As the chief executive of a company that has been at the wrong end of TikTok’s unfair business practices, including being banned as an advertiser from the platform, I have much to gain by keeping TikTok operational — the hugely popular platform can continue to entertain 170 million U.S. users, 60% of them Generation Z — and ending Beijing’s influence on content.
With a deadline looming and set for this Saturday, TikTok must be sold. China’s control must be severed. National security, free speech, and women’s rights demand it.
In the last year, women’s sports have experienced an unprecedented surge in visibility on TikTok. By its own measurement, the number of posts on TikTok using the hashtag #womenssports jumped 170% between 2023 and 2024.
This correlates with the boom my brand, an athletic apparel brand primarily targeting women, is a part of. As a start-up athletic brand with the unique mission of protecting the integrity of women’s sports, a mainstream view held by 80% of people, according to a recent New York Times/Ipsos survey, we are uniquely positioned to engage with currently competing young athletes with content about women’s sports. But Beijing’s thought police won’t allow it.
We first attempted to reach a younger audience on the app on June 18, 2024, just three months after we launched, posting our introductory video called “Stand Up.” The ad is an exhortation to young female athletes to stand up for the protection of women’s sports — and yes, in doing so, not to be cowed by those who would call them bigots.
For that, TikTok permanently suspended XX-XY Athletics as an advertiser and permanently handicapped our business, preventing us from reaching a coveted Gen Z audience. TikTok decided we were bigots furthering hate speech on the platform and, therefore, needed to be silenced — exactly what we warned about in the ad.
In late July 2024, a TikTok ad representative said the brand violated its clause around “hate speech,” specifically for furthering “hateful ideologies” against a “protected group.”
We couldn’t advertise during the Olympics when Imane Khelif became the most-searched athlete of the year, or during the U.S. Open when Aryna Sabalenka’s fitness coach wore our hat courtside. We were locked out and unable to reach likely buyers during worldwide sports moments.
After a summer of enforced silence, Sens. Marsha Blackburn (R-TN) and Joni Ernst (R-IA) sent a letter to TikTok CEO Shou Zi Chew just before Oct. 10, or XX Day).
“In your notification to [XX-XY Athletics] informing them of the ban, TikTok labeled the content offensive and, later, hate speech,” the senators wrote. “The advertisement deemed hateful by TikTok was simply a celebration of female achievement — using a real-life example — and encouraged young women to ‘be honest’ and ‘be brave’. Supporting young women should never be offensive, and it is telling that TikTok would consider a celebration of our girls in sports as worthy of being banned.”
In February, our “Real Girls Rock” ad went viral, securing over 20 million views and dominating online conversation for a week, partly thanks to strong women worldwide, including J.K. Rowling, Megyn Kelly, Sage Steele, and Martina Navratilova, sharing the ad.
While trending on X, there were over 40,000 posts about the ad. This is exactly what a brand strives for to grow awareness and, in our case, further the cultural conversation. The overwhelming response with zero paid media demonstrates that there is demand for a brand willing to defend the integrity of women’s sports.
And February, our 11th month in existence, was our strongest month yet. At first, TikTok did not allow us to advertise with our “Real Girls Rock” message. We objected, and after weeks of back-and-forth and countless hours of filling out paperwork, it said, “Oops, you can run those.” But we’d missed the moment.
TikTok can continue to discriminate against any company it wants, including mine. But it’s clear that the firewall between TikTok and Beijing is paper-thin and, if Beijing wishes, in a keystroke, nonexistent. If there is any nation that should not set a framework for expressive activity or moderating content around women’s rights, it’s our adversary, China.
China has never been on the side of women’s rights. During the days of the “one-child policy,” women endured forced abortions and sterilizations. This policy did not end until 2015. Today, minority women such as Uyghurs and Tibetans are forced into marriages with Han Chinese to increase birth rates and dilute minority cultures. Divorce is a political taboo, trapping women in abusive marriages.
And China has some of the most restrictive speech laws in the world. Censorship is mandated by the Chinese Communist Party, and the government curtails any political opposition while asserting its legal right to control all content on the internet. As of 2024, the World Press Freedom Index ranks China 172nd out of 180 countries on press freedom and terms it the “world’s largest prison for journalists.”
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People should be outraged that a company controlled by a strategic adversary that was forcefully sterilizing women just 10 years ago and is the largest censorship regime in the world is allowed to shape debate on the most relevant cultural conversation in sports today.
The deadline for the sale of TikTok approaches. At stake is more than just ownership — it’s whether Beijing, through TikTok, can continue to silence women’s voices in America.
Jennifer Sey is a USA champion gymnast, the producer of the 2020 Emmy-winning documentary Athlete A on Netflix, and the founder and CEO of XX-XY Athletics.