Name: Kate Borows-Lai
Social Justice Group: Sports and Equality
Date of Fieldwork: November 27, 2017
Name of Organization:
Person (people) with whom I met and their job titles: Chris Mosier: Activist and first transgender Olympian
Type of Fieldwork: Interview
What I did:
We skyped Mr. Mosier and asked him a variety of general questions. The whole interview took about 45 minutes.
What I learned:
Everyone should be allowed to participate in sports, no matter what gender you define yourself as. Gender also isn’t black and white, and everyone’s levels of body chemicals are different, so there’s no “normal” to test by in terms of testosterone levels for the Olympics.
What I learned about Social Justice “work” and/or Civil and Human rights “work” from this fieldwork:
We learned that role models are extremely important. Mr. Mosier never had a transgender role model growing up, so he decided to become one for others. There’s always someone who has to pave the way for something to become normalized. It’s very hard, but it will never happen if nobody does it.