Mother Jones published a story accusing XX-XY Athletics founder Jennifer Sey of “profiting off” what it calls the WNBA’s “trans panic.” The piece, written by Madison Pauly, centers heavily on a July 28 rally held before an Indiana Fever-Seattle Storm game and frames the surrounding movement as an “anti-trans” campaign tied to MAGA politics. A review by OutKick found that Mother Jones never contacted several of the people most directly involved in that rally or the events surrounding it.
Jean Chadbourne told OutKick she organized the July 28 rally herself, shortly after WNBA player Sophie Cunningham told ESPN she wanted to protect young girls in locker rooms and female athletes from having to compete against “biological men.” Chadbourne contacted Amy Sousa in the Pacific Northwest, and the two later reached out to Sey and podcaster Brandi Kruse.
Chadbourne says she’s a lifelong registered Democrat who previously worked in the reproductive-rights movement and with incarcerated people. She founded Women Are Real, a grassroots women’s group she describes as roughly 65% Democratic, including a substantial number of lesbian and bisexual women. Mother Jones never contacted her.
Sey herself couldn’t attend the rally, and Chadbourne says the women who traveled from California to Seattle paid their own expenses. XX-XY Athletics did not organize or fund the event. Amy Sousa, who has helped organize Cunningham-related rallies since that first Seattle gathering, told OutKick she wasn’t contacted by Mother Jones either. Brandi Kruse, whom the story labels a “right-wing podcaster,” also says she wasn’t reached.
A high schooler left out of the story
Mother Jones identifies Ahnaleigh Wilson only as “a high schooler with an XX-XY brand deal.” What the story leaves out: Wilson started speaking publicly about girls’ sports after finishing second in a girls’ 1600-meter race in 2024 to a male athlete. She was 14 at the time, and by that fall she was already discussing publicly why she believed the rules were unfair — well before the WNBA controversy or any sponsorship from XX-XY.
At the Fever-Storm game, Wilson wore an XX-XY shirt and held a sign supporting Cunningham. Seattle Storm minority owner Celeste Keaton confronted Wilson and another teenage girl courtside. Wilson and others said Keaton used profanity toward them. The WNBA later fined Keaton and suspended her from five home games.
Wilson’s mother told OutKick that neither Pauly’s name nor Mother Jones’ sounded familiar to her, though she said she couldn’t be certain no contact was ever attempted. The Mother Jones story does not claim it reached out to Wilson or her mother, even though it notes unsuccessful outreach to other people elsewhere in the piece.
Revenue isn’t profit, and profit isn’t proof of insincerity
The case that Sey is “profiting” rests largely on sales figures, T-shirts, and a reported $1 million in first-year company revenue. Revenue is not profit — a company can bring in $1 million and still break even or lose money after expenses, and the story doesn’t establish which applies to XX-XY.
Mother Jones is itself a nonprofit that solicits donations on the same page as the story, with a
