Against the binary: Athletics and Chris Mosier

The Olympics are on right now, and I am enjoying the hell out of them. Women’s rugby is in the Olympics for the first time ever; men’s for the first time since 1924. The athletes are so talented and their bodies are works of art. And gender has a spot in the phenomenon, in ways both celebrating how far we’ve come and exposing how much there is still left to do.

On the celebration side, we have Chris Mosier, the first openly trans athlete to make TeamUSA. 

Chris Mosier is amazing not only because he broke through the wall separating genders in the hallowed field of sports, but because corporate giant Nike prominently advertised that he exists and that it supports him. 

My opposition to the gender binary notwithstanding, I acknowledge that it currently exists and that any adult today has grown up within it. I identify as queer, but I don't think I'd want to play on a co-ed full-tackle rugby team (co-ed touch is fine). However, my hesitance to play with an average "men's" team has more to do with my ability than with my genitals; I might be delighted to play a co-ed match with men of similar size and ability. And I certainly can't speak to elite women's players' thoughts on the matter.

In my ideal world, young children wouldn’t be separated basically at birth into “male” and “female,” at least not in terms of social participation. Gone would be the boys’ line and the girls’ line in kindergarten, and gone would be separate boy/girl activities during physical education. It would be fine to set up a play kitchen set on one side of the room and a play auto garage set on the other side of the room, as long as the kids aren’t nudged toward one or the other based on their genitalia. Voluntary movement among activities should be fully supported.

There’s no real need to talk much about genitalia until children begin approaching puberty, and then only that certain combinations of parts may result in particular consequences. It is important to emphasize that an egg-sperm combination leads to reproduction. It is not important to say that one’s status as an egg-producer, sperm-producer, or neither ought to inform to whom they are attracted or how they behave.

Of course, there will be many who are delighted to identify with what we now call the “feminine” and the “masculine.” There will be others who identify with neither and still others who identify with different parts of the stereotypes or with different expressions at different times. And never does this have to be dependent on what is or is not between a person’s legs.

The same goes for athletic participation. Have both tackle and touch football, but don't put all the penises in the former and all the vaginas in the latter. Get rid of different athletic expectations for "boys" and "girls." Stop telling people with vaginas that their best isn't expected to be as good as the best from the ones with the penises. Stop telling the ones with penises who don't fare so well in athletics that they are somehow lesser. 

Chris Mosier knew as he was growing up that he didn’t feel authentic competing in women’s athletics. He continued to train and to navigate the world that was given to him, and now that he is competing on a U.S. Men’s National Team, he demonstrates that assignment at birth doesn’t need to dictate a future. He made his climb uphill, in the face of a hostile society telling him that his identification was wrong or weird.

Are there men's and women's athletics in my ideal non-binary world? I don't know. For some people, it's important to identify as male/female and for others it's not, and what this has to do with whether or how we can play sports requires much discussion. I take great pride in being a female athlete, and I would definitely not want to give up that bond with my teammates.

Regardless of the open questions, conflict between what is and what should be, and fear of the unknown, I know that sex and gender's relationship to athletics is much more nuanced than just shuttling people into a classification based on their crotch at birth. I don't know what all the answers are, but I know that Chris Mosier is one of them.