Kye Allums An American college basketball player is about to become the first openly transgender player in NCAA Division I basketball. George Washington University guard Kye Allums, 21, plays on the women's team. Under NCAA regulations, he can continue playing as long as he doesn't undergo surgery or take hormones. "I used to feel like trans anything was really weird and those people were crazy, and I wondered, 'How can you feel like that?'" he said, in an interview with Outsports.com. "But I looked it up on the Internet and I thought, 'Oh my god, I'm one of those weird people." The Minnesota native told the website he started feeling like an outsider during middle school when he noticed he didn't act like many of the other girls. He spent a year trying to be more feminine, and when that failed to feel right, he identified as a lesbian. But that wasn't a natural fit for Allums, who says he realised his true identity during his freshman year of college. By sophomore year, he was asking people to call him by male pronouns. Allums went to his teammates first to tell them about the switch and says they were supportive. "We were all just talking, a bunch of team mates, and he said that he's a guy," teammate Brooke Wilson told the site. "At first I didn't understand, and then he explained that sex is how you're born and gender is how you identify yourself. Then I started to understand." The NCAA is looking at how to handle the locker room and other issue that may be sensitive for Allums due to his gender identity. "The only thing I can't do is take testosterone," Allums said. "And I don't need that anyway. I probably naturally have more than some of the guys on the guys' team. If I get surgery, it doesn't affect my play, it doesn't enhance anything, I'm just taking something off my body, like if I lost a finger." Check out Kye's story below:
Credit: GayNZ.com Daily News staff
First published: Saturday, 6th November 2010 - 12:15pm