Riley Gaines, an advocate for single-sex women’s sports, kicked off the inaugural Real Women’s Day with a rally at Penn State University in State College, Pennsylvania, on Tuesday, Oct. 10, 2023. Calls to boycott Eventbrite surged on social media after the company dropped a listing Tuesday for Ms. Gaines’ Speak Louder Campus Tour, saying that her stance against male-born athletes in female sports violated its anti-discrimination policy.
Those whipping up support for an Eventbrite boycott include Sen. Ted Cruz, Texas Republican, who said Thursday that “Americans need to stop giving money to woke corporations that hate them.” The platform listed a “Stop the Genocide! Free Palestine” panel discussion hosted by the Lesbian, Gay, Bisexual & Transgender Community Center in New York City, centered on the “Palestinian resistance fighters broke through Israel’s siege of Gaza.”
Eventbrite co-founder Kevin Hartz hotly denied the claim, tweeting in response that “I am the Co-Founder and Chairman of Eventbrite and to accuse Eventbrite of being Pro-Hamas is egregious and moronic. How could you make an unsubstantiated slander that I support these genocidal maniacs?”After OutKick founder Clay Travis produced links to the events, however, they were removed without comment from the Eventbrite platform. The company has not commented on the removals.
Will Held, executive director of Consumers’ Research, called Eventbrite’s position “the very definition of woke.”