"I've never said that women's colleges should admit people who know themselves to be men at the time of applying to college, though, just that they need to be honest about how not every 18-year-old knows their gender and how if you don't know your own gender, no one else can either."
From my seat, it seems you want Wellesley to take ownership of the fact that not every student may be aware of their gender upon application/attendance and therefore has to have genderblind admissions. As you have pointed out in previous posts, Wellesley requires no medical/genetic proof of sex/gender. The college has to take on faith that an applicant is female given the mission of the school. If a student does discover/become aware of his male self while a student or (as in your self-described case) after college, I do not believe you can take the college to task for admitting male students. If the student did not know, the college could not possibly have known and can't be made responsible for absent knowledge after the fact.
The admissions office admits students who are female at time of entrance. That's all it can do. To try to retroactively redefine that does not work. And if a student applies, presenting as female but knows he is actually male, that's deceptive. I don't know if that has ever happened (and there may be no way to know that). I would have a problem with a student misrepresenting himself as that disrespects not only himself in the deception but the school in trying to subvert its stated mission of being a women's college. I am not sure what you mean here:
probably because a trans man who most people subconsciously perceive as female experiences all the same negative consequences that women do in college (e.g. being ignored by instructors), and just as cis women might, he might want to make all of that a non-issue
I don't quite follow your logic. I totally get how a transman may not be able or willing to acknowledge his male self in hostile high school environs and may push that awareness deep into the subconscious. But if he IS aware of his real gender and yet hides himself in a female cloak to gain admission, that is deceitful. That has nothing to do, now, with how one is treated in a classroom (though I hope all students, including those who are male, are treated respectfully.)
Trying to claim the college does not acknowledge transmen or think they are really men, what proof do you have of that? I know that my knowledge of specific situations is incomplete, but I have been asking current students and am not aware of any institutional discrimination against enrolled transmen. Nor of any attempt to strip an alum of his degree. It's specious to suggest without proof that the college does not think trans men are men.
I'd bet we can agree that there are many ways of being men, and of being women, and of being somewhere else between/around the binary. This is to me is one of the critical ways where sex and gender are important and separate distinctions. I certainly never carried off the stereotypical pumps and pearls look, nor did I ever feel coerced into that. My sex is female. My gender is a good bit more complex. I didn't know it at the time when I was a student because the language hadn't developed, the awareness of the possibilities of the nuances. I don't think my not being a woman in what may be most commonly accepted perception of woman had anything to do with Wellesley's perception of me, and admission. I was female at the time of admission. That my gender has become more fluid since then does not that change that one key fact, in my eyes or the college's.
It cannot be made the college's responsibility to police the students so rigorously in terms of gender. We learn SO MUCH about ourselves during college years, and any college knows that is going to happen . Transformations happen in many ways. That doesn't necessarily mean the college changes. It means the student changes. It doesn't mean the college has to change its stated mission, on the chance that a student may wind up discovering and living his maleness. It doesn't mean the college is going to start asking for genetics and medical history (which as we know does not necessarily have anything to do with gender, only sex, which is not always the same). It doesn't mean we can go back in history and say "ah ha! I know this now and as a result the college admitted a man and has to own up to that." It means that the college is a place where students CAN come a great self awareness of that gender and hopefully safe if they choose to transition during those years. But it does not change the fact that at its core, Wellesley is a womens college.
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Date: 2011-05-20 04:35 am (UTC)I think you summarize the issue very well here:
"I've never said that women's colleges should admit people who know themselves to be men at the time of applying to college, though, just that they need to be honest about how not every 18-year-old knows their gender and how if you don't know your own gender, no one else can either."
From my seat, it seems you want Wellesley to take ownership of the fact that not every student may be aware of their gender upon application/attendance and therefore has to have genderblind admissions. As you have pointed out in previous posts, Wellesley requires no medical/genetic proof of sex/gender. The college has to take on faith that an applicant is female given the mission of the school. If a student does discover/become aware of his male self while a student or (as in your self-described case) after college, I do not believe you can take the college to task for admitting male students. If the student did not know, the college could not possibly have known and can't be made responsible for absent knowledge after the fact.
The admissions office admits students who are female at time of entrance. That's all it can do. To try to retroactively redefine that does not work. And if a student applies, presenting as female but knows he is actually male, that's deceptive. I don't know if that has ever happened (and there may be no way to know that). I would have a problem with a student misrepresenting himself as that disrespects not only himself in the deception but the school in trying to subvert its stated mission of being a women's college. I am not sure what you mean here:
probably because a trans man who most people subconsciously perceive as female experiences all the same negative consequences that women do in college (e.g. being ignored by instructors), and just as cis women might, he might want to make all of that a non-issue
I don't quite follow your logic. I totally get how a transman may not be able or willing to acknowledge his male self in hostile high school environs and may push that awareness deep into the subconscious. But if he IS aware of his real gender and yet hides himself in a female cloak to gain admission, that is deceitful. That has nothing to do, now, with how one is treated in a classroom (though I hope all students, including those who are male, are treated respectfully.)
Trying to claim the college does not acknowledge transmen or think they are really men, what proof do you have of that? I know that my knowledge of specific situations is incomplete, but I have been asking current students and am not aware of any institutional discrimination against enrolled transmen. Nor of any attempt to strip an alum of his degree. It's specious to suggest without proof that the college does not think trans men are men.
I'd bet we can agree that there are many ways of being men, and of being women, and of being somewhere else between/around the binary. This is to me is one of the critical ways where sex and gender are important and separate distinctions. I certainly never carried off the stereotypical pumps and pearls look, nor did I ever feel coerced into that. My sex is female. My gender is a good bit more complex. I didn't know it at the time when I was a student because the language hadn't developed, the awareness of the possibilities of the nuances. I don't think my not being a woman in what may be most commonly accepted perception of woman had anything to do with Wellesley's perception of me, and admission. I was female at the time of admission. That my gender has become more fluid since then does not that change that one key fact, in my eyes or the college's.
It cannot be made the college's responsibility to police the students so rigorously in terms of gender. We learn SO MUCH about ourselves during college years, and any college knows that is going to happen . Transformations happen in many ways. That doesn't necessarily mean the college changes. It means the student changes. It doesn't mean the college has to change its stated mission, on the chance that a student may wind up discovering and living his maleness. It doesn't mean the college is going to start asking for genetics and medical history (which as we know does not necessarily have anything to do with gender, only sex, which is not always the same). It doesn't mean we can go back in history and say "ah ha! I know this now and as a result the college admitted a man and has to own up to that." It means that the college is a place where students CAN come a great self awareness of that gender and hopefully safe if they choose to transition during those years. But it does not change the fact that at its core, Wellesley is a womens college.