This article was written by Karen Crouse and published on Sport & State, a new media company founded by Clay Travis that is built around sports, culture, original voices, and live conversation.
* * * * *
PORTLAND, Ore. — A girl walks out of her house, on her way to a bar, and asks, “Should I bring my mace?”
My friend Angie would not, as it turns out, need her self-defense spray.
I turned down my husband’s offer of pepper spray but did dress with special care for this girls’ afternoon out, settling on a long-sleeved blouse with a books-on-shelves pattern, figuring the only way I’d get kicked out of the place we were headed wearing that top is if I crossed paths with a bibliophobe.
Our destination was The Sports Bra, a bar that bills itself as a woman-friendly spot and is particularly cherished by members of the LGBTQIA+ community. But because we live in a world where one person’s woman is another person’s biological male, the lines between inclusivity and coercion have become hopelessly hazy, like the smoke-filled gin joints of the Prohibition era.
My friend and I are both lifelong athletes, and sports are our sacred space. If we showed up to the bar and were asked to leave because something we said in passing made someone uncomfortable, how is that different from biological girls requesting that biological boys be removed from their athletic spaces because they find their presence disconcerting?
The bar, originally hailed as the first to cater to women and women’s sports when it opened in 2022, became known for something altogether different this month when a woman was kicked out of the establishment mid-meal for sporting one of Jennifer Sey’s XX-XY Athletics T-shirts (note: Sport & State founder Clay Travis is an XX-XY investor) that are either staunchly pro-woman or an affront to transgender athletes, depending on your point of view.
Two regular customers, both part of the transgender community, expressed discomfort at the messages on the shirt, I was told, leading to a server politely asking the group to leave. A restaurant staffer told me the party was refunded the cost of its meals within days, but that was not the end of the story.
Credit: Sport & State
The simmering hostilities boiled over into the street outside the bar two Sundays ago when roughly a dozen protesters gathered, identifying themselves as advocates for biological women in sports and ostensibly championing the right of diners to exercise free speech.
They were soon joined by a larger contingent of counterprotesters, including groups supporting transgender rights. In the ensuing clash, mace and pepper spray were deployed and windows of a nearby grocery store were broken, though no arrests were made.
Our curiosity piqued, my friend and I showed up this past Sunday for a late lunch with a side of first-round WNBA playoff games. We’d heard and read so much about this bar. We wanted to see for ourselves what their brand of inclusion looked like.
The bar, which can accommodate roughly 45 patrons, was standing room only when we arrived. Three of the five television screens were showing the game between the top-seeded Minnesota Lynx and the eighth-seeded New York Liberty. The other two screens were turned to a soccer match and a softball game.
The Lynx, led by the resplendent rookie, Olivia Miles, and their coach, Cheryl Reeve, a vocal supporter of transgender rights, had a vocal following. But no more so than the Liberty, whose starters included the former Oregon star Sabrina Ionescu and Breanna Stewart, who began her pro career with the Seattle Storm, which many Portlanders supported before the Portland Fire entered the league this year.
After the Liberty’s upset of the Lynx in the best-of-three series, the bar began to empty out. While waiting for our order, we talked to the bar manager, who expressed relief that the afternoon was unfolding peaceably.
“We’re still on edge a little bit,” she said.
She introduced herself as Veronica and asked to be identified only by her first name to avoid being targeted by the same people who have bombarded the small business with overwhelmingly negative voicemails since a Washington resident, Amy E. Sousa, posted a video that went viral of her group being asked by a server to leave.
Amy Sousa says five people in her group were removed from a Portland women’s sports bar after patrons complained that their shirts were making them “uncomfortable.”
Video captures a staff member warning the group that authorities could be called if they refused to leave.
On the same day, Sousa and seven others were also ejected from a Portland Thorns match after stadium security flagged their shirts bearing messages including “Save Women’s Sports” and “Woman.”
— Fox News (@FoxNews) September 7, 2026
The volume of the vitriol has been unnerving. I was honest with Veronica. While I would never lash out, I am a firm believer that women’s sports should be the exclusive domain of biological women. I described my reasoning, delivering the same message verbally that Sousa had delivered sartorially.
“You don’t need to agree with what we stand for,” Veronica responded. “This is a small business that was built to serve a specific clientele and we’re very dedicated to being a safe space for that clientele. If you don’t agree with what we stand for, don’t come here and agitate and try to get a rise out of people for clickbait.”
In the Venn diagram of politics, culture and religion, sports used to be the one place where they all overlapped. Not anymore. Now sports has become just another battleground. The best thing The Sports Bra regulars could have done was ignore the T-shirts they found offensive. If they had walked away instead of engaging — or remained quiet as they are essentially demanding pro-women advocates in sports do — all of the vitriol would have been avoided.
What could be achieved if we all chose honest, open, sometimes excruciating conversation instead of clicks and comfort?
After the Lynx-Liberty contest, the three television screens devoted to basketball showed the reigning champion Las Vegas Aces, the No. 3 seed, playing the Caitlin Clark-led Indiana Fever, the sixth seed. Wren, an avid basketball fan, was watching the game with friends Hannah and Nikki.
The Sports Bra patrons, left to right, Hannah, Nikki and Wren (Credit: Sport & State)
Wren, who lives in the neighborhood, explained that she was headed by foot to The Sports Bra two Sundays ago to watch the Portland Fire’s road game against the Los Angeles Sparks when she saw the protesters clustered around her destination.
Wanting no part of that scene, she ducked into the first bar she saw. It was Hop Haven, and since she had never been there before, she worried about what kind of reception she would receive. She asked if one of the television screens could be turned to the Fire game, which started at 4 p.m.
The bartender said no problem but cautioned her that in a little over an hour, a group of regulars, all Kansas City Chiefs fans, would be filling the place for their team’s home opener against the Indianapolis Colts.
Wren settled in to watch the Fire and soon found herself surrounded by a sea of strangers dressed in red. “This might turn out really bad,” she remembered thinking.
She was about ready to hightail it out of there. But then the most wonderful thing happened. “I made friends with people,” she said.
The Fire game remained on one screen, and during breaks in play she struck up a conversation with a man named AJ who, if she had to guess, was roughly the same age as her father. “He seemed safe to speak to,” Wren said. She asked him questions about football and the Chiefs, and he asked her about soccer and the Fire.
This past Sunday, she was back at The Sports Bra, her personal “Cheers”, watching the Aces turn back the Indiana Fever 102-85. But she couldn’t get her interaction with AJ out of her mind. She thought of the unlikely connection forged that day.
“Ultimately, we were both there to be ‘yay, sports!’” Wren said.
Conversation over comfort. It’s the only way forward.
.png)
.png)
