The awkwardness of transgender athletes

An article this morning on ESPN.com describes the situation surrounding Kye Allums, a women's basketball player at George Washington University whose choice to transition to being a male has created an odd dilemma.

A female-to-male transgender member of the George Washington women's basketball team wants to be identified as a man this season.

Junior Kye Allums -- who used to be known as Kay-Kay -- is referred to on the school's website as a "male member of George Washington's women's basketball team."

"GW has been supportive during this transition. This means a lot. I didn't choose to be born in this body and feel the way I do. I decided to transition -- that is, change my name and pronouns -- because it bothered me to hide who I am, and I am trying to help myself and others to be who they are," Allums said in a statement posted Tuesday on the website.

This isn't the first time that the issue of transgender athletes (or gender controversy more broadly) has come into the public eye. Amid some public pressure, in 2004 the IOC passed a resolution allowing transgender athletes to compete in the Olympics under their new gender (with some restrictions). Controversy surrounding the issue once again touched Olympic sports following the 2009 Track & Field World Championships, when questions about female champion sprinter Caster Semenya's gender sparked widespread investigations (she turned out to be a hermaphrodite).

More recently, male-to-female transgender golfer Lana Lawless sued the LPGA to allow her to compete as a woman following her reassignment surgery. Lawless is citing civil rights law in challenging the LPGA's "female at birth" requirement.

But the Allums situation adds a new twist. For the first time (that I am aware of), an athlete is asking to continue playing under his (or her) former gender. In order to do so, however, Allums must choose to forgo any medical procedures or hormone therapy (thereby remaining "female" under NCAA rules). Essentially, then, Allums is merely choosing to change what he is called. This is strange territory for sure.

It will be interesting to see what the public reaction to this situation is. There is definite inconsistency in policy from one sport to another, with the LPGA's "female at birth" policy representing a particularly stark departure from the norm. Typically, athletes are expected (and required) to compete with those whom they most closely resemble biologically--regardless of what they were at birth. Allums' choice does not challenge that standard, but the LPGA rule certainly does.

[ESPN.com]