Courtney Crowder

ccrowder@dmreg.com

Ben Christiason begins his morning run on asphalt, pounding the straightaway of a tree-lined suburban boulevard that looks plucked from a John Hughes movie. As the road curves, he trades pavement for the gravel of a trail at the edge of a cluster of baseball fields.

On this airless morning, the sun hangs low, radiating a sticky heat as sweat flattens Christiason’s normally coiffed hair. Performing balletic movements to string his iPhone through his shirt without losing rhythm, he whips off the perspiration-covered tee and tucks it into his shorts.

His bare chest isn’t exactly out of place on this busy Cedar Falls trail, but what is rare are the deep mauve marks forming two perfectly straight lines just under his pecs — the scars left behind from the mastectomy Christiason endured to remove his breasts.

The colored bands are a physical reminder of his emotional journey to a recent milepost: Coming out as transgender and, in the process, becoming the first known transgender high school athlete to compete openly in Iowa.

Trans in Iowa

Popping out against his pale skin, the rich purple streaks are all that remain of Karna, the name Christiason ran cross country under for years until the toll of racing with a group of women while struggling with an internal male identity became too great. They are equally the marks of finally living life as he’d dreamed, and of enjoying acceptance from family and a good portion of the Cedar Falls community, an acceptance that gave him the confidence to rejoin the cross country squad — only this time on the boys' team.

Christiason, 18, is one of a small but growing number of transgender athletes choosing to participate publicly in sports, experts said. But whether competing at an elite level or for a middle school team, transgender athletes often face a mixed bag of policies and laws and confront questions about perceived competitive advantages that come from their birth gender’s inherent physiological traits.

And, with the 2016 Olympic Games set to feature the first openly transgender competitors, discussion of what deems a person a woman or a man has become a flashpoint in the binary world of sports.

“Trans inclusion is the next frontier in athletic equality,” said Chris Mosier, a New York-based transgender male athlete who last month became the first transgender person to pose for ESPN’s Body issue.

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“In the last three years, the conversation around trans athletics has accelerated,” Mosier said. About half of the sports world has adopted "trans-friendly policies," he estimated, and the other half has not.

"While some of that (other) half has adopted discriminatory policies, it’s really that they haven’t stood up," he said. "They have no policies, which leaves trans athletes totally unclear with what to do or what they can do.”

The quest for equity

In Iowa, the 2007 Civil Rights Act has been praised by advocates for including protections for gender identity, or the gender with which a person identifies. But it exempts athletic programs from the discrimination prohibitions listed in the education section, said Kristin H. Johnson, executive director of the Iowa Civil Rights Commission, the state agency charged with investigating discrimination claims.

“Discriminatory practices shall include but not be limited to the following practices,” the code reads, “exclusion of a person or persons from any … program or activity except athletic programs.”

“However, there are federal laws (like Title IX) that deal with gender equity,” Johnson said.

Title IX is the federal law that outlawed discrimination based on sex at any federally funded education institution and compelled many colleges and high schools to expand their women’s sports portfolios in the quest for equity. It's also why The Family Leader, an Iowa-based Christian conservative group, has concerns about allowing transgender people to play on teams matching their gender identity.

"It's baffling that the same Title IX that was once designed to give girls an equal opportunity to participate in sports is now being used to take those opportunities away," said Drew Zahn, the Family Leader’s spokesman. "Erasing the distinction between male and female has a negative impact that tends to disproportionately affect girls.”

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But transgender women (the term for people assigned male at birth but who identify as female) simply have not overrun women’s sports, said Joanna Harper, a transgender woman and Oregon-based medical physicist with an expertise in gender and sports. For example, the NCAA has for more than six years had policies allowing transgender women to compete on women’s teams after a year of taking testosterone suppressants.

“In the 2015-2016 collegiate season, there were about 200,000 women competing in the NCAA at various levels, which (if transgender people are 0.6 percent of the population) means there should have been hundreds, maybe even 1,000 trans women competing,” said Harper. “And I know of two trans women competing openly in NCAA sports.” (The NCAA does not require student-athletes to identify themselves as transgender to the national office, so the organization does not have an official count of transgender athletes.)

“This fear that if you let trans women in we will take over, it’s just unfounded,” she said.

In many ways, the conversation around which sex-segregated category transgender people should be allowed to compete in mirrors the national debate over which sex-segregated public restroom they should be allowed to use, Mosier said. While working to end the discrimination transgender people face in arenas such as employment and housing is a far more important fight, he said, making progress with transgender inclusion in sports could stimulate change in other areas of people’s lives.

“Just think about the profound way people bond over professional sports teams,” Mosier said. “I’m a Cubs fan and regardless of background or job or religious affiliation, if I find another Cubs fan, we immediately have something in common. Sports are the great equalizer, and by talking about trans inclusion in athletics, we can talk about what it means to be trans in America right now and, I hope, break down barriers.”

‘Sports are a lifeline’

For most of Christiason’s life, gender roles weren’t a big deal. His parents let him wear what he wanted and play how he wanted, but, deep inside, something was always off, he said.

“I would play in my imaginary worlds with my imaginary friends, who always called me Michael, Jacob or Ben,” he said. “Looking back, I think I was imagining these places to keep myself sane.”

That's also why he ran.

Being active is important to the Christiason family. In addition to skiing, backpacking and snow-showing, his parents always ran. So when Christiason had the opportunity to join cross country, it was a natural fit.

Until it wasn’t.

Christiason joined his middle school’s co-ed team and loved the physical aspect of running every day with the same group of people. More importantly, he found a needed calm, a chunk of time to escape the thoughts, questions and feelings he had about his gender.

“When you run, you almost go numb because all you can think about is, ‘Oh, this sucks,’” he said with a laugh. And “I couldn’t think when I was done running because I was so tired.”

But in his freshman year, when the team was divided on gender lines, something changed. He felt like a boy on a women’s team, he said, and that calm he loved was suddenly gone.

“I felt weird whenever I looked down at my shirt and saw ‘women’s cross country,’” he said. “Being on the women’s cross country team was just such a big reminder for me of what I was feeling.”

He left the team when the season ended.

Like Christiason, many young transgender athletes tell Mosier they would rather quit than compete on a team that doesn’t align with their gender identity.

“An entire segment of the population is being systemically excluded from having an equal and positive experience,” said Hudson Taylor, a wrestling coach and founder of Athlete Ally, a New York nonprofit that fosters inclusivity in sports.

“It’s a travesty,” he said, “especially because for this population of young transgender people, sports are a lifeline. They are a place to feel solid and play and use their bodies and participate and have teammates and leave the world behind."

“Our transgender youth really need that.”

'A privilege, not a right'

Soon after Christiason left cross country, he told his family — mom, Jennifer; dad, Kyle; and brother, Lars — that he might be transgender. He had previously come out to them as gay, but, after reflection, that moniker didn’t fit anymore. He wanted to date girls and wanted them to see him as a boy, he said.

His parents struggled with his announcement at first, they said, but after researching and soul searching for about a year, they came to accept him.

That path to approval became even easier when Troy Becker, a Cedar Falls High School administrator and coach, asked Christiason to join the boys' cross country team.

“We were at spring conferences, and I remember he just bee-lined across the gym for us and said, ‘I know Ben ran cross country with the women’s team before. I want Ben to be on my men’s cross country team,’” Kyle remembered. “It was a heartwarming moment because I knew my child was being accepted. I think I said ‘yes’ right on the spot.”

When his dad agreed, Christiason hadn’t been on testosterone for long and felt like a “12-year-old boy running,” but he joined anyway — and it immediately felt right.

“I was surrounded by guys, and half of them didn’t even know I wasn’t always a boy, and to look down and see ‘men’s’ on my shirt, there was nothing better,” he said.

“I didn’t think that would happen for me in high school.”

For many kids, it doesn’t, experts said. Policies determining eligibility for transgender athletes are regulated by state athletics associations or local schools districts, not federally mandated.

In Iowa, although the Civil Rights Act has an exemption for athletic programs, both the girls' and boys' athletics associations have guidelines for respectful treatment.

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The boys' association’s guidelines say a transgender male can play on boys' teams “as long as he consistently identifies as a male at school, home and socially.”

The simplicity of that language “allows for full participation for trans male athletes,” said Mosier, who runs the website transathlete.com, which lists transgender athletics policies by state.

The Iowa girls' policy is more restrictive, Mosier said. It contains much of the same language, but highlights and refers back to the Civil Rights Act exemption, even using boldface type on the phrase “except athletic programs.”

“In general, I read that (bolding) as athletics are a privilege, not a right,” said Jean Berger, the girls' athletic union’s executive director. “There are conditions that you have to meet, for example, you have to be academically eligible to participate in athletic programs. There is not an automatic right to participation.”

But, Berger added, the association doesn’t condone any discrimination due to a student’s sexual orientation or gender identity.

“We just want to slow down a little bit and look at each case individually,” she said. “We need to think about where we are and how to move forward in a fair and equitable way.”

Competitive advantages

Aside from just having started hormones, Christiason had another worry about competing on the men’s team: his binder.

A binder, like an extra-tight Spanx, flattens chests by constricting breasts. By many accounts, binders are uncomfortable, if not painful, but they make it easier to fit into men’s clothing and can alleviate the torment of gender dysphoria, the clinical term for the intense feelings of discomfort transgender people experience because their gender doesn’t match their biological sex.

But a binder definitely wasn’t made for running.

Not wearing it wasn’t an option, Christiason said. He wore it every day, all day before his mastectomy, as an emotional comfort and to treat his dysphoria.

“It was basically like running in a corset,” Christiason said. “I felt like I was getting a third of the oxygen supply that I needed. I couldn’t draw a deep breath.”

If there was any question whether he had a competitive advantage over his biologically male peers, look no further than the hindrance of that binder for a definitive "no," he said.

Athletics has long been sex-segregated to give women access to sports teams, said Harper, the medical physicist, but also to ensure a level playing field. Experts accept that biological men are on average taller and stronger than biological women, factors that would give them an advantage in many sports. This widely held norm is why there are few questions whether a transgender man (a biological female transitioning to male) has any advantages in men’s sports.

But the conversation around possible advantages for transgender women (a biological male transitioning to female) in women’s sport is markedly different.

“To the unsophisticated it is: You used to be a dude, so you still have an advantage,” said Harper. For the sophisticated, the conversation centers on hormone levels, specifically testosterone.

When transgender people begin to transition, the first course of treatment is usually hormone therapy. Biological women aligning themselves with a male identity receive testosterone and begin to see secondary sex characteristics like leg and facial hair develop. Biological men aligning themselves with a female identity take testosterone blockers and estrogen, and experience gender-specific secondary sex characteristics like breast development.

While the research and data around what happens to a transgender woman’s body as she loses testosterone is in its infancy, the anecdotal evidence Dr. Nicole Nisly hears at the University of Iowa LGBTQ clinic suggests that transgender women lose the strength, speed and endurance they had in their male form.

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Harper, a distance runner, experienced slower race times within a month of starting testosterone blockers, and a year into her treatments, her 10K time was almost five minutes slower than it had been before taking hormones, she said. Brooke Larson, a 30-year-old transgender professor at UI, said she maintained her basketball shooting abilities after testosterone blockers, but lost strength and stamina, finding herself unable to fight for rebounds.

“It’s hard to convey that to people because I don’t look weaker than I was," Larson said, "but I can tell you I never had a problem opening a jar before, and I do now.”

Blame the hormones, Nisly said.

“If a trans woman has been on testosterone blockers, keeping their level of testosterone below the amount recommended by the International Olympic Committee, for a year, they will be hormonally a woman no different than (biological) women,” Nisly said, “and any advantage you would have at that point would be negligible.”

A mixed gender revolution?

When Christiason looks back on his time at Cedar Falls High, he wishes he could have been part of a few more activities. On the top of that list is the swim team.

Being on the swim team was a favorite high school memory for his dad, and his brother made varsity as a sophomore.

“I hadn’t had top surgery yet, so it just wasn't possible for me to compete,” he said. “But I just wish I could have had that memory with my brother.”

For many advocates, the next step in transgender athletic equality is to keep pushing forward to ensure athletic policies are fair, locker rooms are accessible and uniforms are equitable.

But some advocates ask: Why do athletics need to be gendered at all? At some point, Taylor said, society will need to face that sports are “a binary construction, sex-segregated by narrowly defined buckets of identity.”

“I think we need a mixed-gender sports revolution,” he said. “If we were to create more athletic experiences in which boys and girls play together and take the focus off of gender and put it on access and participation and having a good time, I think we could help end sexism and homophobia and transphobia globally.”

Trans in Iowa

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After Christiason finishes his morning run, pounding back down that tree-lined straightway, he stretches. He used to hate his body, he says, but now he looks down and sees strong legs and muscular arms.

“I’m stronger than I was the day before, and I know as long as I continue to work, I will be stronger the next day,” he said. “I never thought I would look like this at this age, so, to me, the sky’s the limit.”

In about a month, Christiason’s morning jog will change drastically when he starts at St. Olaf College in Minnesota. He’s already planning to continue running there and to play rugby.

And, who knows, he adds, he might join the swim team.

But for right now, feeling the breeze on his chest — something he wanted for so many years — is more than enough.



