MIKE RAYCRAFT: Good evening, sports fans. Thank you for joining us tonight at our-- I think it's our 13th segment of the Sapora Symposium. Very, very excited tonight to host Schuyler Bailar who we will be hearing from here in a few minutes.

This class is being done in cooperation with RC 465, which is an event implementation class on campus. And at the beginning of the school year, we had a conversation in class about people who we thought would be good role models and good speakers to represent our topic.

Now, as you know, our theme this year is we're looking at sport and social justice. And so I was very, very pleased. I got a very nice email on a Sunday afternoon from our student moderator tonight, Brittany Prais, who suggested our speaker. And so I had invited Brittany tonight to introduce Schuyler and to kick off our program. Welcome, Brittany.

BRITTANY PRAIS: Thank you. Hello, everybody. Welcome, and thank you for joining us today. My name is Brittany. And I'm a senior in the Department of Recreation, Sport and Tourism. I'm concentrating on Recreation Management and [INAUDIBLE] Communication. It is my pleasure today to be introducing Schuyler Bailar who was the first openly transgender D1 swimmer in the NCAA, competing for Harvard, where he got his degree in Cognitive Neuroscience and Evolutionary Psychology in 2019.

I have followed Schuyler's journey for some time now on social media. And I felt he would be a perfect fit for our discussion regarding social justice issues within sports, as he is a highly respected public speaker and advocate for LGBTQ+ rights. I myself am very passionate about LGBTQ+ rights. And I'm currently completing my James Scholar project on the importance of inclusion for transgender athletes in recreation and sport.

So I have often looked at him and other trans activists for information, resources, and insight to guide that research. But just a little bit more about Schuyler. By 15, he was one of the nation's top 20 15-year-old breaststroke swimmers. By 17, he and his relay team set a national age group record. In 2019, Schuyler finished four years swimming for Harvard University and what ended up being the eighth fastest men's team in the nation and Harvard's winningest team since 1961.

Schuyler's best swim secured him as Harvard's third-fastest breaststroke swimmer for the 2018-2019 season and placed him in the top 15% of the NCAA overall. Schuyler's difficult choice to transition while potentially giving up the prospect of being an NCAA champion was historic.

And his story has appeared everywhere from The Washington Post to 60 Minutes to The Ellen Show. And MTV cited his story in their list of 2015's Best Moments for the Trans Community. And BuzzFeed named him as one of the 11 transgender people who are shifting our views. Schuyler's advocacy has earned him numerous awards, including Harvard's rarely awarded Director's Award. And I truly could go on and on with the never-ending prestigious awards and honors that he has received for both swimming and his advocacy.

But for time sake, I will just say he is very clearly an excellent person to communicate the importance of social justice advocacy within sport. So that being said, it is my honor to introduce him. And, Schuyler, thank you so much for being here. I will send it over to you to get us started.

SCHUYLER BAILAR: Awesome. Thank you so much, Brittany. I'm really excited to be here today. I appreciate that intro. I'm super stoked to talk to you all and to chat about sports, and inclusion, and all the good questions that you're going to have. What I want to do is spend about 20 minutes to sharing about myself-- who I am, where I come from.

But I'm really focused and excited to have a conversation with you all. So if you have questions, comments, concerns, hang on to those for about 20 minutes as I share about myself-- again, where I come from, who I am. And then I'll open it up for questions to you all. And you'll have the chance to ask that either live or through the Chat box.

I actually encourage you to keep your videos on. It's always nice to be able to chat with you all as opposed to and to avoid-- I know we're all doing Zoom meetings and that kind of stuff. But if you feel comfortable, I'd love to see your lovely faces while I'm talking and also afterwards. All right. I'm going to share my screen, show some pictures to you all, and share about myself. And then we'll hop into the questions, like I said. OK. We good? You can see my screen now, right?

MIKE RAYCRAFT: Mm-hmm.

SCHUYLER BAILAR: Awesome. OK, here we go. So like Brittany was saying, I am a swimmer. I've been swimming my entire life. I started swimming when I was about one-year-old, actually about 10 months. So before I could actually walk, I was in the pool.

And I learned how to actually swim around the same time I learned how to walk. I wasn't particularly good at swimming, though. I got good around the age of eight or nine, about fourth grade. But I wasn't winning anything just yet. This is a 16th place plaque.

So I was much more concerned with the Justin Bieber haircut, the oversized Hawaiian shirt look, and these glasses, which I'm not sure if you've seen them before. But these are the glasses that turn into sunglasses when you go outside, which I thought were wicked cool. And I also always would sit next to the window in class and try to make sure they would change to sunglasses, which they never did when I was inside.

This is one of my other haircuts. Well, I guess it's more of a hairstyle than a haircut. But this is a Halloween parade one year. And I decided that I was going to be a punk rock star. And I thought all punk rock stars wore exclusively black clothing, had dog chains, and also had Mohawks.

So this is my attempt at that. I don't have a dog. So I don't know what kind of chain that is. And the Mohawk is made out of real Elmer's Glue. Yes. And not the white kind that dries clear. But it's that red and sparkly, glittery kind that has little golden stars in it. So if you looked very closely, I had a bit of a star-spangled Mohawk. Very punk rock, if you ask me.

I have a younger brother. His name is Jinwon. This is him in the water Mohawk. But if you'll-- or rather, it is a water Mohawk. Now, he's two years younger than me, though. And you can see he's smaller than me in this photo. He did not grow up to be very much smaller than me. So I never call him my little brother. I call him my younger brother. He is 6 foot 4 and about 250 pounds.

In case you can't tell, because of the video, I know I look enormous over video. I'm neither of those things. I sit up a whopping 5' 8" and no where near 250 pounds. So he's always been the one to carry me around. This is him in the orange. We grew up doing everything together, wearing fun hats and fun shoes, going hiking, getting money together. We were inseparable as kids.

Water sports-- again, a really big part of my life without actually being in the water or screaming and jumping into the water. I'm not entirely sure what I was trying to accomplish in either of these photos. But I had fun doing it. And when you nine, what else matters?

Some of these-- video is not muted. I'm going to just mute them to make sure. Just while I'm talking, if you all would mute yourselves, that would be great. And when we do question/answer, you can unmute yourself. This is a yoga pose that I did a lot when I was a kid. It's called the Peacock. I have a photo of me doing it. Well, my mom has a photo of me doing it, pretty much in every place I traveled as a kid.

But I like to point out these pants. I'm not sure if you've seen them before. But they're khaki pants. They zip off in the middle and they become shorts I thought they were super, super cool. And let me tell you, they give you a lot of social creds, especially in middle school when you're in English class or whatever, and you zip off half your pant leg. I don't really know what inspired me to do that or wear them all the time, but I thought they were cool.

This was also the Justin Bieber hair phase where it had to be in your eyes in order for it to be cool. And my mom was always trying to brush it out of my face. I'd say mom, stop. That's not cool. But clearly, I was a very cool kid. I also skateboarding and roller bladed a lot as a kid.

But if you'll notice, I'm wearing every single type of pad known to man, including underneath my cargo shorts. There are also butt pads. Those would be courtesy of my mother. She was very afraid I was going to break my butt. But I did not. I never broke my butt, so I guess they worked.

When I got to high school, though, a lot of things for me changed. The number one thing was that I decided I wanted to try to fit in. And to me, fitting in meant looking like this girl that everybody else said that I was supposed to be. Right? So I'm transgender. And that means at birth, I was assigned female, despite not having identified that way. As a kid, I didn't have the word transgender.

So for the most part, I just acted and presented in a way that made me feel the most comfortable. And I ended up being in this very boyish, masculine sense. But because everybody knew I was, quote, "supposed to be a girl," I was bullied constantly for looking different, for acting different, for never being, quote, "girl enough."

And I think middle school is a difficult time for most folks, no matter who you are. But for me, there was this added layer of gender, right? I was never girl enough to be considered a, quote, "real girl." And the girls in my grade would explicitly tell me that. And they'd kick me out of any friend groups they had. And the boys would tell me that I wasn't a, quote, "real boy" either, because they knew that I was supposed to be a girl.

And so I existed in this in between. And that got quite stressful. I tried to tell myself that this was just normal. This was how it was for me. And I was just different, and that was OK. But bathrooms were incredibly stressful. I went into the girls' bathroom, because that's what I was told I was supposed to do. And I was thrown out of every single girls' bathroom that I ever entered.

And it was because I didn't look, quote unquote, like a girl. And the girls in the bathroom would be like, what are you doing in here? Get out of here. No boys in here. You look like a boy. I'd be like, I'm just trying to pee. I'm nine, all right? I'm not trying to pull any stunts.

But that got so stressful, that I'd run from one end of the school to the other end of the school to find the staff-only bathroom, because it was a single stall. And I thought that it was better to get in trouble for that than it was to get scorned by all the girls in my grade.

But when I got to high school, I thought, you know what? I'm sick of being bullied. I'm sick of everybody thinking that I'm different and making fun of me all the time. I'm so sick of being thrown out of the bathrooms. So I thought, what can I do to stop that?

I thought, maybe if I look like this picture of a woman that everybody else says that I'm supposed to look like, this stereotype of a woman, maybe then I'll stop getting made fun of. OK. What does a girl look like? I guess, stereotypically, longer hair, girls' clothes, makeup. I don't know. Heels.

So I stopped cutting my hair short. I grew it out long. I started wearing more girls' clothes, had my mom take me to the girls' section of Target or wherever we shopped. I wore makeup twice, heels the same two times. But this is me in high school. I'm still skateboarding. I actually still have that watch, too. This is me at my senior prom, the second time I wore makeup.

At the time in high school, I was getting a 4.0 GPA. I was getting recruited to swim for Harvard, Yale, Dartmouth, Columbia, and Princeton. I was swimming faster than I had ever swum before. I had actually broke a couple national records with my swim team. We were national champions on swim team.

I actually got my Harvard acceptance letter. And I was ready to go to Harvard in the fall. And I was recruited to swim there. I had come out as gay. I knew that I liked girls. And I thought, OK, if I like girls, everybody says I'm a girl, then that makes me gay. Maybe that's the thing that's different about me. Maybe that's what's setting me apart. I was dating a girl I really liked at the time. Everything seemed to be going for me. Right?

For most of high school and especially in this photo, I was absolutely miserable. I felt so sad, so lost, so disconnected from myself all the time. But instead of taking any kind of pause to figure out what that meant to me, I thought, you know what? I'm getting the good grades. I'm winning the gold medals. What does it matter if I'm miserable?

But it did matter. And over time, my mental health began to suffer. And actually, halfway through my high school career, I broke my back. In a biking accident, I fractured three vertebrae. And that robbed from me my number one vice, number one pastime, my number one passion. Right? Swimming.

And for 20 extra hours a week that I was usually under water training, I was doing nothing. And it was in that emptiness that my mental health deteriorated. I began struggling with an eating disorder, with depression, with some other maladaptive coping mechanisms.

And I always like to pause and remind folks here that if you or somebody you know is also struggling with any of this-- mental health issues-- that's time to get help. It's time to ask for help from a counselor, from a teacher, from some other adult that you trust. It's time to reach out.

And so that's what I did. I asked for help. I began seeing a therapist. And over the next couple years, I tried to get better from my mental health issues. By the time I was at my senior year, so by the time I was in this photo, I'd actually gone to the hospital a couple times for the mental health issues that I was having.

And my therapist actually was like, you know what? I don't think that we can do enough for you in outpatient, so one hour a week outpatient therapy. I think you need residential help. I think you have to go to rehab. I don't think you should go to Harvard in the fall. I think you should take a gap year. Take a break from all of this, because you're not focusing on your mental health. You are focusing on school, swimming, and social life. And you need to focus on mental health in order to deal with this

That was incredibly nerve wracking. Honestly, it felt earth shattering to me. Because they wanted me to put my life on hold for what? Mental health. I'd never been taught to prioritize that at all, much less take a year off of my life. Right? Especially not swimming to do mental health stuff.

Also, what was I going to tell my teachers, my coaches, my friends? How was I going to tell Harvard that I was going to take this year off? What was I going to do? Right? But I also knew that I had been banging my head against the wall and just not getting anywhere with trying to get better.

So I thought, OK, I think I should try that. So I went to a place in Miami, Florida. It's called the Oliver-Pyatt Treatment Centers. And I spent 131 days there. That's about five months. And that was the first place that asked me to slow down and actually come to a stop. I wasn't allowed to see my family or my friends. I wasn't eating any of the same food. I couldn't swim or do any kind of exercise. And I wasn't even allowed to have my cell phone.

And it was in that pause, that space, that stop, that I was finally able to say, I am transgender. And initially, that came with a lot of relief, right? It explained a lot about my childhood, a lot about how I never fit in, how girlhood was so uncomfortable for me, how boyhood was so much more comfortable, why bathrooms are so hard. Right? It explained a lot of things.

But you have to remember that I'm an athlete. And I had been recruited to swim for Harvard women's swim team. And I'm sure you all know this. But gender is really important in sports, especially in swimming, where there isn't any kind of gender-neutral uniform. Right? No T-shirt and shorts behind which I could have hid. It's a tiny little men's Speedo or a one-piece swimming suit. The gender boxes are very, very clear.

So when I figured out that I was transgender, I was terrified that I was going to lose my sport, maybe my team, maybe my coach. I had no idea. My coach at the time was calling me when I was at this treatment center. She knew that I'd taken the gap year for mental health reasons. She was actually very supportive of that.

But she wanted to check in and see how it was going. So she called me this one time. She's like, hey, Schuyler, how's it going? What are you working on? I'm like, oh, I'm working on some parent stuff, some eating stuff, some gender stuff, so I'm continuing [INAUDIBLE].

Gender stuff? What does that mean? I pause. I thought, OK, if I tell her in this moment, there's a very real likelihood that I not only lose her, but the team, Harvard, swimming. Do I lose swimming altogether? I don't know. Do I want to take that risk?

And then I thought to myself, I spent all this time trying to be honest with myself, that I think actually in this moment, I owe it to myself, to be honest with my coach. So I said very slowly, Steff, I'm transgender. I don't know what that implies about sport. All I know is that I want to swim. And she also paused. And I could feel the hesitance from her.

And she said, slowly, Schuyler, gosh, I don't know what really it means to be transgender. I don't know any trans people. I don't even know if we have gay people on this team. But what I do know is that this team loves you, that we recruited you, that I recruited you here for a reason. So if you want to swim, you have a spot on this team. We're going to figure this out.

And that was incredible, right? At least I wasn't going to lose my sport, my spot on the women's team. I could figure out how I wanted to move forward with that without losing everything. So I continued forward. So my 131 days, my 5 months at this treatment center came to a close. And I started reintegrating myself into the real world. Treatment is very much not the real world.

And I tried to integrate or at least express this newly discovered part of myself and my identity. I started going by he and his male pronouns in some situations. I started dressing more in clothes that made me feel comfortable, more men's clothes. I started getting haircuts that felt more comfortable to me, something a little bit more appropriate than the Elmer's Glue Mohawk. But I started walking into this new presentation of myself.

At the time, my coach, again, was calling and keeping up, seeing how I was doing. And she calls me this one time. She said, Schuyler, you're taking all these steps forward to be yourself in the world to be a man. But then you're going to be on the women's team. How is that going to work? And I was like, it's going to be fine. I was like really optimistic. I was like, I'm going to be a man over there. I'm going to be a woman over there. What could go wrong?

She's like, well, it's not that something's going to go wrong. I don't know. But I want to make sure that we're giving you the best options, and that we're not just jumping into this without any options. So she went and talked to the men's coach. His name is Kevin.

And I was told this was a very casual poolside conversation. They were just chatting about what was going on. Steff said, I have this trans swimmer. What do you think? And Kevin, the men's coach-- he was like, OK, wait. So let me get this right. You have somebody who identifies as male who wants to swim here at Harvard and who's already accepted into Harvard. Right? Well, I, Kevin-- well, I coach a men's swim team at Harvard. Why doesn't he swim for me?

Now, I think when put that way, can sound simple, illogical, maybe too simple. Because if we think about Division I sports, we think about the NCAA. We think about the sociopolitical climate in this country. And then we think about the fact that this man, this coach has never interacted with a transgender athlete before. And he's like, sure, bring the trans kid. That's pretty incredible.

So they bring that to me. They say, OK, Schuyler, you have the opportunity to swim for either team. What do you want to do? I burst into tears. I wasn't excited. I wasn't happy. I wasn't relieved. I was terrified. In that moment, I felt like I was being torn apart. And I found myself at a crossroads. Here's me thinking at my crossroads. If you'll notice, the glasses have now turned into sunglasses. They too have transitioned.

But anyways, I'm at crossroads. On one side of the crossroads, there's everything I've ever worked for to be this winning female athlete. Right? I had started swimming before I turned one. I started competing by the time I was six. I was training year round by the time I was eight. I was training at 4:00 AM [INAUDIBLE] before and after practice by the time I was 10. I was training 20 hours a week by the time I was 12. And I was nationally ranked by the time I was 15.

My whole life, I had been working my butt off to be good at swimming. And swimming as a man-- instantly shattering all of that potential success I could have had competing as female. Swimming as a man-- that would be me, being myself in the first time in my life, in my sport altogether. It would also mean doing something that somebody else hadn't done before.

And in that moment, that was so terrifying, so lonely. And I was so not ready to give up all the potential success I could have garnered competing as a female, that I said, you know what? I can't do it. I have to compete as female. I have to stay on the women's team. I'm not ready for this.

The coaches said, you know what? It's January. You have until September to figure this out. Let's leave the door open. I was like, OK, but pretty certain about my decision. I went home. I actually ended up deciding to get a vasectomy. It's called top surgery for transmasculine trans men, folks like me. It's a double mastectomy, a masculinization of chest, if you will.

And I decided to do that because that was something that was important to me. And also, there's no rule within the NCAA, so the governing body of sports in this country. There's no rule that says you can't do that and also compete as female. So I was going to do this in between.

When I got back from-- other coaches said, hey, why don't you meet the men's team? Just hang out with them, get to know them. Maybe that can help you feel more comfortable and make a better, more informed decision. Now, this was a great idea. But you have to think about the fact that I was brand new to this, to everything.

And the idea of me sitting down with these college-aged guys-- I never socialized with a bunch of college men before-- was terrifying. My social anxiety was through the roof. I mean, these were 6 foot 4 Harvard men, swim and dive seniors. They are bearded men. I felt like a fetus sitting in front of them.

So they sat me down. They're like, OK, so if you want to be socially part of a team, well, we'll put you on our email list. You can come to our social events. It's going to be great. We'll put you on our group meet. It'll be awesome. You don't actually have to compete for us if you don't want to. You could just be socially part of us.

But if you also want to compete for us, that's great. We'd love to have you. That's awesome. We know you're nervous about the scar on your chest. Don't worry. We're just going to tell everybody a shark bit you, which I always find funny for a couple of reasons.

First of all, they really did say that. They really were like-- I was like, I'm so nervous about my scar. What are we going to tell people? They were like, don't worry. We'll just tell people a shark bit you. And the funnier part is that people actually believed them. So people actually believe that there's a shark bite on my chest. I will show you pictures later. There is only a scar on the front of my chest. So I'm really not sure would had happened to the shark's bottom teeth. I don't know. Maybe he had dentures. Anyways, I have no idea.

The reason that I share this all with you all today is because nobody had any idea what we were doing. But they were so excited to potentially welcome me on to the team anyways, to find a way to make it work, to make me comfortable. And that was so awesome, so wonderful, and so scary. Because it made that option real, right? If they had been assholes, they could have just thrown it out. No, can't do that. Right? But they said, hey, let's try this. And so I said, hey, maybe, maybe I could actually do this.

So over the next month or so, I spent some time with the men's team, hung out with them, got to know them, realized I felt pretty comfortable with them. I was still set on competing as female. I really wasn't ready to let go, all the potential success I wanted to have competing as a female.

But at the end of that month, my coach-- the women's coach was guiding me through all this, called me to her office. She said, Schuyler, I think you know what you want. And the reality is you're standing at the edge of a cliff. And you actually have a safety harness on you. You just need to jump. You need to take that risk. We're here. We've got you. And actually, I think your heart knows what it wants. We're just waiting for your mind to catch up. So take that jump, take that risk.

I knew she was right. I also knew I needed to piece it through on my own, call my parents, call my friends. So I went home. I did that. I wrote in my journal a bit, really thought about it on my own. And I wrote her an email that night that said, I think I'm going to take that jump, and so I did.

[VIDEO PLAYBACK]

- [INAUDIBLE]

- Introducing [INAUDIBLE] the freshman [INAUDIBLE].

[END PLAYBACK]

SCHUYLER BAILAR: So that's me competing in my first meet as male. If the video was glitchy or you couldn't see it because of the connection, it's just a video of me diving into the pool and swimming halfway across. And the introducer says, introducing Schuyler Bailar from Washington, DC.

So this is my first meet competing as male. And before the meet began, we all walk out one at a time. They throw your name up on the Jumbotron, your stroke, your hometown. It's a really neat induction on to Harvard Men Swim and Dive. But we're walking out one at a time by alphabetical order, last name. So my last name beginning with B means I'm first. And it also means I'm all alone.

So it's my first college meet. And I'm walking out in front of this entire natatorium of people, all by myself. And I am panicking. Not only is it my first college meet, so my family, my friends are there. The news was also there. So the camera crews are there, because of the whole first trans athlete thing.

But it's also my first meet in almost a two-year break. I had never taken more than two weeks off of competition. And now, I had taken almost two years, so I was quite nervous about my athletic ability. And lastly, perhaps most importantly, it's my first meet competing against other men. Everybody had said I couldn't do it. There was no way a trans guy like me was going to be able to keep up with, much less beat other men. Right?

So I felt like I had a lot to prove. And I was very afraid that I couldn't prove it. So we're standing at the edge of the pool. The rest of my team has now joined me. We were standing in our crimson slacks. And the national anthem begins to play. I'm thinking, everything is so new and so different, but the national anthem is playing. And it's off key, as always.

And I'm like, wait a second. This is the same thing I've been doing my whole life. right? I'm so nervous, but this is the same. It's the same 25-yard pool, the same 6 strokes of breaststroke that are going to take me across it, the same 100-yard race I've been doing my entire life, since before I could remember. It's the same chlorinated air that's making everybody cough. It's the same echoey sounds of the natatorium, right? The same take your mark--

[VOICED BEEP]

--that;s going to go off when I dive in. It's the same. And so I'm standing there at the edge of the pool. The national anthem is playing. And I don't know if any of you who are maybe athletes or perhaps performers, if you have a pre-performance or a pre-competition ritual.

But for me, I put my hand over my heart, just like everybody else. But a woman's swimsuit has straps on either side, right? And I put my thumb on one side of that strap and my four fingers on the other side before every single meet during the national anthem. So I'm at this meet. And I go to do my pre-meet ritual. And I'm like, no strap. And in that moment, I realized that while everything is the same, it's also different.

Because for the first time in my life, I'm competing as just me, as just myself. There isn't all this baggage of who I thought I had to be, who I thought I was supposed to be, who everybody else told me that I was. I was just me. And that's really why I share my story with you all today or with any audience ever is to prove that possibility, that you could be exactly who you are, whatever that means to you. And it could mean LGBTQ, trans, queer, gay.

But it can also not. Maybe it's something that differs from what your parents expect from you, what your teachers, your coaches, your friends, what the media, what society expects from you. Maybe you can be just a little bit different or a lot different from what people expect from you and hold that difference in your identity and also, do what you love. That is, your identity does not ever have to hold you back from your passions.

So that's really the background, the blurb I wanted to give you all about myself. What I'm going to do before we open up for questions is just to give you a little bit of a container with which I do questions. And it's really just vocab. I'm going to make sure we're all on the same page with language. And then I'll open up for you to do questions.

Well, first, we're going to do some mostly naked pictures of myself to start. This is a photo of me from my pool at Harvard. And it's the first photo of me I really saw myself in. And I was really excited. I had spent a lot of time feeling incongruent with my photo, with my image. And this was the first picture I really saw myself in doing my sport, which was really cool.

I said I was going to show you pictures of my scar. So underneath my nipples, there's a lazy W, if you will. That is my mastectomy scar. I don't think it looks like a shark bite. If you think it looks like a shark bite, you are welcome to believe that it is. But you now know that it is not.

But people really come up to you, like, dude, man, what happened to your chest? I'll be like, oh, yeah. I got a shark attack. They're like, no way. Where? I'm like, really? But people will believe all things. So anyways, that's a picture of me with them. This is a picture of me at my last swim meet ever. So my 18 years from career came to a close with the close of the college season in 2019, so a year and 12, 10 months. I can't do math. Almost two years ago.

And I think I was more nervous for this meet than I'd ever been for another meet. And the reason was because it was the last one. And I got up on the blocks at the last race of that meet, literally shaking with the nerves, I remember. And as I stood up on the blocks, my whole team began to chant my name. And I actually began to tear up. And I remember thinking to myself, not now, guys. I have one more race to get through. Right?

But I don't think that there's any better proof that a trans athlete can truly be included on a Division I men's program or any program, for that matter, than that moment. Because they weren't cheering for the trans guy, or the trans man, or whatever. They were cheering for me. And they knew how hard I'd worked to be there and what the end of my swim career meant to me. And they were there for that. That meant the world to me. OK. Like I said, some vocab.

So I'm going to run through these, hopefully quickly. And then we'll open up for questions. All right. So transgender is a word that is used to describe any person who does not identify with the gender they were assigned at birth. A person who does not identify with the gender they were assigned at birth.

So when you're born, you get a birth certificate. It usually says M or F on it. If you do not identify with that, then that makes you transgender. If you do identify with that, that makes you cisgender. It's really important to recognize both of these words are adjectives. That means they are used to describe a noun.

So we never say those transgenders over there or that transgender over there. Or that person is transgendered with an "ed" at the end. Both of those are not only grammatically incorrect, but they also imply something incorrect about the person. So if I say those transgenders over there, what I'm implying is that they're not also people. I'm putting the label transgender instead of person.

And so I want to say transgender person, transgender athlete, transgender swimmer, et cetera. I don't want to just say transgenders, right? It's also not a word. Additionally, if I say transgendered with an "ed" at the end, that implies something happened to a person to make them the way that they are, which is not the case. A person just is or is not transgender. Same with cisgender. There's no such thing as cisgendered with an "ed" at the end or cisgenders with an S at the end.

[INAUDIBLE] now. OK, transition. This is any step or steps that a person takes to affirm their gender identity. So gender transition can mean lots of different things. And a lot of people will say "the transition," or the "full transition," or a "complete transition." There is no such thing as all of these, right? There are as many transitions as there are trans people. And we want to award the person transitioning, the trans person, the agency to define that for themselves.

There are a lot of things a transition can include-- hormones, pronoun changes, wardrobe changes, surgery, clothing changes, all the kinds of things. But it can also not include any of those. And we really want to let that person define that for themselves. Also, it's no secret that when somebody asked me, so, Schuyler, have you gotten the full transition? That they're asking me what's in my pants. That is not a secret to any trans person, that if you ask them that, we know that what's you're asking.

If you want to ask me that here today, if you would like to ask me what's in my pants, you are welcome to do so. You have to be brave, but you are welcome to do so. And we will talk about that. But that is not a question to ask to any random person that you walk down the street, the same way you wouldn't ask any random person on the street what their genitals look like. Right?

However, today we can talk about that. Again, if you'd like to, you have to be brave. But you can ask me that question. OK. Lastly, we're going to run through together, because a lot of people confuse them. Also, all this is on my website at pinkmantaray.com/terminology. If one of the moderators wants to just drop that in the Chat so people can click on it, that would be awesome. But that's where you can find all these definitions in case you forget.

So gender identity is an arrow pointing inwards. It's who I am. It's an internal sense of my own gender. It does not have to match sex or biological sex, the next word on this list. But with a lot of people, it does. Right? So most people are not transgender. And that's why I'm here to talk to you all today.

Sex or biological sex is on this list. Because a lot of people think that you are either biologically male or biologically female. The reality that is biologically false. Biology is far more complex in this binary. And there is really nothing else in our entire biological system that is binary, right? We have so many different colors eyes, different sized hands, different color skin, different textures of hair, different colors of hair. All of these things are variety, right?

They are so much different. There's so much diversity within those. And nothing is binary. But for whatever reason with sex, suddenly people think it's binary. The reality is it is not. So there's also no one way to define biological sex. There are actually five main components of biological sex. And we'll run through that in a minute.

But it's really, really important to recognize that it's not nearly as binary as we think it is. OK, so five main components. And I apologize. I don't want to make this a biology lesson. But because most people don't learn this in high school bio, we're going to run through it really quickly. And if you have more deep questions, we can talk about them later.

So five main components. We start with chromosomes, right? Most of you have heard of these. Chromosomes are XX and XY. Most people have heard of those. The reality is there's also XXY, XYY, and just an XXX, and also just X, right? So there's actually-- I guess that is six different variations of chromosomes, right?

The next thing is hormones. So most people have heard of estrogen and testosterone. The reality-- there is also dihydrotestosterone, progesterone, estradiol, and many other androgens. Most people have both classes of hormones. It's just the difference in concentration that actually produces the different effect. So really, one isn't male or female. A lot of people think of testosterone as "the male" hormone. But actually, many women have testosterone as well. Again, it's just a difference in concentration that produces a different effect.

The next thing is hormone receptors. So this is really important. Because if you don't have the receptors that fit the hormone, you won't get any effects from that. So think about it this way. I have an iPhone. I don't know where it is, but I have one. And if I have an Android charger and if you hand me an Android charger, I cannot charge my phone with it. Right? They can both work independently. But if they don't fit, it doesn't work. So I need to write charging ports for the hormone in order to get the effects of it. That's hormone expression.

The next thing is internal genitalia. And the last thing is external genitalia. I'm not going to piece through exactly what those are. Hopefully, you know. But if not, we can come back to it. The reason I'm piecing them all apart, especially the last two of internal versus external genitalia, is they don't always develop in these neat little buckets of classically male and classically female.

For most people, they do. Right? But they don't always. And the folks' bodies who don't are called intersex. And the word intersex means between sex. And there's nothing wrong with folks' bodies who are intersex. It's just a natural expression of human biological diversity.

And the reality is intersex bodies are as common as redheads, right? So about 2% of the population is redhead. About 2% of the population is intersex, which is far more common than most people think it is. It's a statistically significant value. If you think about it this way, if you know somebody who has red hair, then statistically speaking, you know somebody who is intersex. Again, far more common than you might think. All right.

Any question that you can drop in the Chat or ask them later. The last word on this list is gender expression. That's really just a term that we use to describe how we present ourselves, how we communicate our gender. It is a completely a social construct, so is bound by a sociality, by geography, by culture, by a time period that you live in. And it has nothing to do really with anything else, except that society has constructed this to be a certain gender expression.

Gender expression doesn't have to match how you identify. A lot of people like it too, especially in their social circles, to make sure that they're presenting in a way that makes them feel comfortable, but it doesn't have to. And we really want to recognize that gender expression does not always equal gender identity. OK.

So that's really the vocab here. I'm going to exit the screen share for right now so that I can see your lovely faces. I would really enjoy it if you all would come off of-- or come on to video if you feel comfortable doing so. Because it would just be lovely to see your faces while we chat together.

So while you all are turning on your videos, the last thing that I'm going to say before I open it up for questions is that I want you to ask real questions. What I mean by that is a lot of people like to tiptoe around trans people. They think we're going to break or combust or bite you or something. I promise I won't do any of those things.

I've given this presentation to kindergarteners, all the way through high school students, college students, bankers. I don't know how old they are. Lots of different kinds of people, right? Let me tell you something. Kindergarteners have absolutely no filter, none at all.

So today, I'm going to ask you to access that inner kindergartner and have no filter. That means if you think the question is rude or offensive, then definitely ask it. It sounds funny. It makes teachers nervous usually, other professors or moderators in the room. Luckily for them, I'm going to be the one answering the questions.

The reason I say that is because I really believe that if you have that question, somebody else has it, too. It's also very unlikely that I'm going to be offended by the question. If I do think the question is offensive, I'll let you know. I'll tell you why. We'll talk about it. I'll probably also answer it. And I'll explain why it might not be the best idea to ask it in another scenario.

I'm an open book. I'm not a punching bag. I'm not asking you to be mean to me, but I don't think that's going to be a problem. And please don't expect that just because I'm transgender and saying, hey, ask me all these questions, that everybody who is transgender will also open themselves up for this. Because they most likely won't. Most people, regardless of their gender identity, don't love to be bombarded with questions to prove their identity to people. But I apparently do. It's also my job.

So without further ado, if you want to drop-- there's two ways we can do this. You can either put it into the question box or-- sorry, what's it called? The Chat box. And I can see it there. Or I would love it if you would just use the Raise Hand function. And then I can actually just call on you. You can ask it live. I do think that, Michael, you said you had some questions to start off. So if you wanted to begin, we could do that. And then we can hop into other people's questions. You are muted. There you go.

MIKE RAYCRAFT: There you go. My students would love to have that Mute button all the time. Thank you for that presentation. It was fascinating, very, very insightful. My first question-- and I'll have one. I'll let the students go. I'll have some later.

SCHUYLER BAILAR: Sure.

MIKE RAYCRAFT: But in terms of-- a lot of these kids are going to go out. And they're going to work in organizations. They're going to go out and they're going to-- most of the kids in our major are looking for careers in recreation, sport tours, and facilities, and other areas. What are some things in the workplace that the community, the people in work can do to make the environment more inclusive transgender, but to all types? I mean, what types of recommendations would you have?

SCHUYLER BAILAR: Yeah, that's a great question. So I think for the best way to be a good ally to trans people-- it starts on the ground, right? It's small little interactions. And the number one thing you can do for trans people is call us the right name and right pronouns always, right?

So that means calling us the name that we identify with and the pronouns that we identify with, not the one that you see on some paper somewhere. That doesn't vibe with us. Not the one that somebody else tells you it is ours, but the one that we say is our name and our pronouns. Right? That's the number one thing you can do.

And it's, honestly, the easiest and most impactful way to say, hey, I affirm you. Right? So when somebody calls me he in pronouns, that's a great way to say, I see you. A great way to say, I don't see you, I don't recognize you, I don't respect you, I don't care about who you are is to use the wrong pronouns.

And it is, for a lot of people, an act of violence to be misgendered, especially on purpose. Right? If it's a mistake, it's a different story. It can still feel violent, right? But it is something to really pay attention to. Gendering somebody correctly is a really big deal. So that's number one thing.

Number two, if you will-- level two ally is to call out other people when they misgender us. So it's really important to correct people when they gender trans people incorrectly, especially if we're not in the room. So it's not just something you do if I'm in the room. Somebody calls something wrong. Oh, I'll fix it there. That's a great place to do it as well. But if I'm not in the room, stand up for me when I'm not there as well.

Those are really, really important. The ways that you can bring that into a space is to introduce yourself with your pronouns. The reason that this is important-- a lot of people will say, well, I'm not transgender. Why do I have to share my pronouns? Sharing pronouns helps to dismantle the idea that gender expression-- how we present or how we look equals gender identity, which it doesn't. Right?

As I said earlier, we can present ourselves in lots of different ways. And if I put on a dress right now, today, it wouldn't make me a woman. I'd still be myself, a man wearing a dress. Right? So if we present our pronouns-- Hi, I'm Schuyler. I use he/him pronouns. How about you? It just helps to, again, dismantle this concept that gender identity equals gender expression-- or sorry-- gender expression equals gender identity.

So I would really strongly encourage all of you to include your pronouns wherever you introduce yourself, so number one thing. You could do it right now. You can change it on your Zoom handle. So, see, if you look at my Zoom handle, it says Schuyler Bailar, parentheses, he/him. You can change that right now. You go click on just a little blue square. It's got three dots in it. Add your pronouns to your Zoom handle. It's a great way to start.

You can put it in your email signature. So when I write, sign an email, I say, Best, Schuyler, parentheses, he/him. That's a really great way to do it. It could be when you introduce yourself in person. I say it all the time. I say, Hi, I'm Schuyler. I use he/him pronouns. How about you?

And you don't have to ask people for their pronouns. If you offer the information, it's likely they're going to share the same information with you. Right? And if they don't-- if they don't know what it is, that's a great way to be a trans ally. They're like, hey. Oh, this is why I did that. They're like, why are you telling me your pronouns? Oh, thanks for asking. So pronouns are whatever. And you could explain to them that gender expression doesn't always equal gender identity.

I will add the last part of this, because sometimes people are resistant to this. They say, well, again, I look like a boy. Why do I need to share my pronouns? Here's how I think about it. If I walk down the street and I see somebody who looks masculine and who I would think is a man, I wouldn't walk up to him and be like, Hi, Matthew. How's it going? I don't know his name is Matthew, but I still-- why? He looks like a Matthew to me. That's not how the world works. Usually, you say, hi, what's your name?

Same way with pronouns. We want to give people the opportunity to share what their pronouns are. Right? OK. Hopefully, that makes sense if you all have specific questions about that you can ask. But I think that's really what I would say and answer that question, Michael.

MIKE RAYCRAFT: Reece, I'm going to call on you.

AUDIENCE: Awesome. First of all, thank you so much for joining us today. It was awesome to hear about your story. And I know it takes a lot to share that with so many people, so--

SCHUYLER BAILAR: Thank you.

AUDIENCE: --thank you.

SCHUYLER BAILAR: Absolutely. And also, if you would-- anybody who is asking a question, if you introduce yourself with your name in pronouns, that'd be awesome.

AUDIENCE: Yes, I'm sorry. My name is Reece [INAUDIBLE]. I identify with he/him pronouns. So my question is within our major, we spend a lot of time discussing facility management. And most of the people here major in Recreation, Sport and Tourism.

We spend a lot of time about making sure that we have the proper facilities to accommodate everyone, regardless of their gender or physical abilities. What has been your biggest issue when using a public facility? And what message would you send to current facility managers that want to make sure that they're doing everything or doing the best of their ability to accommodate everyone?

SCHUYLER BAILAR: Yeah, I love this question. So the number one thing that I'm going to tell you about facilities is they should have gender-neutral bathrooms. Gender-neutral bathrooms. They should have a single-stalled bathroom somewhere or at least floor to ceiling stalls inside of a community locker room or something or a multi-person community locker room.

I think that those are in my head, non-negotiable. If I was designing a facility, it would have to have gender-neutral bathrooms. That doesn't mean all the bathrooms need to be gender neutral. And I know that there's different state laws in different places about whether or not that you can have a bathroom that is only gender neutral.

I mean, if you can make all of them gender neutral, that would be amazing. That would be ideal in my head. I think society has a little bit of ways to go to really be accepting of that. But I know there are places that do that. So in many places in Seattle-- so I used to live in Seattle, Washington.

And they had bathrooms at a couple places that I went, actually many places that were segmented by urinals and toilets. And that was it. One side-- you chose a urinal. One side-- you chose a toilet. And it says, "Please just wash your hands." And that was it.

And I think that's a great way to segment it. Because then we're segmenting it not by what gender you identify with or whatever. It's just by what you need to use. I think that's really, really important. So that's just an idea for you, to someone providing an idea of a facility.

But the non-negotiable for me is it needs to have a single, solid gender-neutral bathroom. And the signage should say gender neutral. It should not just say bathroom or just toilet. It shouldn't say unisex. It should say gender neutral or all genders. And the reason I say that is because that's a nod to trans people and non-binary folks. That says, hey, we've thought about you. We understand that this is important to have a safe place for you to go to the bathroom. And here's that.

So another argument-- sometimes people are like, well, it's just for trans people. And trans people make up 1% of the population. We can't make accommodations for that. And here's the thing. There's plenty of cis people who don't like going to the bathroom in a public restroom.

And having a single-stall bathroom is actually very accommodating to everybody in general. It's really the signage that's just important to make sure that you're, again, giving a nod to trans people that says, hey, we've thought about this. So does that answer your question?

AUDIENCE: Yeah, definitely. Thank you.

SCHUYLER BAILAR: All right. Awesome. Though, actually, I have one other thing to add. Having signs also that say they're the "Safe Space" sign, or having the rainbow pride flag, or even the trans pride flag-- those are also really great ways. And this is for any of you, in any place that you are-- on your door, on your office door.

Those are really great ways to say, hey, queer community, LGBTQ community-- we've thought about you. It doesn't necessarily say everything about queer people. But I know that if I walk into a facility that has one of those stickers on the wall or on an office door or whatever, that they've thought about queer people. And they are that much more open. And I feel that much more safe. And I think that's another way. It's, again, a small nod to queer folks that says, hey, you're OK here.

MIKE RAYCRAFT: Dr. Payne, I see you have a question.

AUDIENCE: Hi, Schuyler. Thank you so much for joining us tonight. And I've really enjoyed hearing from you. I am a professor in the Department of Recreation, Sport, and Tourism and also a former swimmer, long-distance freestyle, but not nearly as competitive and elite and accomplished as you are. But what I'd like to know is, what are you doing now? And what do you hope you have and can continue to contribute through your work/advocacy?

SCHUYLER BAILAR: Yeah. So what am I doing now? This. I am a speaker. I'm an advocate full time now. I usually say I'm a public speaker, advocate, author, and consultant and recently added life coaching to my list of things that I do. So mainly, I'm an educator, if you will. I think everything falls under the category of educator, not necessarily traditionally, like in a university, of course.

But I do spend a lot of time at schools and universities educating like this-- no, exactly like this. And, yeah. So most of my work is built on that advocacy, on that visibility platform that I built for myself and that got built or handed towards me, because of my being the first trans athlete news story, if you will. The visibility brought me that space.

And I do a lot of work with kids. I do a lot of mentorship with kids. I do a lot of work on Instagram. And I think COVID has really shifted that. Because everything is virtual now. And so there's been a lot more people, especially with the recent blooming or heightened visibility of social advocacy in general, especially following George Floyd's murder. And the increase of Black Lives Matter movement, I think, has just increased everybody's presence on Instagram, if you will, for social advocacy.

And so that's been a place that I do a lot of work. So if you're interested, you can hop over to my Instagram. That's a place that I'm doing this work constantly and that kind of education. And hopefully, it can be stuff that you all learn from and more importantly, share with your friends.

So one of the things that's really important about advocacy work is that oftentimes, well, recognizing that advocacy work, I'm often in an echo chamber. Right? So right here, you all have chosen to come here. You've chosen to be here. You've chosen to listen. Maybe somebody forced you. But at the end of the day, there was some sort of volition. That's why you're here, which is awesome. And I'm really grateful for you being here today.

But the most important people that need to learn are the people who won't ever show up to this. And those are the people you have to have conversations with. So I tell you all this. And what I want you all to do and what would be so wonderful is have conversations with other people. Talk to your homophobic uncle. Talk to your transphobic parents.

Talk to your friends and your transphobic-- mostly guy friends or whoever. Talk to people and talk to them. Talk to your sons, your siblings, your whatever, right? Spread it beyond here. Because like I said, here is a little bit more of an echo chamber. Most likely, you're here because you wanted to be. Talk to people who won't come here.

And so that's to answer your question directly, Dr. Payne. That's what-- I'm hopeful, that I hope my work can go beyond my echo chamber. And I think that that's why I make so many tools on my Instagram that are easily shareable or that I try to make as easily shareable as possible so that they can go beyond that and get to people who really wouldn't otherwise come to my account. And it's not about my account, right? It's about the information. So, yeah, I hope that answers your question.

AUDIENCE: Yeah, thank you so much. I think that's great to make us ambassadors to help spread this, to educate and inform people.

SCHUYLER BAILAR: Yeah, my pleasure. And I'm really grateful for you all being here to help in that fight as well. It's [INAUDIBLE] teammates.

MIKE RAYCRAFT: One of the items that's been fluid throughout this entire symposium is the [INAUDIBLE] sport. Now, you said that you have been swimming. There was a picture of you as a baby. You've been in the waters from the very beginning. How do you think sport has been used and can be used as a vehicle to promote positive social change?

SCHUYLER BAILAR: I think sport is the positive social change, oftentimes. I think oftentimes, sport runs the edge of it. Because everybody can connect to sports, right? Everybody can connect to sports. Everybody can-- I think most people play sports to some degree. I think that if you didn't play sports, you're a sports fan.

So I think that sports is very much a uniting-- I'm going to say value, if you will, or experience. And so I found sports to be actually very important to my advocacy, and my work, and my reach. Because I think that in a lot of scenarios where I wouldn't have a connection with somebody, they connect with me over sports.

And I find often that when I travel-- and I do have advocacy work and speeches like this at universities. Oftentimes, it's organized by the athletic director, or by an athletic head, or an assistant AD or whatever, a coach or something. And so a lot of teams are there. And I think in another scenario if I wasn't an athlete, I might not get across as well to some of those folks.

But I actually very consistently have athletes that will come up to me and be like, gosh, I never really understood any of this before meeting you. And then you share your story, and I realized we're both just athletes. And your story is a little different from mine, but we're really just athletes. And I felt those things before, too, of being uncomfortable, or not understanding myself, or feeling stressed by an injury that I had or whatever. And I'm like, great, good, perfect. You understand that we're just all people, right?

So I think that sports can be that unifier a lot of the times. And it's very useful in that way. I will also say that-- and this-- depending on how-- I don't know how this comes across. But with kids, oftentimes, they look up to athletes, too. They look up to successful athletes in a way that they don't look up to other adults or other people around them.

And so there's a bit of social capital, honestly, that awards me to a degree that allows people to trust what I say and allows young folks, for the most part, to be more inclined to listen to me. And so I think it's a privilege that I've hopefully run with so that I can make as much social change as possible.

MIKE RAYCRAFT: Alex, I see that you have a question.

AUDIENCE: Hi, I'm Alex. I'm a student here. My pronouns are she/her. My question is-- I know this is your job now, but it seems like during the time you were figuring out your identity, back when you didn't really know what you were doing, you were still pretty open about all of this and all of these topics online. And I was just wondering why you decided to do that and put yourself on the internet like that?

SCHUYLER BAILAR: Yeah, that's a great question. So when I was coming out, my coach actually stopped me. And this is when I decided to swim for the men's team. And he said, Schuyler, if you want to do this, that's great. There's going to be media attention. And we can keep it as quiet as you want, which means he was like, listen, Harvard has a really tight PR system. If you don't want to do any interviews, you don't have to. And we can stop everybody at the door.

And I said no. I said if we do this, if I switch to the men's team, I will tell people. And I was like, I'm not going to go screaming at the rooftops, which I ended up doing or screaming at the Zoomtops. But I wasn't originally planning on doing that. I said, I'm not going to be quiet about it. If people ask me, I'm going to tell them.

And the reason was really-- there was one reason. And that was because when I was growing up, I saw nobody like-- I saw no other people like me. And when I was coming out as trans, I Googled constantly. I remember every single night, I would spend hours googling transgender swimmer, transgender athlete, Korean transgender person. Nothing came up, literally nothing.

Now, if you Google transgender swimmer, I come up. And it's not about me coming up, necessarily. It's about somebody. I don't really care who comes up, but somebody comes up. And that little kid who's in their room by themselves, crying theirselves to sleep at night, because they don't think they can be trans and do whatever they want, will now see that they can. And not only can they, but somebody else has done it to prove that that's possible. Right?

So that's it. That was the number one reason. I was like, I want people to know that I exist. Not me as in Schuyler Bailar, but me as a successful, happy, healthy trans athlete who's competing, who's doing his thing. He's totally OK. Right? I wanted kids to see that. And I wanted the world to see that so that they can extrapolate that and realize, wait, so if he can do that, if he can be himself naked in a Speedo as a trans person, then maybe I can do my thing. Right?

So that was the number one reason. It was really for those kids that I-- it was for the kid I used to be, who really thought that they couldn't do this. And that's why I continue doing this. Over time, that's still the number one goal. And still, every time anybody asks me why I do this, that's the reason. But there's also been other things that have added to that. For example, educating other people about this, right?

So the more I share, the more I talk about it, the more people can realize, hey, this is actually just another experience. What I think the most dangerous thing in the world is otherness. And what I mean by that is if you just know a label, you just know trans, or you just know a race, you just know somebody is a person of color, you just know a religion, whatever, then these labels are very othering. They're like, oh, those are just others. Those are over there. They're not me. I don't know them. That's fine.

And it's easy to discriminate against people who are other. If you sit in front of a person, and you look at them, and you're really right there, it's much more difficult to discriminate against them. Now, people still do, of course. But that otherness-- if we can eradicate otherness, I think that's huge. And so what I do by sharing my story, by talking about this, by speaking from my own experience is I am slowly, hopefully eradicating otherness on small levels and getting bigger and bigger as I go, right?

Because as I meet people, as I talk to you, hopefully I'm becoming less of just this label of transgender. Hopefully, I'm also a person who has all these other things that they do or that they are. Also, you just realize that I'm actually just a person, because I can talk. And I can converse with you. And I laugh and whatever, right? I think that's really, really important.

MIKE RAYCRAFT: Patrick?

AUDIENCE: Hi, my name is Patrick. And I identify with him/he. And my question has to do with a lot of the debate that we see, whether it's with schools, or an isolated case, or even sometimes it's in Congress. But I'm wondering what your response is to the controversy/debate out there that takes place on transgender people in sports. And do sporting officials and schools really care about enforcing old rules?

And a lot of the arguments they make is that they're protecting the sanctity of sports and making sure that it's fair. Because, well, all of the semantics that you see. But my question was, is that the case? Or is a lot of the push-back that we see simply rooted in prejudice with using those semantics above as a justification for their exclusion and bias?

SCHUYLER BAILAR: So that's a perfect question. You phrased it perfectly. The short answer of the question is, yes, you're right. It's absolutely rooted in bias, but we'll break it down. OK. And then we'll do Brittany's question. And I think that's probably bringing us to time. I'm not sure how much time we have left, but we'll do these two questions. And then we can wrap up.

So, Patrick, let's talk about the rules first, just so that everybody understands what playing field we're on, if you will. And then we'll talk about the answer to your question directly. So the NCAA has the same rules as the IOC. If you don't know, the NCAA is the National Collegiate Athletic Association. It's the governing body of sports in college in the US. It mirrors the IOC, which is the International Olympic Committee, which is basically the governing body of sports in the world.

Not all the rules mirror these, but these are the two major ones that we're working with here in the US. Right? So the NCAA says that if you-- it's basically segmented into two policies with inclusion of transgender athletes like myself, segmented into two sides-- assigned female at birth like me or assigned male at birth.

If you're assigned female at birth, you can actually compete on either team without any medical interventions. Because before I took testosterone, I had no advantages over women. And I definitely didn't have advantages over other men. Right? If I take testosterone, if I take hormones, then I must compete as male. And I have to prove that my testosterone levels are at an average male level.

What that does is it makes me the same testosterone level as any other man who's competing on average. It usually actually makes [INAUDIBLE] testosterone levels slightly below most other men. Because most men in athletics have the most-- and so male athletes have higher levels of testosterone than the average male in the general population does. So really, my testosterone levels are probably lower, but it's in a range. It's not like a specific number exactly.

I have to do my labs twice-- or, sorry-- three times a season beginning, middle, and end. And I submit those from my doctor. He basically says, Schuyler's testosterone level is at an average near level. There's no doping. There's no whatever, whatever. It's off there, right? I mean, clearly I'm like the Hulk or whatever. But it's proving that I'm not doping above the average male level.

And so when people argue with me about-- there are two arguments for trans men or "controversy" of tran men. People are either like, oh, it's illegal. You're unfit because you're taking testosterone, and it's doping. And I'm like, literally it's not. If you look at my hormone levels, they're the same. If you want to argue with numbers, that's not my problem. Right?

The other argument is exactly the opposite, which is, you're never going to be able compete against other men. Why are you even trying? You're going to suck. You can't be-- it's like we're polar opposite arguments. And to that one, I'd say, actually, I beat 85% and 87% of men in my event. And so if you want to argue again with numbers, that's not my problem. That's yours.

And there are many other trans men who are competing against cis men and able to beat cis men. There is one man who is on Team USA, which means he's better than literally every other single man who's competing in this event, most of them being cisgender. So trans men can absolutely beat and compete with this cis men. OK, that's that side. No surgery or comments on either side.

On the other side, if you're assigned male at birth and you must compete as male, unless you can produce the evidence that you've been on testosterone blockers, so hormone blockers, for at least one documented year. What that does is it brings a trans woman's testosterone levels down to an average female level. And then we have the same thing going. Then you're competing with the same hormone levels as people around you.

So any kind of argument with testosterone-- we throw those out the window, unless you want to argue with numbers. Again, that's not my problem or anybody's problem in the legality of this. However, so now, we're on the trans woman side, right? This is where people get really, really heated. This is where all the arguments are. This is the whole "sanctity of sport" thing. And they're like, preserve women's whatever, whatever. That's where all these arguments come in. OK.

So let's think about it this way, that the most people are-- the reason they say this is like, well, I don't care about trans women. It's unfair because they've gone through testosterone-driven puberty, right? Here's the thing. If somebody-- they're like, they're taller, they're stronger, they're bigger, whatever-- if somebody is taller, I can't tell you that they're not, right? I'm not going to argue with that. If somebody is 6 foot 4" they're 6 foot 4".

Now, here's the thing. There are plenty of cis women, so not trans women who are tall, who are big boned, who are large. And they're good at sports, right? Let's think about a 6 foot 4" cisgender woman. So again, not transgender. And let's say that she's really good at basketball, right? So 6 foot 4" woman. She's really good at basketball. We look at her. We say, wow, that girl is made for basketball, right?

Now, let's say we have a 6 foot 4" trans woman. Well,you know what? Let's just make her 6 feet, all right? A 6 foot trans woman. Everybody immediately says that's unfair. The reality is that is often transphobic, sexist, misogynist, racist. Actually, very often it is racist. Because a lot of the women who have been yelled at or called out for this are also Black or brown. The three that ran a lawsuit in Connecticut a couple years ago were all Black, right?

So there is so many factors of bigotry that are involved here. And it's almost always like you said-- semantics masking hatred. And it's really, really important for us to dissect that. And the reality is when we start getting into the weeds of biology, everybody's bodies are different.

That's what sports are based on. If everybody's were exactly the same, what would we be doing in sports? Right? The whole point is that there are differences. So do people have biological advantages in sport? Absolutely. But that's how sports work. Bodies are different.

And the reality is that biological-- so cis women-- there are plenty of biological differences between cis women. They're tall. They're short. They're whatever. Also, by the way, have you ever met a tall person who's not good at sports? Because I have. There's a lot of them. Have you ever met a short person who are really good at sports? Yeah, also. Lots of them, right?

So also really important to note that biology doesn't always dictate how one competes in sport. And people get really hung up on that for women, especially trans women. The other thing to recognize-- and this is something that people often miss is that the policing of trans women's bodies is actually just the same as all the police-- not just the same, but it's very similar to the policing of women's bodies, period.

A lot of people get hung up on trans women. They think they're preserving the sanctity of women's sport when the reality is that people are trying to police women's bodies everywhere. You've heard of Serena Williams, I'm assuming. Everybody is always like, she's too big. She's too masculine. She's whatever, whatever. And they go off about her body. The reality is that is very sexist. It's very misogynist. It is very racist, right? Not a lot of white women get the same kind of policing.

So we really want to think about what biases are informing our, quote, "arguments" about, quote, "fairness." It's often nothing to do with that. And there's often all these people who have no care. They have never cared about a single sport in their life. And suddenly, they are like massive sports fans when a trans woman wants to compete. Right?

The reality is, again, racism, homophobia, transphobia, and all these other kinds of things. One really important anecdote for you all just to remember, if you ever take this argument elsewhere, which I really hope that you do, you have these conversations like we're having now elsewhere. Think about it this way, OK?

So we've got Michael Phelps. You all have probably heard of him. He is the winningest Olympian of all time, a swimmer. He's 6' 4" or 5", pretty much made for swimming. His arms are a foot longer than his height. He's got these ridiculously long fingers. He's just made for swimming.

Also, guess what? He has the fastest re-uptake of lactic acid, so the lowest level of lactic acid in his skin. They tested him, OK? They tested this. And it's literally the lowest than any other athlete they had ever tested. Guess what the IOC said? They praised him. Wow, he's a genetically superior model of a swimmer. OK?

Then Caster Semenya, who is a woman, who is black, who is also lesbian, who is also from South Africa-- she competed. And they figured out that she had-- they accused her of-- some people accused her of having unfair testosterone. Something-- they tested her. They found that her testosterone levels were slightly higher than the average female.

And they took away her medal. They said she was unfair. And they said that she cannot compete unless she chemically alters her testosterone levels to lower them to the average female level. OK? This is racist. This is homophobic. This is transphobic, even though she's not a trans woman, by the way. She's not trans. She isn't taking any hormones. She was assigned a female birth, right? But it's still part of that transphobia, right? Or an intersexism as well. Sexism.

I already said transphobic. I already said-- oh, it's also racist, right? I said that. OK, lots of different things. It has nothing to do with fairness, OK? It's policing of women's bodies. And I think it could not be illustrated more clearly than when Michael Phelps was praised by his "genetic" superiority for having this lactic acid.

Do you think that helps you, by the way? Hey, let's think about this for a second. At the end of a race, if any of you have ever done anything athletic, when you get tired, and your muscles really hurt, and you're like, ow, I can't do this anymore, that's lactic acid in your muscles. That's what makes you stop.

If you have a low level of that, guess what you might be better at doing? Winning races at the end. Guess when Michael Phelps wins all of his races? At the end. OK, so it's actually very important. And I'm not saying he's unfair. I'm just explaining that there are biological advantages. We just don't think that they're unfair when it's a cis white, straight man. We do think it's unfair when it's a black woman. OK, hopefully that made sense.

That was a long answer. I appreciate your question. But I hope that the battle was helpful. And I really hope you all can take this elsewhere. If you also forget any of the arguments that I just shared, it is all on my website. And I will just drop that link right here, just so you can see it. That's a place to share this in case you are curious. Brittany, you go and then we'll wrap up. Also, if you have to drop off, no worries. It was a pleasure having you here. But I do want to answer everybody's question.

BRITTANY PRAIS: As I said before, my name is Brittany. I use she/her pronouns. And I actually pretty much have the same question as Patrick. So I'm not going to keep you too long. But I'm pretty much exploring the concept of fairness in sport in my project that I was talking about earlier, when it comes to inclusion of transgender athletes. Because I think there are so many different components to fairness.

Pretty much everything you said is pretty much what I've written in my paper so far. I even included the example of Michael Phelps and Caster. So that's really funny. I'm glad to know that I'm on the right track. But, yeah. Basically, I think there are plenty of non-physical, non-biological aspects as well, including socioeconomic status, support, mental health, all of these different things that affect your ability in sport that have nothing to do with gender or sex, I guess.

So basically, I'm going to adjust my question from what I was going to ask, since I think you did a really good job at answering that in depth. And I guess I'll switch it to, what to you is fairness in sport? Because as we just said, there are so many components.

And you explained the rules of people competing with the gender they identify as. And there are different rules for trans men as there are for trans women. Are they necessary? And what really is necessary when it comes to rules and when it comes to fairness? Does that make sense?

SCHUYLER BAILAR: It does. I don't know if I can answer for you. It's a really good question. And it's something I want to think about. I think what I'll say now is you've probably seen the imagery on equality versus equity. And so for anybody who hasn't seen it, it's like there's three kids standing, trying to see over a fence. And they're all different heights. The kids are all different heights. And this is probably better if you just google this, but I'll try to explain it.

Equality is giving them each the same box, right? You give them the same little stepping stool and it's the same height. And the shortest kid is still not going to see over the top. Equity is you give them each a box that allows them to see over the top. Right? So the idea is you're giving equal access, not equal resources.

So if somebody has less resources, you give them more resources. If somebody has all the resources they need, you give them no extra resources. I'm all about that equity. I don't think everybody needs to be given equal resources. They need to be given equal access.

And I think right now, we have a lot of issues with access. And you named the first one that we really need to work on. That's socioeconomic access. Swimming, for example, is a sport that doesn't have a lot of socioeconomic access right now. Pools are expensive to have membership. Swimming lessons are expensive. Swimsuits are expensive. Goggles are expensive. Swim teams are expensive. It's not something we can pick up a ball, and go to the nearest court, and just play around for free. Right?

So access is huge. I think that if we go beyond that, race is really important. And that sometimes is very interlocked with-- or it has a lot of intersections with socioeconomic. But it's more about systematic racism, systemic racism, disenfranchisement.

People of color weren't allowed in pools until the late 1960s. That means 50 years ago, I couldn't even go into the pool, right? I couldn't even compete. I couldn't even swim. I would have to go on colored days or into a colored pool. And so there's a reason that there's very few people of color in the sport even now. I mean, there's some.

I don't know what the statistics are. But I know for a fact that there's very few Black and Indigenous and brown folks who compete in swimming. And a lot of it is not actually because of any of the socioeconomic stuff, although that's a factor, of course. But it's because there was no access to a pool. You weren't allowed in a pool, because of the systemic racism in this country.

So these are the things that need to be changed, right? And I think if we don't start from dismantling white supremacy-- that's always the number one issue, to be honest with you, in this country. We have to start there. If we don't, we're going to leave people behind.

So I think when we think about fairness, we have to think about dismantling white supremacy. We have to think about access and how that equity to access is going to happen. And then from there, we can start thinking about all the nitty-gritty details. But that's my short answer and also my thoughts right now. There's probably more I could say, but we're going to leave it there for now.

So for those of you who are still here, I appreciate you sticking with me over time. I'm going to share a little story with you all, before we wrap up. And then I'll let you go. So a lot of people talking. We brought in race a little bit. A lot of people asked me about my ancestry, my history and specifically, the intersections of that and being transgender.

So I'm half Korean. My mother is Korean. She immigrated here in the late '60s with her family. My grandmother, then, is a Korean, very conservative Catholic immigrant. And I was very afraid to tell her that I'm transgender. I initially came out as gay, like I mentioned.

But I decided not to tell her. I thought, you know what? Maybe one day, I'll marry a woman. And then I'll tell her. But until then, we'll just forget about it for now. When I came out as trans, though, I was going to look different. I sound different. I could only tell her I was like sick for so long, right? And the news-- it was going to be all over the news. So I really felt like I had to tell her. I also really wanted to tell her.

But I eventually-- or originally, I came out on Facebook. I got sick of telling people one at a time. I was like, you know what? I'm just going to make a big Facebook post. It's going to be that. Turns out my grandmother has a Facebook. So I blocked her on Facebook. And I told all of her friends, who are also my friends on Facebook. I told them, don't tell her. Let me get there, please.

So I spent about a month writing her a letter. I tried to use Google Translate to help me, because-- and she speaks English, but there's a little bit of a language barrier. So I thought, OK, let me Google how to say transgender in Korean. It turns out it's transgender. It just said in a Korean accent. So it sounds like [INAUDIBLE] gender. Gay is [INAUDIBLE].

So translation wasn't really going to help me a whole lot. So instead, I wrote her this very detailed letter about what it meant to be transgender, how I was transgender. I ended with a paragraph that said, listen, I'm telling you this because I love you and because I desperately want you to stay in my life. I respect you deeply. And I hope you can understand that.

My mother and I went over to read my grandmother's letter. We were terrified that we would get disowned, to be honest with you. I mean, like I said, my grandma is very Catholic, very conservative, had said a lot of homophobic things to me over my life in passing. And I was like, I just have to tell her, right?

So we drive over pretty much like-- I mean, I was so, so nervous. I remember we took 20 minutes to get to her house, which she was five minutes away from me. We were driving super slow. We get there. We sit down. It's my grandmother, my grandfather, and my mother.

And I read them the letter. I end with, I love you. And I waited. My grandfather actually began to clap. And he goes, so you come out of closet now? I'm like, [SPEAKING KOREAN] grandfather, I just spent months trying to find the language with which to tell you this, but you already have it?

And my grandmother looks at me. She's got this really, really stern look on her face. She's like, I knew that. What? I didn't know that. How did you know? What? I knew that. OK. So I have two grandsons from your mother. That's fine. My mother begins to cry, sobbing. I'm like, OK, what is the catch here? There's got to be a catch. This is really weird.

My grandmother launches into this enormous discussion of how it's normal that people are transgender, how this happened to my brain and all these kinds of things. She's like citing all these scientific things and all of which, by the way, are false. I'm like, [SPEAKING KOREAN], where did you get this information? She's like, oh, I got Korean-- read YouTube internet. I'm like, what the heck is that? It doesn't matter. It got her there. And she's like, you have boy hormones. I'm like, [SPEAKING KOREAN], that's the problem. I don't have those, but OK.

So she goes on about this. And then she's like, OK, so you can be a boy, and you can be a brother, and you can be a husband. I'm like, wait a second. Slow down. Husband? What? You can be a doctor. I'm like, oh, my god. Gender roles. OK, we'll have to come back to that one. You can be a man.

But in Korean culture, it is the daughter's responsibility to take care of the parents. And your mother has no more daughters. It is still your responsibility, Schuyler, to take care of your parents. I literally said to my 83-year-old Korean, conservative Catholic grandmother, dude, I got you.

And I have her words-- [SPEAKING KOREAN]. It means take care of your parents, tattooed in her handwriting beneath my mastectomy scar. It is my tribute to my history, the people from which I come, the daughterhood I was assigned, never truly identified with, but the duties of which I will fulfill.

I share this with you in closing to prove possibility, that sometimes people do leap over culture and faith and difference in order to really love people, to use that. My grandmother could have used so many different things as an excuse. She could have used so many different things to put a barrier between me and her language, religion, culture, age, all these things.

But she said, you know what? I'm going to love you, anyways. Right? I love you first. And I want all of us to be able to follow that example. Right? She is proof that that is possible. Is it likely? No. And I want to recognize that it is absolutely a privilege in this day, age, culture, that somebody like my grandmother can accept me with open arms.

That is a privilege to have an East Asian immigrant grandmother do that. Right? I know that. And I'm fighting for the day when it is no longer a privilege, when it's an expectation. And when it is, it just is, right? But for now, it absolutely is a privilege. My grandmother, the one on the far right, has been the only one of my family members, actually, who has never misgendered me.

She always calls me the right pronouns. As soon as I came out to her, she's always called me the right pronouns. She always is just very affirming. She's like, oh, you're so handsome, so handsome, so handsome and such a great man, whatever. She always goes on about this. And her newest thing is whenever I call her, she'll tell me that she's-- you are such precious grandson. And she'll tell me that all the time. And it's adorable, honestly.

When we went to Korea this past winter, so a year ago, I was very nervous. I hadn't been to Korea to see my relatives in over a decade. So they hadn't seen me since I transitioned. And so I said that to her. I said, [SPEAKING KOREAN], I'm really nervous. What if somebody says something bad?

And she was like, they're not going to say anything bad. And I said, well, what if they do? Well, I'll yell at them. They're not going to say anything bad. And I was like, OK. Nobody said anything bad. But I knew that if they did, she would yell at them. Anywho, she's my biggest supporter, absolutely proof of this love and proof of this possibility. And sometimes it means we really, really should take those risks to open up to people. Because we never know how they're going to respond.

Thank you so much for being here today. It's been my pleasure. I really enjoyed the time with you all. If you need me, this is where to find me. I do these. I offer free 30-minute video chat support sessions. You can sign up for one of those at that link right there. I will drop the link for all of this information in my Chat.

If you also know any transmasculine folks, I am running a transmasculine support group now. And that is for transmasculine folks, also non-binary folks assigned female at birth. And you can check those out, all at this link and register there if you're interested. Thank you so much for having me. It's been a pleasure. And that's really all I have for you all.

MIKE RAYCRAFT: Schuyler, fascinating talk tonight. Thank you so much for your time. Students, thank you for your attention. And we'll talk again soon. Thank you. Have a good evening.

BRITTANY PRAIS: Thank you.

SCHUYLER BAILAR: And if anybody has questions, personally for me, they can email me. I do answer my emails, just not quickly.

AUDIENCE: That was wonderful. Thank you.

SCHUYLER BAILAR: Thank you all.