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Article and comment
A couple weeks ago, Zoe Moyer, a student at Wellesley and writer for the Wellesley news, emailed me asking my opinion about a petition to make Wellesley admissions gender-neutral. I explained that in my opinion, Wellesley is already not a single-sex institution and the question is whether to admit people who were coercively assigned male at birth, not whether to admit men (since Wellesley already admits men, provided they were coercively assigned female at birth).
The article was published last week, but unfortunately, it appears I didn't make myself very clear in my comments, as the first part of the passage where my name is mentioned is accurate about my views, but the second part isn't. I wrote the following email to Zoe:
Anyway, I just thought I would post this here in case anyone came across the article and thought that my view is that admitting trans women (which Wellesley never does in practice, except for those women who have corrected their gender documentation and can avoid disclosing their trans status, as far as I know, so that's also a bit confusing) makes Wellesley not-single-sex.
If anyone is interested, my original reply from which the quotes from me are derived:
The article was published last week, but unfortunately, it appears I didn't make myself very clear in my comments, as the first part of the passage where my name is mentioned is accurate about my views, but the second part isn't. I wrote the following email to Zoe:
I'm afraid that something I wrote in my email may have
been unclear, because of this quote:
'Because transgender women are also allowed to apply to Wellesley,
Chevalier said that Wellesley "need[s] to be honest…and stop referring
to [itself] as a single-sex college.'"
The quote makes it look like I believe that trans women are not women,
and that's absolutely something I do not believe. Trans women don't
make Wellesley not-a-single-sex-college; trans *men* do. The quote
would reflect what I believe if "women" was changed to "men". Would
you mind printing a correction? I would hate for anyone to come away
from the article thinking that I said something that was so erasing of
trans women's personhood.
Anyway, I just thought I would post this here in case anyone came across the article and thought that my view is that admitting trans women (which Wellesley never does in practice, except for those women who have corrected their gender documentation and can avoid disclosing their trans status, as far as I know, so that's also a bit confusing) makes Wellesley not-single-sex.
If anyone is interested, my original reply from which the quotes from me are derived:
On Sun, Feb 5, 2012 at 5:39 AM, Zoe E Moyer wrote: > Dear Mr. Chevalier, > > I am a current Wellesley student writing for the Wellesley newspaper on a > petition that was begun by a student here to make Wellesley co-educational. > Your story was mentioned in our Community discussion about the petition, and > I was wondering if you could give your opinion for the article. > > If you have a moment, I am very interested in your responses to the > following questions: > > 1. Why did you choose Wellesley? Was it because or in spite of it being a > single-sex institution? At the time when I was applying to colleges (I was 15 years old then), I was not aware that I was a trans man. Wellesley being a historically women's college played a minor positive role in my decision (as a feminist, I thought it could only be a good thing), but I chose Wellesley mainly because of my experience taking classes there (through a program that allows high school students living in Wellesley to take classes at the college, though I was not in high school) and my belief that as a homeschooler without the usual high-school-related credentials, it was one of the best schools that I had a good chance of getting into (since I had recommendations from Wellesley faculty). > 2. Did you find a support network while attending Wellesley for being a > gender-questioning student? If yes, please elaborate. I wouldn't say there was a formal network, and I wasn't consciously questioning my gender until late in my junior year. I knew a few other students (one through the "Gender, Marriage and Family" class I took in the anthro department as a junior) who were questioning their genders as well, but they weren't incredibly close friends. > 3. Without weighing in the total disrespect from the admissions office you > have since experienced, would you make the same choice to attend Wellesley > as an undergraduate today if given the opportunity to change your > 18-year-old self's college decision or, based on your experience at > Wellesley and following graduation (with the Wellesley alum networks and > college connections), would you choose a more typical co-ed institution? > 4. With weighing in your experience with the admissions office, would you > choose Wellesley again? I'd prefer not to answer this. > 5. Some students have said that they support a limited co-ed policy, opening > the Wellesley community to trans women and women-identifying men only rather > than all genders. What is your opinion on this? I find this a strange question, as Wellesley is already open to trans women: it's open to women, and trans women are women. Trans women are not a different gender from cis women. If there is a policy barring trans women from being admitted, I'm not aware of it, especially given that Wellesley has at least one (and probably more) trans woman as an alumna. I don't know what a "woman-identifying man" is -- that sounds like a contradiction in terms. So it doesn't sound like that "limited" policy would change anything. > 6. Do you believe Wellesley should remain a single-sex college (based on > gender as stated on the birth certificate)? Wellesley is already not a single-sex college, as it admits men -- for example, me. My sex (determined by my brain, the same way everyone determines their sex and everyone still knows what their sex would be even if their body mysteriously changed) is male, and always has been, even when I wasn't aware of it. Also, I'm not sure what the question about birth certificates has to do with it, since at least when I applied to Wellesley, I did not have to submit a copy of my birth certificate (although I'm aware that apparently, the Common Application now asks for "sex listed on your birth certificate"). Birth certificates do not state gender, which is impossible to determine in an infant -- they state an observer's guess as to whether or not an infant has a phallus that will someday be able to play the penetrative role in normative heterosexual intercourse. This guess reflects neither sex nor gender. I don't have an opinion on whether Wellesley should admit cis men, but I do think that if they are going to be a college that admits women (which, again, includes trans women) and trans men, they need to be honest about that and stop referring to themselves as a single-sex college. The criteria Wellesley uses to determine an applicant's gender (name, and pronouns used in recommendation letters) do not necessarily reflect a person's real (internal) sex or gender, so it's just incorrect to say that they only admit women. (The same goes if they use the Common Application information that requests "birth certificate sex", since for many people, including me, the sex on their birth certificate does not reflect their true sex.)
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