide from isolation, loneliness. So tried to get at the broad range of issues. A young girl in Oakland who got into drugs and ultimately ended up trying to kill herself and ended up in a mental hospital. So trying to show the full range and also just the more sort of mundane. Not every child that had that extreme of 8 response, they suffered too. Every child suffered. So really trying to just tell the story of the kids and families and also why and how it happened, because as I said, we knew and we did it anyway.
I just, I want a record because I feel like getting memory hold, and I knew that I'd want a record of it. So I started that in March of 2020. And we filmed for about two and a half years because we wanted to see what happened over time. And now we're editing and looking for a distributor.
[00:46:07] Speaker A: A little bit about the apparel company started XXXY in March last year, end of your book, you talk about after leaving Levi's, that you were approached by, you know, several big brands for marketing lead. Pleasantly surprised in that regard, but that you were a bit hesitant because you wanted to retain your ability to speak out on issues that were important to you. So I'm wondering if that was part of the consideration in starting your own apparel brand, or was it just something maybe that's been a dream for years, or was it. Or did it go out of administration with men and women's sports?
[00:46:55] Speaker B: Yeah, it's. It was not a dream for years. I never wanted to start my own. I actually liked operating within established companies and helping to build brands and, you know, make them stronger and better. I never wanted to start my own, my own brand. But I was interviewing, and I was actually interviewing for CEO roles at very large companies. You know, not just marketing roles, because I had the experience to do it. And in the last round of interviews for a very large company that, you know, folks have probably heard of, I was shocked that they had reached out to me. But I was. I was on, like, my 10th interview, and it was with sort of the HR lead on the. The board. And she started with, will you apologize for what you've done?
And I was just sort of astonished. And I didn't really know what to say. This is like, you know, the middle of 2023. It was already very clear. There was general consensus that, you know, closed schools were harmful. Like, what did she want me to apologize for? I hadn't done it, you know, for three years. Why was I going to do it now? But I realized as I sat there looking at her through a screen, that what she really meant, whether she knew it or not, is, you know, was I going to pledge to be more obedient? You know, I violated the agreement that you only speak the words that are given to you by legal and HR and corporate communications. And I was not going to do it. I was not going to bend an E, and I was not going to apologize. I had been right. I don't hand over my rights as an American, my right to free speech, because I have a job.
And so I said, no, I won't apologize. And that interview went very quickly, and as you might imagine, I did not get the job. So I realized I was going to have to do something else and, and chart my own course and find my own way. And I was talking to friends, fellow canceled travelers, and one friend, I don't know, we just started talking about it and we had this idea it started a little different than what it is now, but we looked around at all the major athletic brands and we thought none of them is weighing in on this. And in fact, all too often they're on the wrong side and they're pretending they actually care about, about female athletes. And we just sort of felt like my background as an athlete, as a brand builder, and as someone who's willing to say true things that get me in lots of hot water, it just felt sort of like kismet, like, why not give it a try? I didn't have other options, so. And I had met some folks locally here in Denver, where I live, that were interested in, you know, funding a consumer brand. And, and so I just did it. I don't overthink things before I start. I sort of leap. And so here we are a year and one month in. It's going pretty well, but we're a baby brand. We're just getting started.
[00:49:51] Speaker A: What has been the biggest thing that has surprised you or that you've learned? I mean, having spent the better part of your career tell what's been the biggest surprise in your own brand?
[00:50:06] Speaker B: Well, I wouldn't say these things are surprising, but I mean, it's really hard. You know, that's why I didn't want to do it. You're in the weeds every day. I mean, I do everything. I write all the copy on the website, you know, stuff I was. Haven't done in, in years as the brand president at Levi's. But I like that part. You know, I like forming a brand. So I wouldn't say it's surprising how hard it is and how hard we have to work, but it is. Oh, it's hard work. I mean, I work from 6am to 10pm every day. There are no days off. You know, I'm trying to carry this thing on my back to get it on my back to get it to take off. I think the other thing that is, you know, startups are hard no matter what, and I knew that. And we face extra challenges. I will say fewer than I thought. You know, one of the things I was really worried about when we started is were we going to. We use Shopify, which is, you know, like a web platform that, you know, it's our, our selling, you know, we didn't build our own website. From, from scratch. I thought once we launched, maybe they'd kick us off and refuse to do business with us. So I was worried about some of that stuff.
Some of it happens. Shopify has not, has not been a problem at all. They've been terrific.
But, you know, two days before our first photo shoot, the modeling agency pulled all their models. They didn't say why, but we knew we were kicked off of TikTok as an advertiser, I think a few days after we launched last June and haven't really been able to get back on. You know, this obviously is really. I'm not someone who spends time on TikTok, but 50%, you know, that's where young people spend their time. So when you're barred from presence there, that makes it hard to reach younger consumers who tend to buy more and shop more.
So I, I just, you know, startups are hard and I would say the path we've chosen is doubly hard because we have all these barriers.
[00:51:58] Speaker A: Well, you never seem to have been one from shying away from hard challenges. So now I might be oversimplifying, but it seems like you've argued that consumers are primarily interested not in what companies stand for or say that they stand for.
Yet xxy athletic is very explicitly standing. Yeah. Women's sports and spaces. Is there a contradiction?
[00:52:29] Speaker B: That's a good question. I mean, I think we're just speaking truth. Like, I don't think this should be political. We're saying that there's a difference between men and women and we support female athletes. I think that's a statement of. Of fact that men and women are different.
So it is politicized. But I don't believe it should be. And I think at some point in the future it won't be anymore. We'll return to some common sense. I think that very large brands with a broad consumer base needs to be much more careful about. And they're not, you know, they haven't been.
Take Nike as one example. But you could take every, you know, you are there to deliver an outstanding product. And as I've said several times, unifying marketing, how do you find the highest common denominator?
We're a startup, we're a small brand, we're a challenger brand. We are punching at the big guys. It's pretty typical for, for a small brand. And I think we're providing a really viable alternative to people who are really sick and tired of buying brands that don't align with their values but not feeling like they have an option that you know, is great fitting. Like they, they don't want to sacrifice, as you said earlier, if they love the shoes, you know, they don't want to sacrifice fit, quality, style. But we're giving them an option where they don't have to sacrifice those things. And by the way, we believe in biological reality. So I don't really think it's a, it's a contradiction. And I also think for a smaller brand, programs go for it. You know, if you can carve out a space in the market, which, by the way, it's not niche. 80% of Americans agree with us.
I mean, arguably this is the most unifying issue. You could kind of rally around 90, 80% of Americans agree in basic biology. So, you know, I don't think this is political. I think this is standing up for women and girls.
[00:54:30] Speaker A: So you wrote in one of your say everything substack posts, and it's a great substack, by the way. So I'm going to make sure that we keep putting its link into the chat. You wrote, quote, people aren't evil because they talk to people you don't like. People aren't evil because they hold views you don't like. They just hold views you disagree with. That's it. Remember, disagreeing without canceling. Let's try getting back to that. End quote. So question. Do you think we've made progress as a culture in getting back to that?
[00:55:04] Speaker B: Not really. Not as much as I would like to see. I mean, I don't know if we're ever going to go back. I mean, I don't. You know what? I don't think the counselors hold the power that they used to hold, but they still hold some. You know, the left have been the drivers of cancel culture. And I would argue women in particular have driven cancellation campaigns.
[00:55:26] Speaker A: They fight dirty.
[00:55:29] Speaker B: What's that?
[00:55:31] Speaker A: Why do you think women have been driving it?
[00:55:36] Speaker B: I think.
Well, I think the left has driven it because they have the institutional power or have had it. Whether it's, you know, universities in politics, not anymore right now, but universities, corporate companies, as we've seen, the education system, you know, all of these organizations were, have been captured by the left. So they, they were the only ones that wielded the institutional power to do it. As far as why do I think women do it? I don't know if you agree with that or not. And I'm not saying men don't cancel people, but I feel like women are the drivers of it. I think, think men fight with their fists and, you know, women Will do you dirty and talk about you behind your back and try to take you down that way.
I don't know. I think it's just how women more typically kind of fight, and I think they do it by kind of ousting you from the herd.
You know, it works well, the threat of cancel culture on women, I think that, you know, oftentimes times, all of these campaigns for all these crazy ideas, you know, they weaponize our empathy against us. Women don't want to seem mean. We don't want. We care. Like, my husband doesn't care at all what names he gets called. It still hurts me a little bit. And I've been going through this for, you know, nearly 20 years. It still gets to me some. I think we want everyone to get along. We. We want to be seen as nice and welcoming, and we don't want to stand alone in. In a way that I think think men are a bit more accustomed to. And so being ousted from the herd, the pack is. The threat of that is tough. And I think most women will fall in line to avoid that.
And I think most women know that about other women, and that's how they're able to kind of wield that threat. Does that. Does that make sense?
[00:57:31] Speaker A: Yeah, no, I think it does make a lot of sense. I mean, I also feel that cancel culture is driven, in fact, by insecurity. A. A, you know, if you're secure, that you actually do have truth and facts and logic on your side and you're willing to debate them. And if you're not, you don't want anybody else saying things that others, you know, may. May listen to find compelling.
[00:57:58] Speaker B: Yeah, absolutely. I mean, if you think about what I was saying earlier as it pertained to gymnastics, and why did all the gymnasts come after me? It's like they wanted to preserve this false memory of what it was like in the sport and their sort of happiness depended on it. That's a real insecurity. And so anyone who was kind of pushing back on that and threatening to kind of puncture this very fragile memory that was keeping them sane had to be taken down.
That. You know, that's how I see it.
[00:58:30] Speaker A: Yeah, I agree. Well, we're very grateful to you, Jen, for having the courage to raise your voice on issues when it may not be popular to do so. And I think that, you know, you're leading by example and an example of, you know, resilience and integrity, and maybe others will be inspired to follow in your footsteps. So thank you very much for all that you've done well.
[00:58:56] Speaker B: That's my hope. Thank you. I really hope so because I think if we stand together, we can't lose. If we all just stand up and do the right thing.
[00:59:04] Speaker A: Well, thank you again and perhaps, you know, these days in person.
[00:59:10] Speaker B: Awesome.
[00:59:10] Speaker A: So thanks to everybody who joined today. Thanks for all of your great questions. Please go out and buy Jen's book. It's got a great audible version, so I highly recommend. She. She voiced it herself, narrated it herself and usually I'm not a fan when. When in her case, hey, Jen, you know the athletics. You might have a future as an audiobook narrator.
[00:59:41] Speaker B: So.
[00:59:44] Speaker A: And please remember that the Athletes Atlas Society is a nonprofit. If you like this program or any of our other work, please consider sending us a
[email protected] donate and next week, we are kind of sticking with this similar theme. I'm going to be joined by Topher to talk about his book good People Break Bad Laws and his experience with fighting the lockdowns in Australia. So we'll see you then.
