URBANA — Chris Mosier, an eight-time Team USA athlete and activist, encouraged people to advocate for the transgender community at the Spurlock Museum on Saturday. He gave a presentation sharing strategies for navigating difficult — and often emotional — conversations about the transgender community.
In 2015, Mosier made history when he became the first transgender athlete to represent the U.S. in international competition after he qualified for the world duathlon championship. Ten years later, he said advocating for trans athletes like himself is more important than ever.
“Everything that I do today is rooted in the struggles that I had in coming out in 2010 when there weren’t a lot of resources or a lot of information about how we can be supportive of trans and non-binary people,” Mosier said.
President Donald Trump has signed several executive orders since he took office, affecting transgender people’s ability to change their documents, gain access to gender-affirming healthcare or enlist in the military. One order directly targets trans athletes.
These orders have had immediate effects in some places, including the NCAA. Its policy on transgender athletes was changed in February to only allow those assigned female at birth to compete on women’s teams, despite NCAA President Charlie Baker testifying in December that he was aware of “less than 10” transgender college athletes.
Mosier said the orders aren’t just about sports or documents.
“It’s really about trying to make it so trans people cease to exist,” he said. “And there have been some very effective messaging and talking points on the other side to create the rhetoric that demonizes and villainizes trans people, and we see that show up particularly for trans women right now.”
Mosier’s presentation focused on defining basic terminology, discussing strategies for having productive conversations and refuting common misconceptions about transgender people. He said the human connection is what draws him to continue advocacy.
“People can passively read stats and figures and get the information that I’m telling them in 100 other ways,” Mosier said. “Maybe folks know most of this information, but they hear me phrase it in a way that really resonates with them.”
Jerry Carden invited Mosier to speak after attending one of his webinars in November.
Carden is the founding chair of the Gay Community AIDS Project (now the Greater Community AIDS Project) and a longtime member of C-U’s LGBTQ+ community. He volunteers with the Unitarian Universalist Church, who organized the event.
“With so much emphasis against the trans community, it’s become even more of a mission for us to make sure that we are providing a welcoming space,” Carden said. “Just about every Sunday, I see new faces that are trans, and some of them are people that have moved here from out of state, trying to find refuge in a blue state.”
Mosier said he will continue competing, despite the increasingly hostile environment he said trans athletes are facing.
“It’s really important to continue showing up in the sports space, because I am representing our country at the highest level of play, just like every other man who’s made the team,” Mosier said. “It’s complicated, because I’m representing a country that doesn’t love and support me.”
Mosier hopes his work will guide people through the negative rhetoric that he said leads to further discrimination and harassment.
“It’s going to take all of us to make it through, not just the next four years, but whatever the future for trans people looks like after the damage that’s been done,” Mosier said.