Sam Mezrich

b. June 2005

Our frisbee program at Columbia is called Women and Gender Diverse Ultimate, except gender diverse is just me at the moment because all the other non-binary people graduated, so it’s really just women and me. 

At the beginning of last year, I wanted to show these young frisbee recruits that this is a genderqueer space, but it doesn’t really feel that way when we have 50 people going around saying “she/her.” I feel like it’s kind of on me to show that it’s an inclusive space. Over my time at Columbia, it's more common that people will be “she/theys.” That makes me happy and takes a little pressure off of me. It will be interesting next year to see if we get more non-binary people. because I would love for it to be a truly non-gendered space. 

Sometimes when I’m around cis people, I feel the need to explain whatever pronouns I’m using. Around trans people, I have to explain less. Because how do you explain to someone who has never questioned their gender what questioning your gender is like?

I’m also Jewish which is important to me, although it’s hard at Columbia now because I don’t feel good about a lot of the jewish spaces there. Our Hillel said, “We don’t claim jews that support Palestine.” There are Jewish queer spaces that are associated with Hillel that I was a part of. That was a space that I had that I don’t really have anymore because I don’t feel comfortable going into that building

Because I have experienced how different languages help me have different perceptions of reality, I think inclusive language is really important to me. I study classics, so I am basically a double major in ancient Greek and Latin. I’ve learned throughout my studies that language is what controls reality and it controls how you experience reality.

People who are at ultimate are down with using language that’s inclusive, such as DoM, DoC, and DoW. I do have the thought, even though ultimate is so committed to being inclusive and using inclusive language otherwise, why when we play and it’s high tension, do we immediately revert back to what we’re comfortable with and just say “find your girl,” or whatever.

Over the past year, we’ve been trying to do better about not calling people she because you don’t know. I think we’ve been moving in the right direction and I hope to help push those changes even more by reminding people to keep using gender neutral language. 

Another thing that’s cool about frisbee is that you can match up on another person and directly challenge yourself based on the different styles of people you are able to match up on. Getting to know my teammates in that way, knowing what person I can match up on to work on a specific skill is important. Especially in mixed frisbee, not having gendered lines is nice because I can match up and really push myself with anyone on the opposing line

I usually play as a DoW, but sometimes I have played as a DoC. I feel comfortable doing that because I like to push the gender lines a little bit, but I like that that option is open to people who are not genderqueer. Everyone has an opportunity to go beyond gender binary in order to challenge themselves or push themselves.