George Washington University has announced that its NCAA Division I women’s basketball team has a man on the roster.
Kye Allums was born female, but identifies as male. Kye will be the first transgender athlete to ever play NCAA basketball. A junior this season, Kye made his first appearance as a male on November 13 against Wisconsin-Green Bay at the Best Buy Classic.
While Kye is not the first transgender student-athlete in the NCAA’s history, his story has been receiving attention from all over North America, and may be setting the stage for more coming out parties in the not-too-distant future.
The NCAA has had a policy in place since 2006 that applies to transgender athletes. It was not until this past October, however, that a set of guidelines was presented by the Women’s Sports Foundation and National Center on Lesbian Rights, regarding transgender athletes undergoing hormone therapy.
The existing policy requires that if the athlete is not taking hormone treatment, they play for the gender they were born as — the one that matches their state identification, such as their driver’s license or income tax return.
If, however, the athlete is undergoing treatment, it gets a little more complicated. The proposed policy requires that transgender athletes who were female but transitioned to male (FTM) cannot play for a women’s team after beginning treatment. In order to play on a men’s team, the FTM athlete must be approved by the NCAA because he will be taking testosterone. Male transitioned female (MTF) transgender athletes can play on a men’s team at any time, but must wait for one year after undergoing hormone treatment before they can play for a women’s team.
So, the NCAA decided that as long as Kye doesn’t take any hormone treatments, he can play for the women’s team.
Despite the overwhelming support Kye has received, there remains a large group of people who are against the decision to let him play at GWU, and who have voiced concerns.
One is the locker room issue, and how to determine which room is appropriate for a transgender athlete. Although Kye is biologically female, he identifies as male. So which room is the right one?
A proposed solution is to create small gender-neutral rooms. While this proposition might seem appealing, it is unlikely to sit well with transgender athletes, who would be made to feel outcast by the very same people who claim to accept them.
Another matter is the ‘convenience’ issue. There are some who have a problem with Kye’s situation because they feel that he is straddling the gender line.
Kye identifies as male, but still wants to continue playing women’s basketball so that he doesn’t lose his scholarship.
Often, transgender people can live for years with this knowledge about themselves but are unable to express it to the world for fear of being chastised. Should these people lose everything they have worked for because they built the courage to finally announce to the world who they truly are?
Also of concern is whether or not transgender athletes have an advantage by transitioning. Many feel that an athlete transitioning FTM will have an advantage because they will be accepting hormones, which will give them a competitive advantage. Meanwhile those transitioning MTF will have the advantage of having the genetic makeup of a man.
The difficulty with this issue is trying to find an acceptable way for transgender/transitioned athletes to express themselves as they truly are, while at the same time not restricting access to their fundamental rights.
Transgender: an umbrella term for individuals who are physiologically identified as one sex, but psychologically do not conform to the social expectations of being a member of this sex and, instead, identify with the other gender.
Transitioned: refers to those who have undergone sex reassignment surgery and/or hormone therapy. A male who has transitioned to female or is a transgender female is known as male-to-female (MTF), while female-to-male (FTM) is true for the reverse.
