Rikurzhen
Gold Member
- Jul 24, 2014
- 6,145
- 1,292
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The Schadenfreude is sweet:
As women’s colleges challenged the conventions of womanhood, they drew a disproportionate number of students who identified as lesbian or bisexual. Today a small but increasing number of students at those schools do not identify as women, raising the question of what it means to be a “women’s college.” Trans students are pushing their schools to play down the women-centric message. At Wellesley, Smith, Mount Holyoke and others, they and their many supporters have successfully lobbied to scrub all female references in student government constitutions, replacing them with gender-neutral language. At Wellesley, they have pressed administrators and fellow students to excise talk of sisterhood, arguing that that rhetoric, rather than being uplifting, excludes other gender minorities. At many schools, they have also taken leadership positions long filled by women: resident advisers on dorm floors, heads of student groups and members of college government. At Wellesley, one transmasculine student was a dorm president. At Mills College, a women’s school in California, even the president of student government identifies as male.
What’s a women’s college to do? Trans students point out that they’re doing exactly what these schools encourage: breaking gender barriers, fulfilling their deepest yearnings and forging ahead even when society tries to hold them back. . . . .
“Sisterhood is why I chose to go to Wellesley,” said a physics major who graduated recently and asked not to be identified for fear she’d be denounced for her opinion. “A women’s college is a place to celebrate being a woman, surrounded by women. I felt empowered by that every day. You come here thinking that every single leadership position will be held by a woman: every member of the student government, every newspaper editor, every head of the Economics Council, every head of the Society of Physics. That’s an incredible thing! This is what they advertise to students. But it’s no longer true. And if all that is no longer true, the intrinsic value of a women’s college no longer holds.”
What’s a women’s college to do? Trans students point out that they’re doing exactly what these schools encourage: breaking gender barriers, fulfilling their deepest yearnings and forging ahead even when society tries to hold them back. . . . .
“Sisterhood is why I chose to go to Wellesley,” said a physics major who graduated recently and asked not to be identified for fear she’d be denounced for her opinion. “A women’s college is a place to celebrate being a woman, surrounded by women. I felt empowered by that every day. You come here thinking that every single leadership position will be held by a woman: every member of the student government, every newspaper editor, every head of the Economics Council, every head of the Society of Physics. That’s an incredible thing! This is what they advertise to students. But it’s no longer true. And if all that is no longer true, the intrinsic value of a women’s college no longer holds.”
