PLEASE NOTE: This is a minimally-edited transcript that originates from a program that uses AI.
Anita Rao
This is Embodied, from PRX and WUNC. I’m Anita Rao. Chris Mosier was the first openly-trans athlete to represent the U.S. abroad. When he came out publicly in 2010, he wanted to be the role model he wished he’d had as a kid.
Chris Mosier
For the duration of my life, sports was the place where I found my sense of self in those moments of uncertainty or feeling like I didn't belong. I always knew that I belonged in sport.
Anita Rao
Chris has spent most of his career advocating for policy change for transgender athletes. But in the past few years, he’s watched that legacy begin to unravel.
Chris Mosier
We have to understand that the policies that are in place for the Olympic and Paralympic games cannot and should not be the policies that we have in place for fifth graders where the goal of sport is fundamentally different. It's not to bring glory to your country. It's to move your body and play with friends.
Anita Rao
A conversation about trans athletes and the future of sports. Just ahead on Embodied.
It was summer 2009 on Staten Island and 29-year-old Chris Mosier was gearing up for the flat as a pancake triathlon.
Chris Mosier
These races were separated by men's and women's division. The men were wearing a blue swim cap. The women were wearing a pink swim cap.
Anita Rao
Chris is a trans man, but at that time, he didn't have the language to describe his identity, so he was competing in the women's division and wearing a pink swim cap.
Chris Mosier
I just remember standing at the start line being like, wow, I am so excited to be doing this sport. And I feel like I'm gonna do really well. And also, I'm just so deeply uncomfortable standing here with women feeling like they're looking at me like, what are you doing here? And feeling in my body. Yeah, what am I doing here?
Anita Rao
Chris raced and won in the first timer division, but alongside the euphoria was also a sense of clarity.
Chris Mosier
This is not where I belong. It was that race that really kind of set me on the path of understanding or trying to understand more about my gender as it relates to, you know, me in this world, but also me in sport.
Anita Rao
This is Embodied our show about sex, relationships, and health. I am Anita Rao. Chris Mosier came out publicly as trans in 2010, and today his name is associated with many firsts. Among them, the first trans athlete to represent the US in international competition, and the first trans athlete to be sponsored by Nike. But since Chris started advocating for trans athletes in sports 16 years ago, the policy landscape has shifted dramatically. The International Olympic Committee is expected to release a policy that could exclude trans women from the Olympic Games, and as of early March, 29 states in the US have banned trans students from competing on sports teams that align with their gender identity. The future of trans athletes is something Chris cares deeply about. As someone whose life has been inextricably linked to sports since he was a little kid.
Chris Mosier
We had the biggest backyard in the neighborhood. Mm-hmm. So it was the gathering place for all of the neighborhood kids to just come and play. It was either T-ball or soccer or tag or whatever imaginative game we had. But you know, my earliest memories of moving my body were those of joy.
Anita Rao
As you kind of went to elementary school and were playing more with peers, playing things at recess, how did your relationship with sports evolve and and how did that relate to kind of your relationship with your physical body?
Chris Mosier
You know, I don't know that my relationship with sports evolved so much. Um, I think more than anything, that time period made me realize things about myself. Rather than sports. Hmm. Like it made me realize that not every young girl was as competitive or sports minded as I was, and not every adult liked the fact that I, as a little girl was so interested in sports. The way that they spoke to my brother in terms of being a kid and how he should play sports was very different than the way the adults spoke to me as someone perceived to be a little girl. And I think it was okay to a point, and then there was the expectation that that would change.
Anita Rao
When did things start to shift? Like when did it go from it being okay for you to be like really confident and really competitive to, um, getting other kinds of messages?
Chris Mosier
I think that changed kind of around puberty time. You know, I was such a confident young kid. My brother just dropped off a couple of bins of childhood memorabilia. Of mine that he was storing in his house, and I opened up these bins and it is filled with baseball cards, football cards, basketball cards. And I was opening these with my wife yesterday and they were just looking at me like, it's funny that any adult in your life wouldn't have known that you are exactly who you are. And I feel like there was a point at which the adults in my life kind of shook that out of me because I wasn't meeting their expectations of how a quote unquote little girl should show up in the world.
Anita Rao
So I wanna kind of set us in time. You were in high school in the mid nineties. What kind of conversations were happening at that moment about gender identity or gender diversity? How much exposure did you have to these ideas?
Chris Mosier
I'm gonna say late nineties.
Anita Rao
Late nineties. Okay.
Chris Mosier
Uh, but yeah, I didn't really have exposure at that time. My exposure to quote unquote trans people or people who were gender diverse was really from trashy TV talk shows like. Maury Povich and Jerry Springer. And what I saw in those cases was usually trans women or people that they were saying were trans women being the butt of a joke and being quote unquote exposed for who they really are, and then it turning into a violent. Uh, situation. And so I would see that as a young person and be like, that's awful. And something about it really physically, you know, ab buzzed in my body, but I also at the same time was like, that's not me. Like I, I, I don't truly relate to that.
Anita Rao
Yeah. So your kind of internal narrative of your identity at that point was like, I am Chris. I know what I like, I know what I don't like, but you, it doesn't seem like you were thinking so much specifically about gender.
Chris Mosier
In fact, I was probably trying not to think about gender, to be honest, Uhhuh, because I knew there was something out there that I didn't know. But I also knew that it was such a challenge to the people around me to have them be uncertain about how to refer to me. So like as a young high school basketball player, when we would play the other teams, you know, in high school sports there's a lot of trash talk, there's a lot of, you know, trying to get under people's skin and. I remember going to school, to school, to school, and the way that the fans would would try to get under my skin was by yelling, is that a boy or a girl? That's a man out there. And part of me was upset about that because it was kind of embarrassing to be the person singled out on my team and, and to have it be happening so consistently. I mean, it was just the constant narrative of my youth was people being confused about how to refer to me or how to interact with me, but. Inside. It also really felt good to have people say he sometimes, and to question. Not like, is that a boy? But to question, I don't think that's a girl. And so there were really, you know, more questions than there were answers at that point.
Anita Rao
So you talk about yourself playing basketball and that I know was a big part of your high school life and you really had a dream of playing basketball in college and, and being on a basketball team. But then when you got to college, you decided not to play. Tell me about that. Decision and, and maybe take me back to that time, what were you kind of feeling and thinking?
Chris Mosier
I probably had this idea that I was hoping that going to college would probably illuminate a little bit more about what my future could be in terms of how I could show up in the world and feel comfortable and also feel safe because. This idea of feeling unsafe has been one that's been a through line of my, of my life and remains today. Is, is is feeling like when people don't understand you, it can feel very unsafe.
Anita Rao
Hmm.
Chris Mosier
And so I think part of me wanting to go to college and just like figure it out really quickly and be able to feel like me, quote unquote right. And. I, I didn't really have that opportunity. I still had a lot of self-discovery to do. So when it came to basketball, I really, really wanted to be, you know, that was my first love was basketball. Really wanted to be on a college team. But then when I got there, I just realized I couldn't picture myself being in a room with women athletes and having a coach say, let's go ladies, or, come on girls, let's go. It, that the, the language of that was starting to feel. Less and less comfortable.
Anita Rao
Hmm.
Chris Mosier
And so I made the decision not to play college sports because I couldn't see myself having a good experience on that team.
Anita Rao
So it was mostly about the language for you? Less so, like playing on a team with women athletes.
Chris Mosier
I, I think the language was number one. Mm-hmm. But I, because I think that team, team sports for me. When I'm on a team, gender goes away.
Anita Rao
Hmm.
Chris Mosier
Like everybody's just an athlete out there. And I think it's part of the reason that I was so drawn to sports was that it really provided me cover to be myself for that one or two hours a day. Like I was able to. Wear my baggy clothes and to be aggressive and be competitive and to take a leadership role when I was told that I shouldn't do those things in the classroom or in my outside life. So sports really was a way for me to just show up and not have to think about gender. And it didn't matter if my teammates, you know, what their identity was. We were all gonna work together towards a common goal, which is, you know, part of the best part of sports. So it really wasn't about playing with. With girls or women. It was more about how does that reflect on me and how do I feel about that?
Anita Rao
So you didn't play basketball. Um, what did you do to kind of fill that, uh, sports craving when you were in college?
Chris Mosier
Yeah, I did intermural everything. So, you know, there's all these club sports at college and I played badminton and ultimate Frisbee and hacky sack and like whatever there was that a group of people were coming together to play. I wanted in. And so it really was like kind of going back to that. Five-year-old backyard that I had and just gathering with people and playing for fun. My goal at that time was kind of just to avoid the locker room and avoid the quote unquote women's team designation. And so everything was like intramural. It was people of all genders just joining up on a team and playing for fun. And so it allowed me to get a little bit of that teamwork, a little bit of that competitiveness out, but in a less structured way, which was. Great until it kind of wasn't, because I really did miss that idea of being like a competitive higher level athlete, someone who was really striving towards being the best in their sport.
Anita Rao
What were your sports goals as you moved out of college and you had more opportunities to kind of move toward that maybe elite athlete, uh, realm that you were excited about?
Chris Mosier
Uh, initially I think it was just to get back into sport in a way that felt more authentic to me. And part of it was probably this idea of pushing myself, of seeing what my body could do. So in my last year of college, I had two mini strokes.
Anita Rao
Hmm.
Chris Mosier
And they were kind of a, a medical mystery, but it. It set me back pretty significantly to the point where I wasn't able to run one mile, uh Oh wow. At a time. And I remember seeing a Chicago Marathon banner and this was right out of school and going, I'm gonna do that. And my friends were like, you can't even run a mile. Like, what makes you think that you're gonna run a marathon? And you know, it was, it was that sort of challenge. I was always the kid who, if you double dog dared me, I was gonna make sure that we did that. Um, you know, someone telling me that I can't do something. Was incredibly motivating to sort of prove them wrong, but also prove myself right
Anita Rao
just ahead. How diving back into sports helped Chris understand his gender identity and why sports have become a battleground for trans rights. You're listening to Embodied from WNCA broadcast service of the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill. You can also hear Embodied as a podcast. Follow and subscribe on your platform of choice. We'll be right back.
This is Embodied. I am Anita Rao. Sports has become a battleground for trans rights with trans athletes of all ages and levels caught in the crosshairs. Trans athlete and activist. Chris Mosier has been watching this unfold for years. He came out publicly as trans in 2010 and has been at the forefront of pushing for more inclusive policies for athletes ever since. Chris has been playing sports since he was a little kid, and athletics played a big role in helping him understand his own gender identity. In 2009, Chris competed in his first ever triathlon as a 29-year-old, and that race led him to a big realization.
Chris Mosier
When I'm playing sports, I am so fully present. I'm present in my body in ways that I'm not able to be in the rest of the world. And I remember not really knowing my position going into the last part of the run, really just hammering. And when I finished, you know, it took a minute to, for me to realize and, and to be told that I had won my division. And, you know, I, I think it just didn't get better than that. It's, it's the moment of clarity of like, yeah, I think I found my new sport. This is amazing. And then there was the deep disappointment and sort of. Embarrassment and shame of feeling like I had to tell people that I won, but I won in the women's division.
Anita Rao
Mm.
Chris Mosier
And you know, I wanna be very clear, there's nothing wrong with winning in the women's division at that time. I just didn't want people to see me as a woman. And again, not that there's anything wrong with being a woman, it's just it doesn't fit for me. But that experience made it so abundantly clear that. Appears me feeling like I had this great accomplishment that I was really, really excited to share with people and then feeling this deep sense of shame because it didn't fit who I am. And that was really a moment of reckoning.
Anita Rao
So did you keep it quiet or, or what happened from there?
Chris Mosier
I told people and then I, you know, sort of sat with that discomfort of having to explain it and tried to figure out how to articulate it to people. And I think it was really just this flashlight on the issue for me. It was just a moment where I was like, okay, we have to do something. We have to explore this, we have to read some things. My now wife, uh, then partner was. Uh, much more ahead of me on, on these topics and was able to point me to some resources and really support me through that journey. You know, saying like, no pressure. I'm not saying that you are, are this or aren't this, just maybe I can expose you to other possibilities for yourself. And I recognize that's a, a, a, a true privilege and gift to have had.
Anita Rao
So it was about. One and a half years from when you personally started identifying as trans to when you publicly came out. And I would love for you to take me inside your internal monologue in that window of time, if you can remember, like what factors were you weighing, what things were taking up the most mental space as you thought about kind of sharing this more publicly?
Chris Mosier
First and foremost, I think it was, um, safety.
Anita Rao
Mm-hmm.
Chris Mosier
It was really, you know, will I be. Safe in the way of having a job still. How will I be able to still have a relationship with my family if and when I tell them this? You know, those were all the, the questions that were sort of swirling in my mind that were. Pausing me on making a decision to tell people, but then there was the sports piece.
Anita Rao
Yeah.
Chris Mosier
And that piece was so incredibly important to me because for the duration of my life, sports was the place where I found my safety. I found my sense of self in those moments of uncertainty or feeling like I didn't belong. I always knew that I belonged in sport. So I was terrified to lose that ability as an adult athlete to be able to continue to play the things that I love.
Anita Rao
So this is 2009. At that time there were few, if any, openly trans athletes. So you didn't really have any role models for what this might look like. How did you think coming out publicly was gonna affect your athletic career?
Chris Mosier
I really wasn't sure. You know, it just kind of got to a point where it, it was the thing I had to do. Mm-hmm. And I think, if anything, I am so abundantly clear for the last decade that this to me is the reason why I'm on this planet. It is to do my work in sports and to be a possibility model for other people who are like me. And so, you know, I, I didn't know what coming out would be like. Part of me wanted to leave my job, move to another state, make new friends, and just start over as the person that I, that I think that I envisioned myself to be when I was a kid. Like be the person that I am, but but not have to explain myself. Just start fresh. And then the rest of me knew that in the struggles that I had in trying to figure out who I am and try to find people like me, that I could be a great help to others in my situation by coming out publicly and sharing my story and being open about my experience as a trans person and a trans person in sports. And so I really, you know, labored on that decision, but ultimately landed on writing something coming out publicly in the Advocate magazine and, and trying to be the role model that I wish that I had when I was a kid.
Anita Rao
What kind of reaction did you get from the sporting world when that piece came out?
Chris Mosier
There was a little blip of and buzz, and we have to remember, you know, timing wise, we didn't have the social media sort of repost factory that we have now. But I think it generally, it was positive and, and largely it was kind of a shrug, you know, it really was just kind of a. A novelty for folks if they were paying attention at all. So I remember the first New York Times article that came out about me, had interviewed someone from the New York City triathlon who said, you know, he's gonna be a middle of the pack guy. Just let him compete. Hmm. And those words, middle of the pack and, and my name. Just felt like they did not belong together. And it was that sort of, I dare you as a kid, right? I'm gonna make it happen. It made me more committed to proving everybody wrong and really seeing what I could get out of myself.
Anita Rao
So as you began to kind of socially transition, you have come out publicly, how did your athletic goals and your kind of pursuits as an athlete affect the choices you made about your medical transition?
Chris Mosier
I had researched the rules about making a medical transition, and I think it was difficult at that time because national governing bodies didn't have policies for transgender athletes. Like you said, I was one of the very first who came out publicly who wanted to compete, who was trying to change the category that they competed in, and so there was really a lot of question marks from my national governing body of USA triathlon. Of what to do with me where, where to put me, how to classify me. So my goals in sort of making a medical transition were not related to my sports career, but they were related to me feeling more comfortable and aligned in the 98% of time when I wasn't competing in sport.
Anita Rao
Yeah. I'm curious about like the physical experience of being an endurance runner. All the endurance runners I know are so. Attuned to their body. Like, like if they've had, you know, less carbs the day before, they feel like they're running in a different way or they're just like, yeah, they're, they're super aware and hyper aware. I'm curious about how going through medical transition and experiencing this, like fluctuation of hormones and, and changes in your musculature, like how did it change how it felt to physically run?
Chris Mosier
Yeah, I think trans people who are starting a transition often are looking for those changes. You know, it's something like, I had wanted scruff like a five o'clock shadow for a very long time, and I think as, as a person, early in my transition, it's like you wake up every day and you run to the mirror and you're like, are there chin hairs? Like, do I have a beard yet? And for many of us, we've waited so long to make that decision that. Those changes can't come fast enough. As an athlete though, as you mentioned, I'm very attuned to my body and so it was like really interesting to feel like the vessel that I had been navigating for 20 plus years had suddenly changed and the changes were gradual. It, it didn't happen all at once, but in the course of the year, I had gained. 10 pounds of muscle. And you know, that to me was a, a completely different body to navigate. You know, and I say that completely different. Like I'm still a very little guy. You could see my pictures online. You know, I didn't hulk out after starting to take a testosterone, but the way that I felt in my body needed some adjustment. And I think that that was something that I wasn't really prepared for as I started to transition.
Anita Rao
Can you tell me about the first competition you did in the men's category? I'm thinking about that New York Times piece in your head of like, okay, he's gonna be the middle of the pack. Like, what, what happened when you raced for the first time?
Chris Mosier
Yeah. Uh, my first race actually in the male category was an Iron Man race, and it was my first Iron Man that I had ever done. It also happened to be the first time I ever ran outside without my shirt on after top surgery. So it had like a lot of these really momentous. Joyous moments. But that said, an Ironman is not an easy race. It's a 2.4 mile swim, 112 mile bike, and then a marathon run 26.2 miles at the end. And you know, I, I remember having just so many revelatory moments in this race of, you know, first of all, this race is really hard. But in the moments of difficulty, my mantra and the thing I kept going back to was, you know, this is hard, but I signed up for this. Hmm. In fact, I paid a lot of money to do this race. You know, I, I invested a lot of time, and by comparison to my daily life, the suffering that I felt like I was feeling in my daily life, that was nothing. You know, so it really framed up this idea of like, the sports suffering was voluntary.
Anita Rao
Hmm.
Chris Mosier
And I think part of the reason why I poured so much of myself into sports, probably as a young person too, is that it was suffering that I could control. Whereas the things that the kids in my class said about me and the things that I would hear, uh, fans and spectators say to me as I ran past on race courses, I didn't get to control that. I could only control the suffering that I put myself through. So that first race, you know, realizing that moment that, that I'm responsible for this suffering, and that just felt so good. But then it was also this idea and this feeling of finally being able to show up as the person I've known myself to be forever.
Anita Rao
So as the years went on, as the competitions went on, you began to gain more visibility, and in 2015 you really gained a lot of visibility when you became the first openly trans man to make a US national team for. Duathlon, but you qualified and then after qualifying realized that you couldn't compete in the world championship race because of the rules at that time. So you and a group of lawyers challenged the International Olympic Committee's policy. Tell me about how that went and, and what the new policy became.
Chris Mosier
Yeah, so in 2015, that group of lawyers went to the IOC and they had, were already. Sort of thinking about sport policy as it existed at that time, which the policy at that time, so the 2003 Stockholm consensus from the International Olympic Committee said that transgender athletes could compete, but there were specifications in in to do so. So it was a full lower surgery and years of hormone treatment as the primary rules for transgender athletes, you know. Me coming in as someone assigned female at birth didn't fit the way that they thought that that policy would be applied. And so I was able to challenge that policy and it was changed then to remove the surgery requirement and to lower the testosterone threshold for transgender women from two years to one year based on the best medical data out there. So that was the way that the policy changed, which then enabled me to compete in the 2016. Uh, world Championship race.
Anita Rao
Hearing you say that at this moment in 2026, it, it feels so different from, you know, the policy changes and the updates that we're hearing about now. So what do you think kind of precipitated the shift toward a greater restriction of trans athletes? Can you point to a specific moment or time when you feel like that really started to happen?
Chris Mosier
2016 was about the time where I would say, you know, with my increased visibility. Making team USA in 2015 challenging the policy. 2016 was also the time that I was sponsored by Nike and became the first trans athlete to be sponsored by a major sporting company. I was also in the ESPN body issue, so there was a lot of buzz around my participation, but that was also the time of the quote unquote transgender tipping point. We had Laverne Cox, uh, on the cover of Time Magazine and making, you know, huge waves in the entertainment industry. We had Chaz Bono, we had Caitlyn Jenner coming out around that time and all of that while, while not necessarily related to sport, increase the level of visibility on the social scale for most Americans.
Anita Rao
Hmm.
Chris Mosier
The other piece was politically. There was a shift to try to ban marriage equality from conservative organizations that had poured millions and millions of dollars into the efforts to stop marriage equality. When marriage equality became the law of the land, there were these organizations that had a lot of money to harm the L-G-B-T-Q community and didn't know what to do with it.
Anita Rao
Hmm.
Chris Mosier
And so we started to see. Bathroom bands like HB two in North Carolina, which happened in 2016, and we saw huge pushback from sports organizations and musicians and the entertainment industry and corporate entities pushing back against that law, and eventually it was repealed. What we saw then was that bathroom bans kind of work, but we're not quite ready for them yet. So let's try to shift it to locker rooms and sports. We saw, you know, there wasn't traction in immediately, but by 2020 we saw that the rhetoric had changed around transgender people in sport, and that's when Idaho passed the first anti-trans sports ban in our country.
Anita Rao
Why sports? Why do you think as someone who has been in that world for a long time, that that has become kind of the place where this is really being litigated?
Chris Mosier
I think it's because sport is part of our American fabric, of our society. It is part of our childhood. It's part of our educational system in our schools for young people. And more than anything, sport is emotional. You know, you don't have to play sports to feel some sort of anger as a armchair quarterback on a Sunday if your local sports team isn't doing well. You don't have to play sports to be invested in sports. And even though sports have never been fair. We all have this idea about fairness and equity that we associate with sports, and I think that that really draws on people's emotions. So I think it's just the it, it was the perfect storm and also it tested really well. These, these conservative organizations that are pouring money into harming the LGBTQ plus community aren't just throwing spaghetti at the wall and seeing what sticks. They've been message testing, they've been, they've been researching what would be the most effective way for us to change policy to be more conservative, and sport was the entry point to that pathway.
Anita Rao
So we have 2020 as the first anti-trans sports ban in the state of Idaho. We have more bands that follow. In 2023, you began working on a project with a scholar and a former college athlete that led to the recent book Fair Game, and y'all interviewed. 20 athletes ranging from ages eight to 59 who play at all levels from youth athletics to professional teams. And when you started conducting these interviews three years ago, all 20 of these athletes were able to play and compete. And as of this year, 2026, only five of them can still legally participate in sports. So. I would love to know kind of, of the folks who can no longer participate. Is there, uh, a story that you could tell me about someone who really stuck with you and, and what they're currently navigating?
Chris Mosier
Actually, of the 20 athletes that we interviewed at this time, only one can compete.
Anita Rao
Only one. Okay. So that's changed since the book was published.
Chris Mosier
It's changed.
Anita Rao
Wow.
Chris Mosier
It's changed and, and you know, it just speaks to such, it's such a rapidly changing landscape in sports and, you know. We, we would've loved this book to have been out five years ago. But the fact that it's out now really is going to speak to not only this moment, but more specifically to how quickly things change. Because you know, obviously the process of publishing a book takes, takes time. But even from the time of publication to today, we've seen four more of those athletes lose their ability to play.
Anita Rao
Wow. You met a lot of younger kids. Could you maybe tell me about one of them and, and kind of what's at stake for them if they can't participate in sports anymore?
Chris Mosier
Oh, doing these interviews was so healing for me as a, as a trans adult, to be able to talk to these kids. And also so heartbreaking because I know what sport means to me, and I know, you know, how it helped me, how it helped me be on the same level as my peers, how it helped me connect to people, and the idea of this being ripped away from people really. Just breaks my heart. One of the athletes that impacted me, the most of the youth athletes that I interviewed was Robin. So Robin is a young trans girl who was a swimmer and a, a very social, a very social kid, very extroverted kid. Her, her mom describes her as collecting best friends and, you know, um, so. When COVID happened and she tried to come back to her team, she was told that she was no longer able to play, and she had a, a teacher in her life who helped her start a run club. And so in her school, while she wasn't able to swim with her friends, they created this running club so that she could, in a, in a less structured way, in a way that was still, you know, dodging sort of the state policies. Was able to run with her friends and still be an athlete and still move her body. But, you know, I, I think that it speaks to the ways in which adults can support young people and really show up for, for trans people. And, you know, it's just. Hearing her story. I'm just proud of her for her resilience and also just knowing her. Super proud of her for the way that she's been able to show up and be a sort of accidental activist, which a lot of the people in our book end up being because they're fighting for their own rights, but they also realize that they can help other people by doing so, which is very much my story.
Anita Rao
Just ahead, We'll unpack the assumptions that underpin many of the anti sports bands in the US and talk about solutions that Chris says would benefit all athletes. We'll be right back.
This is Embodied. I am Anita Rao. In 2020, Idaho became the first state to ban trans women and girls from sports. Since then, more than half of US states have implemented laws restricting trans youth from playing on teams that match their gender identity. Trans athlete and activist, Chris Mosier has been a leading advocate for trans folks in sports and has tracked this increased scrutiny on trans athletes over the past several years. Chris interviewed some of the young people these bands affect for the recent book Fair Game, which tells the stories of 20 trans athletes and challenges, the reasoning behind the growing number of sports bans. One myth the book takes on is that trans athletes are overtaking sports, particularly on the elite level where competition is fierce and spots are limited. But Chris says, the intensity of the discourse doesn't match the reality. Less than 1% of all college athletes are trans. There's been no documented increase in the number of trans athletes in recent years, and many of those who want to play are kids trying to compete in their school sporting events with their peers.
Chris Mosier
We have the statistics from the NCAA from December, 2024. The NCAA president, Charlie Baker, testified in front of Congress and famously said that of the 510,000 athletes in the NCAA. Fewer than 10 of them were transgender.
Anita Rao
Wow.
Chris Mosier
And so we, we know that there's numbers like that. We know that there are state after state where lawmakers introduced a ban and then they couldn't name a single trans kid in their state, or they could name one, or they had four on record over the last several years. And so we know that the numbers are small, but I wanna put an asterisk on that because just because it's small numbers of people doesn't mean that we shouldn't be allowed to play.
Anita Rao
Yeah.
Chris Mosier
And o oftentimes people use that as justification for saying, well, it's just a handful of kids. What does it even matter? But by taking away the sporting opportunities for trans youth, we're taking away opportunities for all kids. To learn about people who are different from themselves. You know, sports provides us so much more than winning or losing. And to be honest, like I couldn't tell you my high school record. I couldn't tell you how like my, my best, my best game of basketball and I loved basketball. I couldn't tell you what I scored as my best game. And thank goodness I've had a whole life since then. You know, but we have moved into this idea of the professionalization of youth sports, and I think that that really is part of what's driving this sort of fury around trans athletes and like, quote unquote taking a spot away.
Anita Rao
Yeah.
Chris Mosier
Right. Is is this idea of, you know, everybody thinks that their kid is going to be, become an Olympian or that their, you know, eighth grade swim meet is the most important thing in the world. And so there's a lot of pressure on young kids to do that, to perform. And then there's also this severe lack mindset, and rightfully so, specifically in women's sports because women's sports has been so underfunded, under invested, you know, under supported. And that has really set up this idea of its cisgender girls and women versus the trans community when the truth is that. The few trans athletes that are wanting to participate authentically as themselves are not the reason that the government hasn't enforced Title IX in 52 years. It's not the reason why boys programs get more than the girls programs in funding and support. You know, it's, it's not the reason for any of these issues. There's a much bigger issue with how the United States sees girls and women in sport and how they aren't supported, and it's really set up this idea of us versus them.
Anita Rao
And even when we're talking about this idea of like, oh, a few spots based on the research in the book, like there has not never been an out trans athlete who has won an out an athletic scholarship. Only one trans person has won an Olympic medal. So even that argument is not really backed up by like a lot of data.
Chris Mosier
Yeah. And to be clear, the one trans person that won an Olympic medal was Quinn, who's a non-binary trans athlete participating on a women's team who was assigned female at birth. And so, you know, I think that that should be noted because people are saying that people assigned male at birth are transitioning to pretend to be women, quote unquote, and to try to steal your daughter's medals when it couldn't be farther from the truth. There's been one transgender woman who's participated in the Olympic Games and she was the first out of her category, and that number one is really important because in that time there's been upwards of 70 plus thousand athletes. Who have been Olympians and only one has been a trans woman since the policy was in place.
Anita Rao
So let's talk a little bit about some of the arguments that bolster these bans. And the primary argument that I've seen, and that's often even in the title of some of the state laws, is, is about fairness. That. Trans women competing in sports is unfair because they have a biological advantage. So what does the existing sports science research say about physiological advantages based on biological sex?
Chris Mosier
I think this, this is largely fueled by social rhetoric, by the fears that people have been able to put into people's minds by saying something like. You know, imagine that, uh, NFL football linebacker is gonna transition and play volleyball with your daughter. In, in high school, right? Like that sounds ridiculous, but that's the type of narrative that is happening from conservative folks who are anti-trans who are trying to spread this fear and confusion about the way that sport policy works. The truth is that there have been no studies that show that trans women have an advantage over other women. There have been a lot of studies that have tried. To pull data to support that, and they've all been refuted. There's a, a great study from the Canadian Center from Ethics and Sport that goes through all of the sort of studies up until about 2022 and just picks them all apart about how they decided to pick and choose data to support. What they wanted to say. So the, the evidence does not show what people think that it shows. In fact, it shows that more research probably needs to be done to actually come up with a, a more suitable solution for trans folks in sport.
Anita Rao
How about testosterone? That's often a, a huge talking point. I know testosterone levels do vary between and among men and women. But they are used often as a proxy for talking about athleticism. That it's, it can make you have bigger muscles, it can make you run faster. So tell me a bit about what we know about the correlation between T and athletic performance.
Chris Mosier
Yeah. I think a lot of people think that testosterone is the IT factor for sports. A higher level of testosterone means that you'll be a better athlete, and testosterone is not seen as the sole indicator of athletic performance. Now, there are certainly some differences between cisgender men and cisgender women on averages, but the truth is that just because a cis man has a higher level of testosterone doesn't mean that he will be a better athlete than someone assigned female at birth. I think all of us can think of cisgender men that we know in our lives who are horrible at sports. Right. There's just this narrative, this idea that people who are assigned male at birth will be bigger, faster, stronger, and better athletes than anyone assigned female at birth. And that's just not true. But that is the social narrative that we have. And to boil down any individual's sporting capacity. By saying it's solely based on testosterone is just inaccurate. And we're actually seeing more and more studies show this. So we've had a couple of recent studies that have actually shown that transgender women are at a disadvantage in some ways compared to their cisgender peers, um, particularly in sports. And so I think that we have to consider that there's just not enough data out there and it's gonna be difficult to get data and information if all transgender athletes are banned. From competing in sports. So I think that there, a lot of the policy changes that have happened have been based on the myths about testosterone that we believe as a society and not on the actual science.
Anita Rao
One of the things that was really striking to me about the book was this idea that if banning trans athletes from sports is really about leveling the playing field, then we would need to be thinking about all types of physiological advantages like height, hand size, flexibility, whether or not you're, you're double jointed, just ways people, people are naturally different. I'm curious what you think about that and kind of which physiological differences are sort of accepted as part of the game and, and which aren't.
Chris Mosier
It, it truly depends on the sport. You know, I think we don't penalize, uh, six foot eight athletes in basketball. That's an advantage that people would say that they have. Right. Certainly being double jointed in your ankles or having a long wingspan could be advantages in swimming, and I think that's what's so special about sports. You know, it, it's so different. It's so individualized. I started off as a triathlete and I, I had success, but when I switched the swimming piece, which I swim like a rock, and so like I, I was good enough to be somewhat competitive, but it's not my strong suit. When I switched my sport to be run, bike, run, I found great success. And so I can be a team, USA athlete in Duathlon, but if you put me on a soccer field, I'm gonna break an ankle and probably be on the bench. So that's the cool thing about sports. And I would say there are certainly advantages that we accept to be, uh, universally. Okay. And chief among them I would say is financial advantage. Like the truth is, if you are a young person who has a family that is well off, that has the money to invest in coaching, in camps, in, in good equipment, in getting you on the travel team and in being able to take you around from practice at practice to game to game, that's a huge advantage. But we don't think of that in the same way as advantages as the sort of narrative around testosterone. In in the way that it plays into how good of an athlete you'll be.
Anita Rao
I'd love to talk now about solutions. What I gleaned from reading this book is that there is no blanket uniform policy that is gonna work for all sports at all levels, but there are ways to tailor policies. How would you describe your kind of overall philosophical approach to thinking about policies around trans athletes in sports?
Chris Mosier
I really think they have to be based on the sport and they have to be based on the level of play. Right. And I know some people won't be happy with that answer because, you know, I'm a trans person. I want everybody to have access to sport. And I also am a sports person who understands that sport has certain rules and regulations within it. Right? But I also know that the rules for. Something like billiards or chess are not the same as the rules for basketball or rowing. And you know, I say billiards and chess because trans women have been banned from both billiards and chess and they've been banned from darts and fly fishing. And so it makes you go, okay, well, like what are the specifications of an athlete playing darts? And what are they for a person playing soccer and how do those, how do those overlap? Right? We can agree that those are fundamentally very different sports with very different skill sets necessary to be successful. And so it really needs to be by the sport, and it also needs to be by the level of play. We have to understand that the policies that are in place for the Olympic and Paralympic games cannot and should not be the policies that we have in place for fifth graders. In our educational system where the goal of sport is fundamentally different, it's not to, to win a gold medal. It's not to bring glory to your country. It's to move your body and play with friends. It's to get those values of, and the education that sport provides in terms of leadership and communication skills and teamwork. That's the purpose of sport for young people. And so throughout the whole thing, I think we need to just be thinking about. How can we include more people? Not how can we ban this group of people just because of who they are.
Anita Rao
We've been kind of detailing that this debate, uh, has focused for the most part on trans women and girls, not trans masculine athletes like you. Why do you think that you are less of a target and, and I'm curious about how you're, you're kind of seeing the current movement around that.
Chris Mosier
I think sport has always been designed for men. And all levels of sport. I think sport is seen as an inherently masculine or, uh, preference is masculinity. And I think that there's still these stereotypes of me being assigned female at birth and people thinking back to that New York Times article that I'll be a middle of the pack guy. I'll never be competitive. And so what does it really matter? Right? So it is something about the patriarchy and sexism that provides this sort of cover for me to fly under the radar. Even as a trans man who's been on team USA eight times, you know, I, I still kind of get a shrug in a okay. But this social narrative that's been created around trans women and specifically about being a danger or a threat, or taking away opportunities for cis women has become so pervasive, even though it is all deeply untrue, has become so pervasive in our social narrative that that's where the focus goes.
Anita Rao
At this moment, the International Olympic Committee has allowed individual sports federations to set their own rules or up until this moment, but we are expecting a potential change in that. How are the current trends making you think about your own future as an athlete?
Chris Mosier
I feel like my future is as uncertain as anybody else's, but I also believe that the primary focus here is gonna be on transgender women and any trans boy or trans man who is impacted by policies. And unfortunately e every intersex person that's also impacted by policies is gonna be a byproduct of the attempt to ban or harm transgender women in sports. What I'm really, you know, concerned about right now is. The implementation of more sex testing in our sporting system. This is something that we have done in the past.
It has been a human rights violation of so many people to capture their biomedical data and in, in really unsafe ways, and to put people. Under such scrutiny to be able to play the sports that they love. And so, you know, I'm preparing for a, a potential outcome that would require so many more invasive measures for specifically women athletes in sport. And I'm gonna be closely watching the ways that's impacting trends and intersex folks as well, but also knowing that. All of women's sports is gonna be deeply impacted by a change in the International Olympic policy in ways that are not gonna be helpful or supportive to the idea of saving or protecting women's sports.
Anita Rao
The Supreme Court is expected to release its ruling this summer on two cases about trans athletes in school sports. What are you saying now to young athletes who reach out to you with fears about not being able to play the sports they love?
Chris Mosier
Oh, it is so tough because I know how sport saved me at so many points in my life and all of the good things that sport provides, and I just so deeply believe that every young person and every person in regardless of age should have that opportunity. To move their body, to play the sports that they love and to be their authentic self while they do it. So when I'm getting these messages from, from young kids, from their families, from coaches, you know, the, the thing that I tell them is at this point, the Supreme Court decision is out of our hands. Like there's nothing that we can do about that. But what we can do is know that trans people have always existed. And we will continue to exist no matter what this ruling is. And we've always been playing sports. And no matter what happens from the Supreme Court decision, trans people will continue to exist and we'll continue to play sports. We just need to find a different way. And thinking back to, you know, playing in the neighborhood, there are so many different ways that we can play sports. When I was playing with my friends as a five and 6-year-old, we weren't in a national governing body with specific rules. We were moving our bodies together and having fun. We set the rules and so I think, and I hope that more organizations are gonna step up with inclusive sport policies to combat some of the things that we're seeing at the state and federal level, and that we will continue to find a way.
Anita Rao
Chris Mosier, thank you so much for the conversation and sharing so much of your story with us. I so appreciate it.
Chris Mosier
Thank you so much for having me.
Anita Rao
You can find out more about Chris Mosier and the book Fair Game at our website, embodiedwunc.org. This program is recorded at the American Tobacco Historic District. WUNC is a broadcast service of the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill. I am Anita Rao.