Finding Mastery with Dr. Michael Gervais - Owning Your True Identity | Chris Mosier

Episode Date: August 24, 2022

This week’s conversation is with Chris Mosier, a hall-of-fame triathlete, All-American duathlete, and a 6-time member of Team USA.But Chris is far more than an elite athlete – he is a trailblazer. In 2015, Chris became the first transgender man to represent the United States in international competition – he is also the first transgender athlete to be sponsored by Nike, featured in the ESPN Body Issue, and to qualify for the Olympic Trials in the gender they identify.He continues to be a leading voice for gender-inclusive policy in sport and is a mentor, role model, and inspiration for transgender athletes, teams, and leagues around the world. To do anything at the elite level is extremely challenging and rare – and Chris has done that while navigating an internal experience that is uniquely different from anyone else we’ve had on this podcast. In this conversation, we dive into the complexities (and controversies) surrounding transgender athletes – certainly a hot topic in today’s society that deserves more open discussion. Moreover, you’ll hear from someone who has exemplified a true commitment to know himself, a relentless and uncommon pursuit of truth, and the extreme courage to live authentically._________________Subscribe to our Youtube Channel for more powerful conversations at the intersection of high performance, leadership, and meaning: https://www.youtube.com/c/FindingMasteryGet exclusive discounts and support our amazing sponsors! Go to: https://findingmastery.com/sponsors/Subscribe to the Finding Mastery newsletter for weekly high performance insights: https://www.findingmastery.com/newsletter Download Dr. Mike's Morning Mindset Routine! https://www.findingmastery.com/morningmindsetFollow us on Instagram, LinkedIn, and X.See Privacy Policy at https://art19.com/privacy and California Privacy Notice at https://art19.com/privacy#do-not-sell-my-info.

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the exceptionalness of who you are because you're worried about what other people might think or say. Okay, welcome back or welcome to the Finding Mastery Podcast. My name is Dr. Michael Gervais and by trade and training, I am a sport and performance psychologist. And the whole idea behind these conversations, behind this podcast, is to learn from people who are challenging the edges and the reaches of the human experience.

In business, in sport, in science, in life, where we're pulling back the curtain to explore how they have committed to mastering both their craft and their minds in an effort to understand how to express their potential and help others do the same. Now this week's conversation is with Chris Mosier, a hall of fame triathlete, all American do athlete, and a six time member of team USA. And Chris is far more than an elite athlete. He is a trailblazer. In 2015, Chris became the first transgender man to represent the United States in international competition. He is also the first transgender athlete to be sponsored by Nike, featured in the ESPN body issue, and to qualify for the Olympic trials in the gender that he identified. And he continues to be a leading voice for the gender inclusive policy in sport. He's a mentor and he's a role model and he's a source of inspiration for so many of us. Obviously the transgender athlete and team and community themselves, but for me as well, and for many people.

And I think this community is going to fall in love with exactly how he understands himself. And so I'm really excited to have this conversation and to introduce his philosophy and his way of living to you. Just as a side note here, when we look and celebrate the extraordinaries, if we're just celebrating the achievement, we're missing so much more. We're missing how they have organized their life, how they work from the inside out, how they build community to be able to support and challenge each other along the path. And Chris has done just that while navigating an internal experience that is so uniquely different from anyone else we've had on this podcast, that that is the reason I wanted to better understand. So in this conversation,

we dive into the complexities and the controversies surrounding transgender athletes. It's certainly a hot topic. And in today's society, this deserves a more open discussion. But more importantly, I think what you'll hear and hopefully feel is from someone who has exemplified a true commitment to know himself, a relentless and uncommon pursuit to get to the truth for him. And with that, let's jump right into this week's conversation with Chris Mosier. Chris, how are you? I'm great. Happy to be here. Yeah, stoked to be with you as well. So thank you for coming on and being interested to have this conversation because I don't think this is going to be an easy conversation in the sense that

you've already done so much of the hard work about knowing yourself and being authentic and having the courage to, to blend those two together that I'm excited to have a hard conversation with you. So I can better understand. And we as a community can better understand what it means to know thyself and to act accordingly. Yeah. I don't know that. I don't know. That'll be hard for me. I feel like I'm pretty familiar with doing the hard work. And so I'm entering this with curiosity and open mind and just excited to see where we go. Well, I think that's exactly what we're hoping takes place because you've done the work. Now you've been recognized as the first transgender athlete to represent the US. And so you're also the first transgender athlete sponsored by Nike and the first transgender athlete to qualify for the Olympic trials. And so like those in

of themselves, it's like you've got two things that are really hard to do, to know yourself, to push against the grain, to be authentically yourself. And then also to be in the upper crust of, you know, uh, the sport world. So I think what you've done is extremely hard. How have you done this? Honestly, the more that I've been thinking about this, a lot of this for me is kind of about control. It's about being able to control what I can control in times when things in my life felt so out of my control. In terms of how people viewed me, how people interacted with me in the world, how that didn't match how I knew and saw myself. And so a lot of what I think I've been able to accomplish and what has driven me

is this sort of need and desire to be in control of what I am able to hold on to. I do see a lot of parallels in the way that people compare my story in terms of like the narrative of, oh, you're so brave, you're so courageous. And there's something about that that doesn't sit super great with me in terms of that comparison. Okay, let's pause there because there's two things I want to pick up on. The control piece is really important. But the first thing that you're talking about is like you're not identifying with courage and that's interesting to me because I think it's I think it's really hard to be authentic in a world where there is there's great pushback against people's authenticity so that what people are, I think, experience

in modern society is not so much be yourself. That message is clear, but be yourself in relationship to what I think you should be or could be. And that part is really tricky, I think. And you've, I don't know, I'm, that's the part that I was anchoring to on the courage piece. Can you, can you sharpen that a little bit and say, no, that's not my experience, or I understand that, or like, sharpen that a little bit. Yeah. So think about how to talk through this, right? So I think that as a kid, I was always a really confident young kid. And it wasn't until other people around me told me that I was doing it

wrong, that I was being myself wrong, that I became less confident, that I started to build up walls, that I started to think about maybe how can I stop being exceptional or stop being me and try to be a little bit more in the middle where I'm not causing waves, where I'm not drawing attention to myself so that I can get through without being harassed, without being made fun of, without being picked on, without being bullied. And so, you know, I think that there was that dynamic that was happening in my youth. And in hindsight, I can see sort of the moments,

the situations, the instances of people telling me like, you know, you can't play sports like that. Little girls don't do that. Or you can't like, you know, you can't wear your hat backwards. Little girls don't wear their hats backwards. And at that time being, you know, a young girl, someone assumed to be a girl, you know, for just, you girl. For the listeners, I was assigned female at birth. I was raised and socialized as a girl and a young woman and grew up playing girls and women's sports. And so I didn't have the language or the terminology or the understanding of trans identity. Even through high school, I don't think that I knew truly what it meant to be trans. I didn't have people in my life. I didn't have examples. I didn't have movies or media to look

to to see that. So I always just sort of felt like me. And I just felt like I knew I wasn't like my brother. And I also knew I wasn't like the girls in my class. And I didn't see a place where I really fit. And so sport was really the place where I found my sense of self. It's where I found my confidence. It's where I found my community because all of the rest of me sort of went away. It was, I was loved and appreciated and valued on the court or the field because of what I brought to the team, what I brought as a teammate, what I brought as a leader. And people kind of forgot or ignored how odd they thought I was off the court or the field at that time. And so that was really where I found my courage, where I found my confidence. And then I had to sort of negotiate that with the rest of my life in the classroom, how people interact with me or

what they would say to me or, you know, all of those spots where I wasn't actively playing sports is where I sort of felt that resistance. So I guess, you know, I didn't think of it as being courageous to be myself then, but I recognize and I understand when people say like, oh, you know, it's really brave to be yourself. And I do in some senses feel that because the decision to come out publicly, the decision to tell other people my truth, while knowing that the world is a very hostile place for transgender people, and even more so a hostile that, that, that could be seen as an act of courage. But I think that for me, it was more an act of service. If that makes sense. You, you just paused as if you're trying to calibrate. If that was the right word to match the feeling that you are working from. Yeah. And I think it was, I mean, I think you can expect probably a lot of pauses here as I, as I try to really dig into some,

some real truths with you because you are asking questions that other interviewers don't ask, which I appreciate greatly. You know, I think that for me, it really was a sense of service. And this two parts, initially starting off as a service to myself, this deep desire, this understanding that, as an example, I can give you the moment that I understood that I needed to do something about my identity. I was, my birthday and my partner and I went to a small Mexican restaurant in New York city, kind of broke tradition because I never celebrated my birthday out in public. For me, I felt probably from the time that I was like, Whoa, wait, wait, wait. I know you're going to tell this whole story, but hold on.

Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. You never celebrated your birthday publicly. What does that mean? Yeah. So, so, you know, as a kid, I had like the fun bowling parties. My mom made me amazing cakes. Like I had the kids over, but when I hit high school, I really started to, and I think this is the accumulation of getting these messages that who I was, was not okay. That I really internalized the sense of, I am not worthy of being celebrated. And I, that's how I would articulate it. Now at the time, I think I just kind of was like, I'm not going to tell people when my birthday is. My birthday sort of falls, it falls very soon. And it's actually the time right before school

starts. So I kind of got away in school without having to have the big commotion. But even through college, my closest friends didn't know my Zodiac sign. They didn't know my birthday month. I was very, very tight lipped about it. Even into my professional work life, my boss knew my birthday from my paperwork, my hiring paperwork, but I swore her to secrecy and she would privately send me a text to say happy birthday. And I would work on my birthday every year because I was working at a college and it was kind of move in time.

But I was very, very quiet about it was kind of move-in time. But I was very, very quiet about it all the way up until transition where I started to kind of have a different reflection of myself. So that's what I mean. I just didn't tell anybody my birthday. And in my relationship, my partner understood that I didn't want to have a party. I didn't want to have friends over to celebrate i i having a birthday was really hard for me it made me sort of question my existence of why i was on this planet as the person that i was and how i was showing up in the world so uh we used to order in thai food and have like a private night in but on this on this particular birthday we went to a mexican restaurant uh one of these

small places in new york dimly lit loud loud music, already out of my element, two things I don't really like right there. You know, chair so close that I could eat the chips and salsa off the table next to me. And the waiter came over and asked, you know, asked for our order. And after, you know, ordered a burrito, pretty standard. And when they walked away, I just burst into tears. And for me, crying in public is something that was extra shameful. So being a young athlete, you know, being told that as a competitive person, as an athlete, you never show weakness. You don't let other people see when there's a problem, when you're concerned, don't let them see emotion. And then also as a young kid, I was also told by my parents, by my teachers that I was too sensitive, that I was too emotional.

And so I had like, gosh, there's just so much for us to unpack this, right? I had a lot of feelings about crying in public and I was crying for a particular reason, right? So what I figured out, I just was sitting there and my partner had never seen me in public have such a spill of emotions. How old was that? I was turning 29 and said, you know, do you, do you need to, do you need to leave? And I was like, yes. So I remember this sort of like, you know, swirling movie, like moment where I make my way out to the front of the restaurant, spill out onto the sidewalk of New York City and just crumble into a pile, inconsolable.

And, you know, the thing about New York City, people are walking by, cars are going by, no one even sees that I'm there. So, you know, there's like extra layers of invisibility that's happening for me. And we waited for the food. We took a bus or a car back. I don't even remember. I was just so worked up. And when I finally could say something, I just said, I never thought my life would be like this. I couldn't imagine living to another birthday as the person that I was in that moment, how I was showing up in the world. And it was a truly just a breaking point for me in so many ways.

Like it really kind of made me face this understanding about emotions, about vulnerability, about sensitivity, and all those things that I was told were wrong as a child, how I was showing up, of being sensitive, of being able to connect to people and feel emotions, all that stuff that I had suppressed through sports and through training. And it also made me confront this sort of idea of how I am showing up in the world right now just isn't the real version of myself. And I've known that for a little while, and I've suppressed it for even longer. And if I don't take action, I don't think I will be on this planet to have another moment like this. Finding Mastery is brought to you by LinkedIn

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When you're sharing this crisis, what is happening for you right now? What do you feel? Yeah. I feel like definitely a faster beating heart, a little bit of tension in here. And I also feel some constriction in my throat. And I think part of that is managing the telling of this story. As a public speaker, I think I've been asked to be faced with this story a number of times. And I probably started speaking about 2013. It came out in 2010. 2013, I started to do college speeches, corporations, things like that, sharing my coming out story. And then as I made Team USA and all the other things, sort of building on that.

And it really wasn't until about three or four years ago that someone asked me, what was the moment where you knew? And that memory popped up. And what I found was that in the telling of that story, in the retelling of that story, I found moments where I really have to try to hold on and embrace that and connect to that and feel that in my body. Because after several times of telling that story, I found that there were times when I was on stage where it almost felt like I was telling somebody else's story because I, as a, as a, as a, as a protective mechanism sort of disconnected from it.

Right. So like, that's why I wanted to just kind of understand your experience now. And so it it's, it's in you, you feel it, you're connected to it. And then help me understand why you chose not to cry right now. Cause I think that you could have, um, you know, I don't, I don't think that I felt that it was going to happen. I do have this amazing superpower of my eyes glassing over, like I'm about to cry at any moment, uh, particularly in telling that story. Yeah. Yeah. I didn't feel actually, and I'm not saying it won't happen. I guarantee we'll come back to that moment in my eyes again. Um, because I do, I just feel it so deeply,

you know, the moment where, particularly what it is about that story that really gets me to that point of deep emotion that's nearly pouring out of my face is this idea of not being here, right? This idea of, I was so close to this moment where I literally couldn't imagine a future for myself. I never saw myself getting married. I never saw myself having athletic success at the level that I have. I never saw myself making an impact on other people. I never saw myself being worthy of being on your podcast. You know, when, when I was in that moment of having people listen to me, of people looking to me for answers or guidance or inspiration or as aspiration, I never saw that in my future because I didn't

think that I'd actually have a future. And it was very difficult for me as a young person to imagine what my life might be like at 30 years old, even prior to that, probably 20, 21, 25, because I didn't see any examples or representations of who I knew myself to be deep down inside out in the world. And so what gets me to that emotion point is thinking, is thinking about, it's thinking about the young kids today who are in that situation, who are just looking for some glimpse of hope that would say, it's okay for you to be who you are. And it's actually not just kids, this world. And they're bombarded with messages that it's not okay, particularly transgender and non-binary kids right now. And so I think that's what really gets me to that point of

just feeling the gravity of it all, of just how heavy it is to carry that with me in every moment. You just shared one of the most painful moments you've had. And that being said, you still carry that pain, but you're using it to make a difference in others' lives. So there's a generativity in that so that it's not the pain is running you, but you're using that suffering to be able to be in touch with the need for being true. And I understand better now, one of your core philosophies that I'm trying to be the person I needed when I was younger. And I understand that now better because it sounds like when you were younger, your inner world was a mess. Like it sounds like you were struggling with deep despair,

a hopelessness, moderate to severe depression. I'm making this up a little bit, but just kind of putting a framework on it. I don't know if you were suicidal, but it certainly sounded like you didn't want to be here anymore and you didn't want to be you the way that you were showing up. Yeah. I mean, I would say more than anything, I just wanted to be me and I just wanted to be seen as me. Yeah. The qualifier there was the way you were presenting. So you were presenting to the world at that time as female. No, I mean, people assume that, but from the very, very earliest memories that I have are of young kids saying, are you a guy or a girl? Are you a boy or a girl? And literally,

it's super interesting to me to think about being a high school student athlete with a long ponytail and the same uniform as all my, you know, other teammates. And to have people question my gender identity long before I had the words to sort of interrogate that myself, that was always what came up. It was always, you know, like, that's a guy. And in a lot of ways, you know, that was like the ultimate compliment to me because I thought, oh, I loved it. And I have distinct memories of my mom just losing her shit in a, in a store because I had a hat on and somebody said, your son, blah, blah, blah. And she turned around and like, that's a little girl. And, you know, just like knowing that I was like, yes. And then, you know, but I didn't know how to tell that to my mom. I didn't know how to say that to other people. So, you know, I think that there was this real, this real struggle that I had of really actually knowing exactly who I was and also knowing that that that was not okay by other people's standards

and I and to to share that with them would have been a great danger to me as Chris that's but that's the thing I wanted to I think we needed this context for you and I to syncopate that's the courage I'm talking about is being authentic takes real courage in my mind at least because one it takes courage to know who you are because you've got to face some stuff you've got to be honest with yourself you've got to look and look again and look deeper and look again and calibrate like am i being honest is this you know that process takes remarkable courage and then to live accordingly to it is like the next evolution of that courage. But the first process to really look within, that's not easy. The second process to act

accordingly, that's not easy. And so that's what, like for me, that's what I wanted to just understand better for you as an emblem for that, for people, not just like kids or adults, but like across. And then I do think it's probably important to get a sense of like your take on assigned gender, you know, like, and I think that this is a conversation that many people might not fully understand is that gender is not necessarily biological there is an assigning of gender at birth so the doc you know kind of hold you by your ankles I'm being like silly okay go NAD like looks and sees, okay, gonads. All right. Male box checked, right? Like, can you walk through educational for educational purposes as well? Like two, two things. One is the gender assigning conversation. And then two, the second part, which is like the, the,

the process of coming out and, you know, the, and the process of transitioning and there's a medical conversation and there's a social conversation. So there's a long-winded way for you to help educate us on, on the assigning conversation and then the transitioning. Yeah, sure. So, you know, gender assigned at birth, exactly how the cartoon version that you just gave us of a doctor, that's a designation that's done by a doctor. And usually it's done by external inspection of genitals. And for most people in the world, that matches up. And so people are assigned female at birth, they are raised and socialized. And that to me is a really important part, that socialization, reinforcing the expectations that people put on

others based on their gender, and, you know, identify as a woman and live and navigate their life, you know, in that way. And it all lines up for them. And then for somebody who's trans, who is transgender, or even for somebody who's non-binary, it's really helpful to think of gender as not just the two checkboxes that a doctor would typically say outside of intersex, which also people could be assigned intersex at birth. Which is having both sets of genitalia. Yeah. Or some variation that's considered outside of what adopters would quote unquote norm. And for many intersex people, they are unaware that they're intersex until maybe later in life, in definitely related because a lot of times people conflate intersex with transgender. And particularly in the sports conversation, they're very closely related in terms of being the policing of people's bodies in sport. So, you know, I think that's the first piece is that we are assigned something at birth and then we have these expectations and you know a lot of that is it's just so social in terms of like thinking okay my mom had uh you know two sons

and a daughter and i think that the expectations that she had for me were different than those of my brother and that was you know like at no fault of hers that is completely typical of a lot of people's experiences and so maybe she did picture me in a white wedding dress, you know, like marrying some dude, like, I don't know. We've actually never had that conversation, but I assume that there were based on the way that we were parented, you know, my brother and I were parented, that there were different expectations of how we would show up. And I experienced that not just from parents, but every adult in my life, you know, from the age of four years old, when my aunt pulls me behind the house and says, you can't run around

with your shirt off, little girls don't do that. And all the four-year-old bodies look the same. And I'm perplexed about why I have to sweat in a shirt and my brother can run around through the sprinkler without one, right? So like those sort of things that pop up in my mind in terms of being socialized in a particular way is it makes a difference. Right. In terms of coming out and transition. So every single person comes to their understanding about their identity at a different point. And there are a variety of reasons why people can't come out, why it's not safe for them to come out. Some of that might be family. It might be location that they live in the country or even what country they live in, because in some places being trans is a death sentence. And so, you know, there are a variety of reasons why one may not be able to be authentic. As I'm saying that, I'm sort of thinking about how, you know, in our Courage conversation, how it's actually a great privilege for me to have been able to come out in the way that I have been and to have the support system that I've had and to be able to be my authentic self.

And it shouldn't be a privilege, but I do very much see it in that way. In terms of transition, there are three main ways that a trans person may transition. So the first is social, and that would be changing things like name, pronouns, hairstyle, clothing, you know, how we express our gender to other people. And it may include the facilities that we use as well. So the restroom, the locker room, so on. A medical transition. So some trans people choose to undergo a medical transition that might be taking hormones or hormone suppression, puberty blockers for young people, or a variety of surgeries and it's important to note that there's no order in which this has to occur for one to be trans. You don't have to do all of these. You don't have to do any of these. These are just options for people to transition. The third one would be legal, and that would be changing your legal documents, birth certificate, driver's license, passport, those sort of things.

So legally getting your gender marker changed on those. And so it's really important to note that there's not just one way to be transgender. So some people may make a social transition and never touch a medical thing in their life. Some people may want to go multiple medical routes. It's really individual and in my view, is a lifelong process. So for me, there's no end point to transition. There's kind of a start point for me. I consider my testosterone day, my tea day, as my second birthday. So now that I'm full on celebrating birthdays, I'm doing it twice a year.

So I celebrate that moment of real authenticity. And I kind of love that day more than my real birthday. What is a T day? My T day is the first day that I took testosterone. And so, um, testosterone, uh, trans people can shorten that to T. So yeah, my T day. So it's my, uh, my maniversary, if you will. Okay. So, and the celebration that there is like, listen, I'm going medical. Like I'm going to, socially, I already did some stuff. I'm going to take some medical practices or use some medical practices to further enhance my transition. Is that fair to say?

Yeah. So let me clarify that a little bit, right? So in my personal, so, you know, big thing here, I'm a case study of one. And so while I am a role model for some people, or I'm a visible trans person, and people can learn from my experience, I really truly am a case study of one, I can't speak for all trans people, I can't speak for all trans men, I can't speak for all white trans men who live in my neighborhood, but I am a case study of one. So for me, my process was sort of kind of trying to understand how I would feel most comfortable showing up in the world. And I had a strong sense that based on the years and years of people- Wait, hold on, hold on, hold on. I love this, dude. I like i i know that i know it's probably like a screeching halt right into you know your story but like dude i just have to tell you i love this it's like i speak for myself i want to tell you my story i've thought a lot i've done a lot of work here and there's a fluidness to the way that you're able to string together ideas.

And there's also a gracefulness, you know, in a different way. It's like, I feel like saying, like, I see how you're working right now. And that's what I love more than anything. Rather, like, the stories are good you know like it makes me feel closer to like how you show up um as a human you know across your life like that's you know but obviously there's much more to understand about you but that for me that's stories is like I feel a little closer to the person but the fluid nature I find striking. Thank you. Yeah.

And I also, like, I want to get right back into the story, so let's not lose that. But I also feel, or sense is a better word, that you lead with your head more than you lead with emotion. But I don't know that to be true. You know, I think that they move together. And I would guess that, you know, that one is in certain rooms. Yes.

In certain rooms. Yes, absolutely. And I largely feel like in the last three years, which correlates to the increased legislative attacks on transgender people and the very real negative consequences that the trans community is facing in the United States in terms of bills that remove young people's chances to participate in sports in the way that I did as a young person, in ways that challenge or block or prevent trans people from receiving the medical care that quite literally saved my life. Like I feel in those cases, you know,

I can't lead with emotion because it's just too much. And I try to balance- Too much for you or too much for others to- Yes. Both. Both. It is. Both. Absolutely too much for me and too much for other people to take seriously. So I've found that there's actually a real strategic nature that has to happen. That has to be leading with the head and being thoughtful about meeting people where they're at. What a schema. Yeah. But what an interesting schema is that like you're saying, listen, I am not going to be the emotional flailing person that I was irrational in the decisions that I made. And whimsically. So I decided one day and kind of like I was drunk and got a tattoo. You're like, listen, I'm going to be, I'm going to use like a very sound presentation to, to demonstrate the deep care that I've attended to the deep care that,

that I've, yeah. Is that the right way to say it? That the, the deep care that I have paid in being true to myself. So I, I just, I didn't understand that until I asked and now I totally get it, but you still have emotion. I see, I feel it underneath, you know, it's not like you're, I'm not saying you're cold and you're like disconnected. I'm not saying any of that, but there's, I like that you presented it. Oh, and you nailed it though. I mean, there was a time in, in the early part of my transition where I was as stoic as could be, and I would not show any emotion and I was not, you know,

not even not show emotion. I was actually kind of hard, you know, like, like I wanted to, to make sure that people knew I was a man. And, and, you know, like, like I wanted to, to make sure that people knew I was a man. And, and, you know, this is a very interesting thing about my experience. And man, I love being trans. I just have to say that, like, I love being trans because what an amazing, unique experience to navigate the world, you know, being perceived as a woman, have all of those experiences growing up in the way that I was spoken to and learned different things, and then have the opportunity to make myself, right? And to go, like, I didn't get those expectations that my brother had when he was eight and nine and 11 and 15, right? Like,

there was nobody in my world putting that sort of toxic masculinity on me. There was nobody in my world putting that sort of toxic masculinity on me. There was nobody in my circle who was telling me that I needed to perform masculinity in a certain way. And so there was this time period where I was trying on a lot of different versions that I had seen in my life and trying to see what fit. Literally, two years where I would not wear pink or purple because I did not want to be seen as, you know, like feminine or, you know, I wanted to make sure that it was like people were getting my pronouns right, that they were seeing me. And it was through that sort of like imbalance because it truly wasn't imbalanced. That was not me. That was

performing that I really figured out like, whoa, whoa, whoa. Okay. I'm good with me. I can wear nail polish if I want to. I can wear a pink shirt. I can show up how I want. I can listen to whatever music I want because that literally was something I was thinking about. Like I couldn't listen to certain music because I was worried about what people would say that it was so important for me to be able to be, um, except masculine or something like you're, you're working to fit into that circle as opposed to, uh, like, Hey, listen, it's, I am an N of one. And just to be clear in science, that means like a number there's one research subject. And like, I am, I hope we all can say, yeah, we're all N of ones. I am not a statistic. I am not an average.

I am uniquely me. There's no one like me in this world. And so I'm going to do my best to cobble these moments together to make sense of how the world works, how I work, how others have a... I think that kind of the important takeaway for me is like, how do I experience experiences? And if I can get, if I can be, uh, true to the virtues and principles that matter most to me with the unfolding experiences that I am engaged in, that is what a living masterpiece is. And if I happen to have a craft that I'm working through with it, like it's really cool, you know? So all that being said,

I want to go back to tea day. Okay. So I interrupted you when you had said, no, like I just wanted to figure out like how I could better represent how I felt in the world. And for me, it sounds like what you're saying for me, testosterone was one way that was going to help support that. Yeah. And, and it wasn't the first way that I originally thought of. And so I kind of went through this process of trying to minimize the impact on the people around me. And I was compromising some of my own desires to try to make it easier for my coworkers or for my family and for my friends and really trying to see like, okay, initially, maybe I'll be okay if people call me he sometimes and she sometimes, and maybe that

would be okay with me. Because from that very early age of people, you know, quote unquote, misgendering me, but actually getting it right. I found great joy in when people would call me he. And at the same time, I would feel deep, deep embarrassment and shame when one of the adults in my life said that is wrong. And so, you know, I think that I really had to reckon with that feeling of saying, it was really important for me, right, when I was early in my transition to have people appropriately gender me in my pronouns and accept me into male spaces because of that deep shame that I felt as a child. And because I internalized the sense that I was doing something wrong if people didn't see me the way that I saw myself. So in those early days, that first year or two of going out in the world, you know, starting testosterone, going into men's spaces, if someone would say she to me,

you know, I always say that I felt like a cartoon character, like a video game character where I go out of the house with a full powered bar, you know, but every time one of these she's or hers or ma'am would happen, my power would get knocked down. And literally every day for the first year of that transition, I felt like I was coming home the shell of a person and would just have to recharge to take on the world again. Finding Mastery is brought to you by Momentus. When it comes to high performance, whether you're leading a team, raising a family, pushing physical limits, or simply trying to be better today than you were yesterday, what you put in your body matters. And that's why I trust Momentus. From the moment I sat down with Jeff Byers, their co-founder and CEO, I could tell this

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evening, it's a simple way to cue my body just to wind down. And when I'm locked into deep work, they also help me stay focused for longer without digital fatigue creeping in. Plus, they look great. Clean, clear, no funky color distortion. Just good design, great science. And if you're ready to feel the difference for yourself, Felix Gray is offering all Finding Mastery listeners 20% off. Just head to FelixGray.com and use the code finding mastery 20 at checkout. Again, that's Felix Gray. You spell it F-E-L-I-X-G-R-A-Y.com and use the code finding mastery 20 at felixgray.com for 20% off. I'd love to just hear how you respond to this thought

is that nothing in the external world can change you. And you say, what the hell do you mean? I say, you know, like it's the only way any of us change is based on the way we experience and the way we filter and the way we interpret events. And some of those events are internal and many of them are external events that are happening outside and around us,

but nothing outside of us changes us. I think you could create the most dramatic external events or series of events and say, yep, no, I got 15 alternatives that I have seen or heard of or could have happened for a person. It's not the external world.

And it's not until I'm going on here a little bit, but it's not until we fully embrace that idea that it is, it is always available within me on how I am going to interpret experience, you know, whatever event is taking place, that it is always inside of me. Everything I need is already inside me. And I'm not saying that in a blasphemy way. I'm saying that it is not, it is not acceptable to me any longer to be whipped around by the external demands and circumstances of my world when I know I have the capacity within me, but I'm not masterful yet to be able to eloquently adjust to those external demands. But that's the North Star for me.

So I'd love to hear how you, and please don't allow my emphatic nature dictate your experience. No, look at this. Look at this. No, honestly. So yes, I agree with you wholeheartedly. But at that time, I did not have the capacity. I did not have the understanding. I did not have the sense of self. And I didn't have a sense of possibility that it even could happen that I could control that. And at some point, I couldn't tell you when this changed. It was pretty early on. And it was definitely before 2015, like making Team USA, where I have this strong sense of, you know, I can't control other people. I can only control myself, right? So I adopted this idea that other people's opinions of me is none of my business.

And that changed everything for me because I took ownership and control of what I could control. And I think I had been seeking that my entire life. I just didn't know that it was possible. I didn't know that I could show up in the way that I wanted to show up and not care about how people perceive me. Part of that is a safety issue, I'll say, right? So like, part of my deep desire to blend in with men to be, you know, seen as a man to be acknowledged in that way, was that I had a deep fear of violence against me. And that's based on incidents that have happened in my experience, where people, you know, lashed out verbally or physically attacked me because they couldn't immediately understand or identify my gender.

Can you bring me into an experience? Absolutely. I mean, I can think of multiple times on my commute in New York City where I had walking down the street. And what pains me in saying this is New York City, right? You would think that be, if you're going to transition anywhere in the world, New York City would be the place where you'd be like, yeah, who's going to care? Also, you'll see a lot of trans people and queer people there. You know, I was walking down the street in Chelsea, which is thought of as a gay friendly area, queer friendly area. And I had somebody in front of me. And when I went on the sidewalk, they looked at me and they said, faggot, and punched me in the face. And that was

often, so this is kind of a homophobic slash transphobic experience. And a lot of these experiences that I had were sort of blended in that way that while I've been called tranny you know sometimes i think a lot of what what came up was um anti-gay slurs right and so um you know having riding my bike in new york city now i'm not messing with anybody riding my bike i'm just riding to work and having a car full of people come up and and yell anti-trans slurs and throw cigarette butts at me. Wait, hold on. I'm confused a little bit because how did they know? What are they picking up on? What's the thing that they're responding to? It's purely visual. I think that that was it. It was that I didn't conform to what they thought a man should look like. And part of that might be-

You didn't have a mustache. I did not have a mustache until the pandemic. So this is a, yeah, this is a new acquisition here. Try as I did. It just didn't work out for me. A mustache does not make a man, but I do. I'm joking, but I don't get it. And by the way, my son, he's got the italian latin roots um my wife is cuban el salvadorian and so he got the he got the the hair bit and he's he's 14 he looks at me he goes dad one day maybe you'll have a beer you know he's like he crushes me you know on that like because he's got he's almost got one now you know 14 but so anyways i say that in jest but um i don't understand what, what were they picking up on? What were they seeing? This was, this was my great struggle. I mean, honestly, this is what I think caused me the most stress and strain in the early times of feeling like I wasn't accepted, feeling like

it was unsafe for me was that people weren't seeing me the way that I saw myself. And despite dressing masculinely, I mean, honestly, when I transitioned, the only thing that changed was my pronouns, because I've been representing myself in this way as I am today as a person for the longest, like as long as for the longest time, since I could pick out my own clothes, right? Like this was, I dressed masculinely, I presented myself moved in the same way that I move now. Like, you know, what people were picking up on, it was that I didn't match what they thought a dude should be. And I think maybe it's because, you know, I'm, I'm super slim guy. Like, you know, I, I couldn't tell you. And I think that's what caused me so much, um, brutal stress. Yeah.

That could create an easy recipe for like walk on eggshells ptsd type you know high absolutely yeah yeah did you have any of that oh yeah and i think i still carry that with me today yeah yeah so how are you sorry how are you not doing anger as your response like you it you know back back the up you, you know, it started that way. It's, it definitely started that way as a, as a young person that started that way, like to the point of, you know, anger management. Uh, I think I, I, I experienced my outlashes in, in the form of anger and, and fighting in some ways. And I started taking martial arts, uh, when I was eight years old. I had

a black belt by the time I was like 10 and a half. I was teaching adult classes by the time I was 11 to 14 years old. You know, that was really helpful for me in terms of discipline and, you know, a sense of confidence when I think that was about the time where things, you know, where the adults started to beat the confidence out of me, uh, verbally, not, you know, not really being beat, but, um, those messages that I was getting were really kind of, that was the time period eight to 14, right? So the martial arts gave me a lot of confidence. And what I loved about it was that I was the only girl. And so here I was with all these, all these guys, like feeling like I fit in feeling like I was respected. And it, you know, it was a very positive experience for me and illuminating experience to say like, wait a second, like this, this is starting to make sense for me.

So it's okay. This is a naive question, right? Like like i don't understand this part because there's a reason why you want to plant your flag of being a transgender person as opposed to saying i am a male person so in is that to honor the transition is that to honor like the the journey and maybe as that flag is tall that other people that feel like they would like to, or would have liked to might be able to like, help me understand that. Cause you, I just don't, I don't quite get that, you know? So, and that's a, there's a naivete to me not understanding this. Yeah. You know, so I think that part of it is when we think about gender on a spectrum, right? Not the two check boxes, but a line in between and recognizing that people may fall anywhere along this line. They may feel more masculine, more feminine. They may identify

more with being a man or less with being a man, but have been identified male at birth. I think to allow that flexibility is the key first step, I think, of shifting our perspective on gender and identity and how we define ourselves. And then for me, what I found was that when I came out the first time, which was a calculated decision, lots of therapy sessions, because you're right, honestly, for a year before I came out, I just wanted to quit my job, move to another state, get new friends and be the dude that I always knew I was meant to be. Start over. I just wanted to start over and be seen as who I knew deep down inside that I am. But what I found was that as I was going through this process, I was most pained by the lack of visible role models or possibility models in the world that could have drastically... If I would have seen a trans

athlete on a Nike billboard, it would have changed my entire life. How would you know that the athlete is trans? The internet, right? Like digging into it, honestly. Because part of it is the visibility, not visibly trans. There are moments. Sorry. I think that this is important. Okay. So from a presentation standpoint, I can identify with being male. And at the same time, I could wear nail polish and dresses i could wear i could like to wear wigs but i yeah i was born with testicles and identify with being um a male person and on the same side like i like to wear you know a full fluid range of clothes that's not i want to be very clear to people that's not what transgender is right yes so like that's what

i'm saying like if you were to see somebody you don't necessarily know if they're transgender like that's the part i was getting at like what did they pick up on and maybe you're saying listen i was right in the i was like an adolescent you know like i was right in this weird kind of phase where like yeah dude if you saw me you be like, what's going on here? You know, like, so that's what I'm trying to sort out from like just a purely visual standpoint. Yeah. So, okay. So the first thing is that why do I plant my flag is that, you know, I, I, I realized

that there was a severe lack of representation in sports, in media, in society, in pop culture of trans people. And I wanted to be that person that I wish that I would have seen when I was a kid that would have opened up possibilities for me to more fully express myself and articulate that sense of self to others. Now, why, you know, so what were they picking up on? You might, you might actually be onto it right there because when I started testosterone, I went from being like a 29 year old androgynous person assumed to be a woman to being like a 14 year old dude. And so like, there is this like thing that happens where, you know, as I started to experience some of the physical changes, which, you know, like a range of stuff, I didn't get taller, I didn't get more, you know, like, like, I'm still a pretty tiny dude. which, you know, like a range of stuff. I didn't get taller. I

didn't get more, you know, like, like I'm, I'm still a pretty tiny dude, but you know, like I, there was something about the masculinization of my face and like, you know, just like kind of a subtle change. And part of it was also the, the happiness and the life that people could start to see in my eyes as opposed to how I was showing up before. But I think that there was this setback of age. So I did go into this early second puberty looking maybe like an early high school guy. Okay. All right. Well, so I totally get that. That might have been it. I get that. Okay. Yeah. So the flagpole is really as a representation for, uh, just to honor the, the journey, the

adventure, the process of becoming you. And then also as a way to say, Hey, if, if there's something you're interested in, like, you know, look at me, like you can do it too. Something like that. So, um, okay. So all that being said is, um, I would like to better understand sport because this is a world that in some respects is a microcosm and other respects it's unique to itself. And so when you said, all right, I'm pretty damn good at this thing. I was assigned to be female. I transitioned to be

male. I experienced myself as a transgender person and I love sport and I'm pretty damn good at it. So I took, I took a healthy dose of testosterone and I went from, I don't know what that is. I'm, you know, I don't know how much that. I'm, you know, I don't know how much that is, but, but I am now going to go compete. And so you would be competing. And this is a high level. We're talking about the U S national team. We're talking about like, you know, that in any sport that is a high bar to cross. I there's, there's like a handful of questions I want to ask because it was the place that gave you solace, that was a sanctuary for you when you were younger, where everything could fade away and you could just be. And now you're right in the middle of a political swirl. Like,

wait, hold on. You can't compete here. What? This isn't fair, quote unquote. So I think it's a harder conversation to have about being assigned male and then transitioning to female, and then the fairness question comes up even more there. But can we just talk about your experience first, and then we'll do kind of the flip-flop experience, if you don't mind. Finding Mastery is brought to you by Cozy Earth. Over the years, I've learned that recovery doesn't just happen when we sleep. It starts with how we transition and wind down. And that's why I've built intentional routines into the way that I close my day. And Cozy Earth has become a new part of that. Their bedding, it's incredibly soft, like next level soft. And what surprised me the most is how much it actually helps regulate temperature.

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and a hair serum. With Caldera Lab, it's not about adding more. It's about choosing better. And when your day demands clarity and energy and presence, the way you prepare for it matters. If you're looking for high quality personal care products that elevate your routine without complicating it, I'd love for you to check them out. Head to calderalab.com slash finding mastery and use the code finding mastery at checkout for 20% off your first order. That's calderalab, C-A-L-D-E-R-L-A-B.com slash Finding Mastery. Yeah. So let's start like right before I transitioned. So I was experiencing some success in triathlon in the women's category, but I was really new to it. And so, you know, I won my first try, decided like, okay, maybe I can do this,

but I was too embarrassed to tell people because it was in the women's category. And I, you know, that sort of got me thinking like it really was through sport that I understood, you know, that what led to that birthday moment, that burrito moment, it really was that being at the starting line of these races and having to wear a pink swim cap and start with all the women just didn't feel right. There was the increased dissonance every time that I was in sport. And so while sport was a really safe space for me as a young person, and it was a meditative and therapeutic space for me through transition, it was also a space where I was on eggshells. And I was really tense because there was this understanding that all of this is new to everybody. My coaches,

my competitors, my teammates, like I'm the first trans person that they've met. And for, I would say almost all of them and definitely the first person in sport. And so, you know, it, it, again, like there was this, it was both of those things. It was really a safe space, a space I'd love the space. I felt most like, as well as a space that felt really hostile and scary. And so that started to change as I felt more comfortable in my own skin. And so I didn't start off, I wasn't on the women's national team prior to transition. I was very early in this athletic journey. What transition gave me was the confidence to let all of the other things go and really focus on my training and my racing. So, you know, prior to transition, I was showing up at every race nervous about if someone would call me out on my gender,

if someone would say I'm in the wrong space, you know, having to tell people that I was in the women's category. I was even nervous about getting my race photos. Triathlon uniforms are pretty form-fitting. And I was like, oh, somebody's going to see my chest. And then what is that going to mean when I see these photos later on? So many of these things about transition and about things that were so outside of my control were swirling in my head every moment. And so when I finally came to that point of saying like, you know, other people's opinions of me are none of my business. And also I'm confident in and able to own the power of my identity and stand here

and say, no, no, this is who I am. And I deserve to be at the starting line, like all you other guys, right? When I was able to do that, I just saw my performance excel. All of that effort and energy that I was wasting on putting into other people's thoughts and opinions of me, that I could just double down on my workouts, that I could really just focus on what I needed to do to be better. And I think that became my safe space again, which helped me to accomplish, you know, what I did athletically. Part of the thing about that is that regardless of what I accomplish, you know, people are always going to say, well, you know, it was only this or duathlon is a side sport and it's not like it's an obscure sport or, you know, I went to the Olympic trials and race walking and people are like, you know, like want to talk about, give people an excuse to diminish everything that, that you've done, that you sports like that, or, or what they go to. So there's something about that, that, um, is a little troubling to me, you know, in thinking about my experience, but all of this has been for

me to try to open doors for other people as well. And so like, when I initially started this off by saying like, it was like me coming out was kind of an active service to, to myself and owning the power of my identity and being comfortable with myself again, but also service to every trans person or non-binary person who comes after me, who wants the opportunity to be their authentic self and pursue their passions and not have to give any of that up. This conversation is loaded because people come into this conversation with tripwires that they're unaware of and maybe tripwires that they're very clear about, you know, and they call those something else like boundaries or philosophical positions. But this conversation is loaded for a lot of reasons. I imagine that people

are finding prickly points in this conversation that they're wrestling with, which is like, I don't know, like, listen, I don't care what you guys say is that i don't want my boy wrestling with girls i don't want my girl to do this or play basketball with a boy like like there's things that are happening for people right now as we talk thinking about their own personal lives and so how do you respond to you know this idea that the a b team you know which is a philosophical position that people have taken which is okay listen let's put all humans together and we're gonna have an a b an a team and a b team and if you're bigger faster stronger if you are more skilled and can do this whatever set of skills on demand and consistently you're on the a team and if you don, whatever set of skills on demand and consistently,

you're on the A team. And if you don't make that, you're on the B team. If you don't make that, you're on a C team. You know, so it's the AB type of thing as a philosophy for, let's just call it sport. What's your position on that as a model for humans and sport? Yeah. I mean, sport is such a special place, right? And I think it's such a special, unique environment

where it is a microcosm of society. And I believe sport is a vehicle for social change. And that's really the perspective that I take. And so any listener who is grappling with some of the things that I've said today that doesn't quite understand where I'm coming from, I get it. I feel you. And I just challenge you to just sit with it and unpack some of the things that you

learned when you were younger that might lead you to your position today. I think this is an amazing exercise for everybody to do, to think about what was your earliest messages that you received about trans people when you were younger? When did you first learn about trans people? And who told you those messages? Were they positive? Were they negative? Were they neutral? And what I've learned in my experience is that this is largely age dependent, right? My grandparents' experience is very different than my parents' experience, very different than my experience. And I have a younger brother who is 17 years younger than me, and his experience is totally different. Like he's never known a world without trans people

in the media. And that's an incredible thing. My early experiences when I was younger were Jerry Springer and Maury Povich, And they were violent interactions with trans women. They were, you know, a gotcha moment where someone was being deceptive or deceitful and they're not really who they say they are. And it erupts in some sort of fight. And, you know, I saw that when I was younger and I was like, that's not me.

That's not me. So that, you know, I must not be trans. Like that was my early that's not me. So that, you know, I must not be trans. Like I, that was my early experience of, of the community. So when, when we sit and think about those experiences, how every day after school in high school, I would watch Ace Ventura, Pet Detective with my brother. Cause it was on like whatever streaming channel that was looping. And the whole premise of the movie is that Finkel is Einhorn and Einhorn is Finkel, that the main character is a trans woman. And there are these scenes where Ace Ventura is naked in the shower, burning his clothes and plunging his face and vomiting. And the whole movie is transphobic. And I was taking in those

messages, not thinking about what that was doing to me, you know, in terms of limiting my ability to express myself. So if, if any of the listeners, like just one, I would say, watch the film Disclosure on Netflix, which goes through the representation of trans people in the media, and just sit with that and unpack some of those messages that you had. And, you know, just the thing is like, we don't know what we don't know. Right. That is like one of my core philosophies that we need to be open to learning of other people's experiences. And you're right, so many people come to this with this idea of fairness, being at odds with inclusion, that it's impossible to include trans people and still have competition to be fair. And I will also say the asterisk on this is that people aren't largely talking about me. Like when I made Team USA, I got a shrug and a hypothetical pat on the butt and it was like a good job, buddy. And that was it. Very few people pushed back against me on that. But if we have a trans woman or a trans girl who just wants to play the sport that they

love, they receive exponentially more pushback and discrimination and harassment just for expressing interest in playing girls or women's sports. So there's a real difference in the dynamic. Leah Thomas. Correct. Yeah. And so, and we can explain that in just a moment, but you're suggesting that if you were assigned male and then now go through a transition and you want to play female sports, right? And so a couple of things that I think are really important to know is that you can't do the medical change without a psychology, you know, like a psychologist signing off on this. Like in other words, a quote unquote professional that says, no, no, real work has been done here. This is not

an overnight, you know, Las Vegas kind of thing, or a manipulation, a minute manipulation of trying to get an advantage in sport, you know, I guess is fair. So, so anyways, there's got to be some real work done to do the medical piece that being said it'd be i would i would like to set up a scenario and see how you respond to this um joel and b so he's seven foot he plays for the um the 76ers as a basketball player, 280 pounds, large human. And a seven footer, like that's a real advantage. If you can move in any kind of way, like that's a real advantage in a lot of sports. Let's say that he says, ah, you know what? I don't feel right here.

This is not like the way that I want to do this. I don't, I've been, I've been faking my way through here. And I actually identify with being a female. And he goes through the transition. Would you suggest that Joel Embiid, it would be right? I'm choosing that word with a lot of openness here for him to be able to play in the WNBA. Finding Mastery is brought to you by iRestore. When it comes to my health, I try to approach things with a proactive mindset. It's not about avoiding poor health. This is about creating the

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L E E S a.com. The promo code is finding mastery for 25% off and then plus an extra $50 on us because quality sleep is just too important to leave to chance. So I see what you're doing here and I'm happy that you're, that you're doing it actually. Cause this is, this is what the, you know, right-leaning media does. This is what the, the liberal media does also is play on these, like these huge stereotypes and these hypothetical what if situations. What happens if we get this seven foot NBA player who wants to transition and play college or play high school basketball, you know, with my 14 year old, like that's deeply unfair. You know, we have to separate reality and these hypotheticals. And so like, you know, we could go through any number of hypothetical situations of what if some, what if so-and-so wanted to transition NFL linebacker, would it be appropriate for her to play rugby in college, right? Like all of these cases. And I think what

it comes down to is thinking about first the purpose of sport and the reality of the situation. So one, like we shouldn't be looking at the rules for the Olympic and Paralympic games for international federations for the most elite of the elite or professional athletes. And you probably know the statistic better than I do of like how many people will actually make it to the Olympic Games. I mean, we're talking if only 1% of the NCAA athletes go on to play professionally, we're talking about a very small fraction of people who will ever make that elite status.

Taking the rules that apply to professional and elite athletes and applying them to our youth sports, which is what's happening, youth and recreational sports, which is what's happening in the United States right now, is wrong. It's unfair to children. And think about the purpose of sport. When we're talking about high school volleyball, or you're talking about your middle school track team, it's not about winning championships, gold medals, you know, like world titles. It's literally to have an educational experience, to move your body, to participate, to be a part of a team, and to learn all those

amazing values that young people get in sports. like all those things that I love about myself, I learned through youth sports. And so we should be able to say that there should be differences in the different levels of play. And I would even go so far as to say, there may be differences between sports. And so what we've seen largely is the pushback that's happened on trans women has been in individual sports, right? It's individual sports like swimming, like track and field, like cross country, like wrestling. Those are the sports that we've seen pushback largely in running community though, as a, as a driver of this and not in team sports. And so, you know, are the, the rules be able to be flexible there as well? You know, then I think just this idea of thinking that any person just on a whim would decide that they're trans and then overnight just go like,

I'm going from the NBA to the WNBA without recognizing that there's a process, like a long process that people have to take in order to get the care that they need, as well as to comply with the rules in different sports is part of the problem, right? Because people are basing their opinions on stereotypes and myths and misconceptions. And the reason that we do this, the reason we go to that seven foot basketball player is this inherent idea that anyone assigned male at birth will be bigger, faster, stronger, and a better athlete than anyone assigned female at birth. When what we've really seen is that trans people are more closely aligned with the gender they identify with than with that that they were assigned at birth. And so part of that is social,

but part of that is also experience-wise in just how they feel and how they integrate into a class or a team is that they are more closely aligned with their gender that they identify with. And so this idea that anyone would use trans identity as a way to have a competitive advantage is just it's just false. There are safeguards and mechanisms in place to keep cisgender men out of women's sports. And I think also to go back to your ABC, you know, all humans compete together piece. You know, I think that I now as a trans man, am a stronger advocate for women's sports than I ever was when I was assumed to be a woman, largely because I didn't want to be seen as a woman and be advocating for women's sports. But I think that there's a great value in supporting, uplifting, and championing women's sports and a need for women's sports. But at the same time, I believe also that trans women are

who they say they are, that trans women are women, trans girls are girls, and that they also should have opportunities to play in sports with their peers. There you go. And I think that that hypothetical is, it is a good forcing function to see kind of, to explore what is at the core of many people's fear, which is it's not going to be fair, right? It's like a fairness thing, I think, than anything else. And what I hear you saying from that hypothetical is that, listen, this hypothetical is not

worth entertaining because it's so rare that it's not likely to ever happen. Because I think that that's the position you're taking. But if that's the case, and it was happening now, how would you land on that conversation if you were on some governing board for one of the professional teams, whether it's swimming or basketball or whatever? That's a consideration to take place. Yeah, sure. I mean, I think if it was truly happening, I'd have to look at the situation and would probably adjust my views and consider a lot of different factors. But the fact is that I've consulted on multiple national governing policies, international

federations, professional sports teams, collegiate high school, and so on. And what I find is that when people are coming to the table, often that they're coming from, you know, this place of the Ace Ventura, Maury Povich, Jerry Springer background of this very media crafted idea of what a trans person is. profile stories, as we had Laurel Hubbard in the Tokyo Olympics, as we've had Leah Thomas in NCAA swimming, you know, to have an athlete who's had moderate success tends to throw everybody off to say that every trans person is going to dominate in sport. When the truth of the matter, there's very few people who could mention the names of trans people. Trans people win and lose just like anybody else. And also to include trans people's voices as we're making policies. And that's one of the things that I've seen that has not really happened is national governing bodies have made decisions by consulting with well-known anti-trans groups and activists as their experts,

and then use that as a way to you know to put forth a policy that's intended to keep trans people out of sport it's not about inclusion it's about limiting access for a very small minority of athletes okay so what is that population percentage what population let's go broader population what is the percentage of people in the broader population that are transgender yeah full full i mean you'll get varying numbers but around one percent okay and then in sport yeah much harder to to recognize right but i can say uh in sport what i do have statistics on is say like youth sports right so we know that 68 of all young people play youth sports and of that 24 of lgbtq kids play sport and then if you do so we already have a huge disparity

between your straight and cisgender kids and queer kids you know uh at less than half of queer kids are participating in sports and then if you drill into that, only 14% of trans boys and 12% of trans girls play sports. So let's go less than 1% of your youth, right? And then 12% of those trans girls who want to play. And then to assume that they would be good at a sport is also something different, right? So like the thing that I always come back to is that there's not one single factor that makes an athlete great. And I think you could interview every high performing medalist and world champion, outstanding Hall of Fame athlete and ask them, what was the one thing that made you a great athlete?

And I would say that they would have a hard time answering that to say that it was just one specific thing. And yet for trans people, you know, like we know there's access to good nutrition and recovery and coaching, skills camps, development, right? Like investment, people believing in you. There are so many factors that go into being a good athlete. But for trans people, people tend to say that it's just about testosterone levels. And that's where I think people really go wrong, is just boiling us down to hormone levels and not seeing the humanity of us as people. And on the testosterone thing, you had mentioned me taking a healthy dose of testosterone. I did want to address that. So, so I have to, as an athlete, get a therapeutic use exemption

and get permission from USADA and the World Anti-Doping Agency in order to take testosterone medically. I have it, you know, regulated. And I would, I will tell you that taking testosterone did not make me an extreme athlete much better than where I was before. That when I actually transitioned, I kind of stayed in the same area. I was a top 10% women's athlete and became a top 10% men's athlete. That's cool. Yeah. And I was not suggesting you're cheating with testosterone. I was saying that the average testosterone for female is different than the average testosterone for male. And, um, and I'm not suggesting that you're working the system by means. Yeah. Okay. Okay. So if you could speak into the hearts and minds of people that are right on the edge of a transition, that they've been afraid to commit to the steps

that they know they need to take to feel better, to be better, to be more themselves. And what would you say, like, where do they start? Because there's so many headwinds for this type of radical change, socially, familial, familial, economic, you know, fill in the blanks. There's a lot of consideration. So somebody who really wants to make a radical change in their life, where do you suggest they start? You know, it's so individual for every person. I think I would just encourage them to decide what's right. And I, I have very few regrets in my life. And I think

that that is, you know, that teeters on the edge of one of saying like, I, what, what would my life have been like, had I just followed my own path and not been so concerned about what people would say or think about me? Because again, what they think or say is none of my business. And so, and I can't control that. I can only control how I respond to that. And so I would, you know, the advice I often give young trans people who are in sports or who even not trans people, I mean, so many people from marginalized communities can lean into this advice of just saying, never limit your own greatness to make other people feel more comfortable. And I wish that was something that I knew earlier on, you know, to say like, never limit the fullness, the wholeness, the exceptionalness of who you are,

because you're worried about what other people might think or say. So let's do some fun little quick hits. Okay. It all comes down to intentionality and being of service. So let's do some fun little quick hits. Okay. It all comes down to? Intentionality and being of service. I am? A case study of one. My vision is? My vision is a world where every person can be their authentic self and pursue their passions and not have to compromise any part of their identity suffering is unavoidable but manageable successes self-defined

society is deeply troubled Self-defined. Society is? Deeply troubled. A hostile place. Chris, I love this conversation. I love that we're able to explore the deeper part of becoming, the humanity that you bring to this conversation by expressing and choosing words in an honest way, feeling and thinking at the same time. And it's noted. And so I also really love that. Our community, I think, is more informed, and I know that this wasn't the favorite part, but the educational bit and the kind of hypothetical wrestling, you know, I feel like there's an education that takes place

through you speaking into it. That is awesome. I feel like I could go hours with you talking about becoming the process of becoming. So maybe we even have a second episode strictly to the humanity portion of becoming, and I would love that as well. So Chris, I just want to say thank you. I want to honor your time and say I would love for you to be in the inner circle, to be an emblem for what we're capable of, and at the same time, the honesty of what it takes to do that. So, Chris, thank you. Thank you so much. And you are masterful in guiding these conversations. I think that people will get a lot out of it. And I would love if people could follow me on any social channel, the Chris Mosier. I'm constantly posting educational

stuff there for free. So if people want to expand their learning or just see my own experiences in and out of sport, please follow me there, the Chris Mosier and my website, transathlete.com, singular, all one word, transathlete.com is a great place for people who are interested in teasing out a little bit more about the policy and the idea of trans people in sport, that's a great place to start. And Chris Mosier is M-O-S-I-E-R. Chris, like you normally would spell it, M-O-S-I-E-R. All right. So listen, let's stay connected on it. Thank you for your time, the gracefulness in how you weave together a complicated, electrically charged, you know, ideas. And I love it, dude. Appreciate you.

Thanks so much. This is great. All right. Thank you so much for diving into another episode of finding mastery with us. Our team loves creating this podcast and sharing these conversations with you. We really appreciate you being part of this community. And if you're enjoying the show, the easiest no-cost way to support is to hit the subscribe or follow button wherever you're listening. Also, if you haven't already, please consider dropping us a review on Apple or Spotify.

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