‘Transgender people are people’: Nike-sponsored athlete speaks out against ‘dangerous’ bill
Chris Mosier is a man.
Meeting him for the first time, you wouldn’t think anything else, from his military-short haircut and close-cropped beard and mustache to his deep voice and muscular build.
Mosier is a hall of fame triathlete, All-American duathlete and a six-time member of Team USA, representing the United States in international competition. He is a two-time national champion and has qualified for the Olympic trials.
He’s been sponsored by Nike and featured in his own Nike commercial, which debuted during the Rio Olympics.
Chris Mosier is also the first known transgender athlete to represent the United States in international competition and the first transgender athlete to qualify for the Olympic Trials in a category different from their sex assigned at birth.
Mosier visited Boise this week to speak out against a series of anti-transgender bills making their way through the Idaho Legislature, in particular a bill, House Bill 500, that drastically restricts transgender student-athletes’ ability to participate in girls sports.
“(House Bill 500) is an incredibly dangerous and discriminatory bill,” Mosier told the Idaho Statesman editorial board in an interview Tuesday. “It is intended to solve a problem that, quite frankly, does not exist. It seems like a colossal waste of time for people to be arguing about people’s identities, about my identity, about young people’s identity and putting all women and girls in a position that will be incredibly dangerous and driving many of them from sport.”
Before participating in a fun run/walk and rally at the Capitol steps Tuesday, Mosier spoke with the Idaho Statesman’s editorial board to share his experience and thoughts on the Idaho legislation. Following are portions of that interview, edited for clarity and length.
Can you talk about the importance of sports, particularly for transgender youths?
When I grew up, I was assigned female at birth. I grew up playing girls and women’s sports. And for me, it was sport was the place I felt the most like myself. I felt like, no matter how weird or different people thought that I was outside of sport, outside of the court or the field, and I was different than my peers, very clearly independent sense of style and was not like the girls in my class but also was not quite like the guys in my class. I was clearly not fitting in with my peers in that way. But sports was the equalizer. On the court and field, that was where I felt the most like myself and the most accepted. It’s where I found my family and my friends and my community, as a young person.
So just as a young person, in general, it was incredible to find that sense of self and belonging within sports and I think that’s what youth sports really does. It is an opportunity for us to participate with our peers and to learn values about how to interact with other people and diversity is what makes a team strong. One of the best things about being in sport is that I had the opportunity to interact with people who might not have been my friends outside of basketball, and to get to know them and to get to know what they were like, and to get to know how we were similar — more similar than we were different. And that was a really important part of my youth athletic experience.
Can you talk about your personal journey and your transition and your sense of your gender and what that path was like for you growing up?
Yeah, I was a really confident young kid, and I had a very strong sense of myself. And it wasn’t until adults around me started to tell me that I was doing it wrong, that I was performing my gender wrong or existing in the world incorrectly, that I started to really question myself. Like, I was playing sports from the age of 4 years old. It was one of the most important parts of my identity as a young kid in the neighborhood playing with both girls and boys.
And I remember ... my aunt pulling me around the back of the house when I was 4 years old, saying, “You can’t run around like this. Little girls can’t run around with their shirts off.” My mom said, “You can’t skateboard. Little girls don’t skateboard.” “You can’t play too aggressively. People aren’t gonna think you know that ... you don’t belong here, or that it’s not OK for young girls to be competitive, or to be successful in sport.”
And I started to get all of these messages that were in direct contradiction to who I knew that I was as a person.
I was a three-sport all-conference athlete in high school, volleyball, basketball and softball, and my dream was really to play college basketball. And at this point I had a sense about myself just not being the same as my peers, but didn’t have the language or terminology or understanding to sort of label that for other people, and how I would articulate that, and even moving into college, I was all set to play college women’s basketball, and I decided not to do it. And I think it took everybody by surprise because this was a dream I had for many years. But when it came time to be there, I realized that I did not identify as a woman, and I didn’t want to be on a women’s team.
How do you respond to the argument that there are inherent natural, physical differences between boys and girls and that allowing transgender girls to compete in girls sports puts girls at a competitive disadvantage, and this bill seeks to protect the rights of those girls to compete?
What’s really important is that in states like Idaho, we’ve had a policy in existence for about eight years. And I think that they said in the hearings that in the last six years, when they were questioned about it, there’s been no concern about transgender athletes participating with their peers. So, this is, you know, this bill is largely trying to solve a problem that does not exist.
And there are safeguards in place already. Not just in Idaho, ... one of the most restrictive states in the country for participation for transgender women and girls, specifically, but across the country, there are policies that address the concerns of transgender athletes participating in sports, and we have not seen the problems that people have been saying that we would see transgender girls and women have been participating with girls and women, where they belong.
For years, without problem without trans athlete dominance, you know, the Olympics have had a policy since 2004 that has allowed transgender women to participate at the most elite levels of sport, and we are yet to see a transgender Olympian.
There are so many barriers in place for young trans people to even begin that journey to participate in sports at the youth level has been a challenge and it’s largely because we have legislators who are making broad sweeping generalizations and talking about, you know, false narratives about biology and other things that they’re not really equipped to talk about, but playing on the fears of people using the stereotypes to position trans people as other, and as someone who should be feared. And we’ve seen if you look at the statistics, that is absolutely not the case.
One of the cases that’s been cited is that of the two trans girl high school track athletes in Connecticut. Is that a situation that we should prevent? Is that something that we should be concerned about?
If you look statistically at the number of years that policies have been in place, the number of potential trans athletes who could be participating with their peers, the number of people who have won, right? I don’t think that that is an actual concern, and something for me that I always say like, I don’t just want to be able to participate. I want to be able to participate to the best of my ability. Some people are just incredible athletes, and we can’t discount their hard work, their determination, their dedication to their sport, by saying that their success is simply based on them being transgender. We know that that’s not necessarily true because just recently, one of those trans athletes was beat in a match by one of the women who are one of the girls who is suing them.
So there is no dominance. There are people who have different athletic capabilities in different sports. … But we all find the sport that’s right for our body and we can’t discount the hard work and dedication that athletes put into their training.
It’s really interesting when people keep going back to this competitive advantage idea, right. And what is the purpose of elite sports. Elite as being the key word here, right, elite sports, which is often what people when they’re making these testimonies and in these cases they’re thinking about an NFL linebacker transitioning and playing college volleyball, right, and that simply doesn’t happen. It’s these stereotypes ... that people have painted in their minds that are not happening. Could it happen? Yeah, sure, tons of things could happen, right, it’s just not happening. It’s not a reasonable thing to think about it.
On transitioning to male as an athlete:
When I transitioned and became more authentic in my identity, more comfortable and confident telling people who I really was, my results excelled. And part of that was taking my power back. Really, I would show up at the starting line of races and just be terrified that people were going to call me out about my gender, that people were going to say something about me, or are you a guy or a girl or you don’t belong in this category or what are you doing here. I spent so much time worried about how I was holding myself, how I was talking to people, how I was gesturing, how I was interacting, where I would stand, how my clothes fit. All those things. When I finally owned the power of my identity and started openly telling people who I was, I found that I did so much better in sport because I could focus all of that energy, all of that attention I’ve been giving to other people’s opinions, which actually I have no control over — I have no control over how you perceive me, and it actually doesn’t affect me or shouldn’t affect me — I put all of that energy into my training and my racing, and that’s what made me a better athlete.
Rep. Barbara Ehardt wore a Nike pin and cited a Nike ad when debating the bill on the House floor. What was your reaction to that?
I don’t think that she knows who I am, and that’s OK. She doesn’t have to, but I believe by the end of session, she might. And it’s important to say that she was misrepresenting what that ad means and what that logo means. I’ve been sponsored by Nike as an athlete since 2016. I have my own commercial, which was completely based around my experience as a transgender athlete. Nike is fully behind me as a trans athlete and other transgender athletes and is in full support of: If you have a body, you are an athlete, and sport is for all people, is for all women and girls, not just some women and girls. And so I felt like that she was misinterpreting both the commercial for her gain, but also the bigger picture of what it means to be in this position where I am, sponsored by Nike, and they are fully supportive of trans people. Leaving that piece out conveniently supported her point more, but it misses the bigger picture that Nike is one of the biggest companies in the world, and is in support of trans inclusion at all levels.
What would you ask or tell Idaho legislators to consider as they’re coming up with new laws?
Transgender people are people. And if the goal of the folks in Idaho is to protect all people here in Idaho, to make Idaho a place where people want to raise their children and their grandchildren, as I’ve seen on the governor’s website, you know an important part of that is making sure that we are protecting all people, and transgender people are a part of our communities, of our sports teams, of our workplaces and our schools and educational systems and deserve the same protections and rights as their peers. It’s quite simply that there’s no need to make policies that are trying to solve problems that don’t exist. ... There is absolutely no reason for the government to get involved and particularly in such an invasive way. I think we have to remember trans people are people.
This story was originally published March 5, 2020 at 6:00 AM.
