The stunt

How XX-XY Athletics turned a Portland Thorns playoff race into a culture-war media spectacle

About 20 people affiliated with XX/XY Athletics, organized by activists Amy Sousa and commentator Brandi Kruse, staged a coordinated display of banners and T-shirts in the stands at Providence Park on game night, last Friday, October 23. This is an anti-trans movement with close ties to right-wing groups, figures, and causes. They entered with their T-shirts and banners concealed, then, guided only by their agenda, emerged from the North End, right next to the area the home supporters group, the Rose City Riveters, always occupies. The timing and placement were carefully coordinated, and they had an OutKick cameraman (a Fox News outlet) pre-positioned on site. This was a media stunt.

The second half was already underway. Portland Thorns and North Carolina Courage were playing a crucial game in their pursuit of the National Women’s Soccer League 2026 Playoffs. The teams were locked in a tough, physical match that embodied a rivalry dating back to the league’s inaugural season in 2013, when the Thorns beat the then-Western New York Flash 2-0 in the first NWSL Championship final. The Flash relocated to North Carolina and rebranded as the Courage in 2017. That first final featured icons like Christine Sinclair and Tobin Heath for the Thorns, and legendary forward Abby Wambach for Western New York. This is NWSL history. 

A lot has happened in these 13 years of women’s sports; before 2013, many attempts to build a sustainable, long-term, profitable professional league failed time and again. First came the WUSA (Women’s United Soccer Association) from 2001-2003, then the WPS (Women’s Professional Soccer) from 2009-2012. This wasn’t a problem just for women’s soccer, but for many sports as well; basketball saw many attempts to build a working women’s professional league from 1978 to 1997, when the WNBA was created. The Women’s National Basketball Association has run for 30 seasons. It started strong, but in the early 2000s it was buried on the network’s schedule and ignored. It survived. Many others, in countless sports, didn’t. Today, both NWSL and WNBA are thriving.

The women’s game was reserved for the WTA in tennis, the LPGA in golf, and the Olympics; everything else suffered from a mix of sponsorship shortages, poor infrastructure, pressure from cultural stereotypes and gender essentialism, and a media environment that reinforced its dismissal. Even at the Olympic level, the women’s game was still framed as the pinnacle of collegiate amateur competition, but what happened to athletes afterward?

The framing matters: decades of fighting for a women’s game that is both recognized and remunerated as professional athlete work are gaining ground. That brings us to the City of Roses, home to the Thorns, where a sea of red and black fills Providence Park. At the north end, the Riveters, the home team’s supporters group, cheer on the team tirelessly. They have become a standard-bearer for the league and have been credited with turning this stadium into one of the league’s best atmospheres. They’ve appeared in sponsor ads, the league’s promotional content, and countless TV highlight reels. This is also important: They have earned their relevance in the world of women’s soccer. 

It was at the time of a highly critical game for both teams, in one of the most iconic grounds for women’s soccer, when the season is at stake, in a 0-0 match with players giving it all, playing at the limit, with the knowledge that just a single lapse in concentration means a goal that can nearly end all the work put into the season, when the uninvited guests decided to make their move. 

This wasn’t the first time they tried. On September 6, witnesses reported that Amy Sousa and about seven others were removed from the stadium for violating the Providence Park Fan Experience Guidelines and the NWSL Code of Conduct over complaints about their messaging. Sousa told Portland’s KATU news that while they were wearing their XX/XY clothes, “the scarf was covering it the whole time, except for when I shot that specific picture.” After being kicked out of Providence Park, they moved on to The Sports Bra, a women’s sports bar known for its LGBTQ-inclusive stance, where they were also asked to leave after refusing to cover their XX/XY messaging. 

The episode continued the following day, when some of them staged a protest in front of the bar, this time joined by Conservative livestreamer Thomas Allen. The Sports Bra’s Instagram posted “Trans girls are girls, and trans women are women.” The Riveters were targeted for the third time in a stunt organized by XX/XY Athletics, which visibly opposed trans rights. But was that all?

The Rose City Riveters describe themselves as anti-fascist and pro-LGBTQ. They are strong advocates for women’s soccer and women’s sports in general; their website mantra reads, “The preeminent supporters group for women’s professional soccer anywhere in the world.” This is not new; it has always been that way, as have its male counterparts, The Timbers Army, supporters of the MLS Portland Timbers. Both supporter groups have, at various points, been targets of right-wing political ire for their stances on issues ranging from women’s rights and LGBTQ rights to immigration rights, the full gamut of the culture wars. 

The local fans moved to block them, denying them visibility and obscuring them with trans flags and banners, and the situation grew chaotic. There were repeated calls to the organization to weigh in, and it might have been due to pure surprise, the natural speed of mid-management escalation, or how quickly Raj Sports could get their team of lawyers on the phone to evaluate their options, but it was unfortunate that the situation took that long to resolve. 

The wait heightened tensions; the situation grew volatile and required intervention from stadium security. Fans’ complaints about the club’s and the stadium’s slow response grew louder. Meanwhile, the game kept going; players sucked it in and fought on at a critical stage in their season, after investing so much sweat and injury. In the middle of this scene, in the 60th minute, Marie Müller’s “golazo” put Portland up 1-0, and the unrest paused for the team’s celebration, then resumed. It was almost comedic. This was a very important goal; there were cheers, but no red smoke lit, and no chants sung, until stadium security finally escorted the group out. 

The XX/XY were removed; there were screams, insults, complaints, and accusations of violent behavior. The group got the picture they were looking for, and in the following days, the entire right-wing media apparatus echoed and amplified the incident, elevating it to a “violation of their First Amendment rights,” but the context is a lot murkier, beyond questions of public ownership and private operation limits that govern the fairness of their ejection. The league has strict procedures to separate rival supporter groups; for example, Seattle Reign fans will not occupy an adjacent, non-sanctioned space near the Thorns fans for obvious reasons. 

As a counter-protest, it would have followed the same separation procedure. Using deception to gain that space provoked and endangered everyone’s experience, regardless of the politics anyone in the North End may hold. The ripple effects of this stunt are still unfolding; Riveters fans have been doxed, and there have been calls for the Justice Department to intervene, but this wasn’t a protest; it was an infiltration to access a space reserved for the home team’s supporters, a premeditated culture-war propaganda stunt. 

The incident felt like it took forever, but after they were gone, the stadium returned to its usual rhythm. After all, that game was being played like a final; with about 20 minutes to go, the Thorns were up 1-0, and just like that, the songs were back, and Portland’s vibrant atmosphere was shining again. The final whistle saw Müller’s goal stand, and Portland earned 3 very important points to clinch their place in the postseason. There were fireworks, the traditional season-end presents from fans to the players, and the fans’ favorite player award to Pietra Tordin, presented in the Riveters’ section, surrounded by her teammates and fans.  

XX/XY Athletic’s ideology claims to protect women’s sports; it is clear this group is completely foreign to the world of football supporters. It uses sport as a vehicle for grievances, centered on the rights of transgender people as a threat to women’s sports, and treats it like a “public safety” issue, while remaining silent on the many sexual scandals ailing our society, such as the Epstein Files or the recent sexual assault allegations at Cornell University. This is not about protecting women, but about attacking trans people in their faces, as many of them are members of the Riveters. Manufacturing confrontation for clicks and donations is not protecting the community.

For some of us who have followed the club since the days of Peregrine Sports (also the owner of the Portland Timbers) through the cases of sexual abuse of professional players by men in positions of power, notably coach Paul Riley’s sexual coercion of players Mana Shim and Sínead Farrelly, this is absolutely appalling. That scandal forced the sale of the team, which eventually led to the actual owners, RAJ Sports. It turns out we didn’t fail to protect women’s athletes from trans people but from men.

The absurdity of this action in a club that still bears the scars of that scandal was a tasteless display meant to create discord and score points in a very particular media ecosystem completely foreign to women’s soccer. XX/XY Athletics is a well-funded, well-connected organization; who they targeted, how they planned it, how quickly it went from incident to news via their own Fox News assets, and how quickly the Department of Justice responded are very worrisome. The silence from the league and the club on this incident is also deafening. I am afraid we might not have seen the end of this thread.

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