First, they got bounced from a women’s soccer game. Then a “women’s sports bar” threw them out for the same shirts.
Welcome to Portland, where two X’s and a Y can get you treated like a public menace.
A group wearing XX-XY Athletics gear and slogans like “Save Women’s Sports,” “Woman,” and “It’s common sense” was ejected from Providence Park on Saturday during the Portland Thorns’ match against the Washington Spirit. Stadium staff called the apparel “transphobic,” handed them a code-of-conduct card, and walked them out. They hadn’t even stood up.
So they went for a drink.
They ordered food and beer at The Sports Bra, the Portland bar that markets itself as a shrine to women’s athletics. Patrons complained the shirts made them “uncomfortable.” Staff told the group to leave and warned that authorities could be called if they didn’t. Five people were shown the door.
Video from inside the place is peak 2026 Portland: rainbow flags on the walls, soccer on the TVs, and a heated argument over the most basic fact in high-school biology. One patron in a beanie lectures. Another looks like she just discovered fire is hot. An older woman in a rainbow scarf waves her hands like she’s conducting an orchestra of offense.
The shirts didn’t say slurs. They didn’t say “hate.” They said XX and XY, the chromosomes that still, inconveniently, determine male and female in every mammal except the ones Portland pretends don’t exist.
Amy Sousa, who was in the group, said they did nothing but sit there in clothes they had already worn to the stadium. Jennifer Sey, founder of XX-XY Athletics, posted that the same people got the boot twice in one day, first the game, then the bar, for t-shirts.
The Sports Bra is supposed to celebrate women’s sports. Its owner, Jenny Nguyen, built the brand on that idea. Apparently the celebration stops the moment someone reminds the room that “women” is not a vibe. It’s a sex class.
Private businesses can kick out whoever they want. That’s the rule. The joke is the reason. In most of America, a sports bar throws you out for starting a fight, not for wearing a shirt that would have been a science-fair project in 1998.
Portland has spent years proving it can turn any ordinary fact into a moral emergency. This one didn’t even require a protest. Just cotton, ink, and two letters that refuse to negotiate.
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