By DAVID DUPONT
BG Independent News
For Chris Mosier, the crisis came on his birthday.
Mosier a groundbreaking trans athlete told an audience at Bowling Green State University as the guest of We Are One Team that he hated the song “Happy Birthday.” Even when it was sung to a stranger, “I have a physical reaction to it.”
He made it a practice of not celebrating his birthday. He felt that he was “inauthentic” and not worth celebrating.
On his 29th birthday, though, his partner persuaded Mosier to go out to a restaurant.
It was packed, and then the waiter referred to Mosier and his partner as “ladies.”
Mosier began to cry. They had to leave. Mosier knew he had to do something to address his gender identity. He decided to begin his transition.
Six years later a few blocks from that New York City restaurant, Mosier said he cried again, this time with joy. He was in a trailer and he had just finished the filming of a Nike commercial featuring him as a trans athlete.
In both those instances he had the same thought: “I never thought my life would be like this.”
Mosier grew up in northern rural Wisconsin. He was told he couldn’t wear his hat backwards, or run around without a shirt even as a 6-year-old, or skateboard, because girls don’t do that. He pinned an image of a male bodybuilder’s torso on his closet door. That was his future. “For my entire life, I was searching for a vision of myself.”
His dreams didn’t fit into a “princess” future.
“Those were painful and hurtful years,” Mosier said.
But no matter how he was viewed elsewhere, everybody wanted him on their team. He was a talented athlete. And he dreamed of having his name on a basketball jersey. When he looked for colleges, he looked for ones that had jerseys with names.
He was recruited and was headed towards playing college ball.
Then he refused the offer at the last minute. He had, he said, a lot of excuses. He needed to work. He wanted to participate in extracurricular activities. He needs time to study so he could excel academically. It was only later, he said, that he realized the true reason: “I didn’t want be on a women’s team.”
So he went to Northern Michigan in Marquette. It was only there that he started hearing about what transgender meant. It took him five years to graduate, and because of health issues related to a history of head injuries, he was out of shape.
After graduating in 2003, Mosier went to Chicago for graduate school. He saw promotions for the Chicago Marathon and decided despite his poor physical conditioning, he wanted to run it.
Running, he said, was a way to reconnect with sports without having to deal with locker rooms and being on a women’s team.
Mosier said some trans students feel so much anxiety at the prospect of using bathrooms that they will not eat or drink through a school day in order not to have to deal with the issue.
During the question and answer session, he encouraged institutions to have private stalls, and curtained stalls in shower rooms to allow for privacy. That benefits not only trans people but others who want privacy for a variety of reasons.
After Chicago, he moved to New York with his partner, whom he’d met at Northern Michigan. Even then Mosier said, he felt uncomfortable being seen as a lesbian.
She seemed at times more aware of what he was struggling with and encouraged him to investigate further. They are now married.
After running in the Chicago Marathon, Mosier pushed himself harder. He ran an ultra marathon. He competed in a triathlon — swimming, biking, running.
He said that going 146 miles using his own power was hard, but it was a choice he made. That difficulty was nothing like what he felt in his every day life.
Sometimes, he felt, like a video game character. He’d leave the house and his power meter would be full, and then throughout the day it would get lower and lower. He had no way of recharging. He’d return home feeling “like a shell of person.”
Mosier said it is important for athletes to use their voices. That means that as a member of Team USA he challenged the Olympic committee rules on trans athletes. Before his challenge athletes had to undergo full gender reassignment surgery. Mosier had done “top” surgery.
It was a violation of universal human rights to demand an athlete undergo surgery in order to compete, he argued.
Mosier won on that front, though, he said that guideline remains in U.S. gymnastics and boxing.
Those guidelines will increasingly be challenged as people make their transitions at earlier ages.
Mosier also uses his voice through social media to help younger people going through transition.
He uses social media to help, though he said he’s glad he grew up before it was so ubiquitous. That way there are not photos of him as a child plastered all over.
Mosier said he makes himself accessible. He feels that’s his responsibility.
“Whether athletes want to be role models or not, they are,” Mosier said. They need to use the platform, athletics gives them “to amplify the voices of those who don’t have a voice.”
Mosier is pleased when people say they’ve seen billboards of his Nike ads and view them as a sign of acceptance for their trans children.
They provide the self image that Mosier said he lacked when growing up.
