POV: Expanding the Definition of Women at Women’s Colleges
Accepting trans students is the right thing to do
In August, Mills College, in Oakland, Calif., announced that it would accept applications from any student who self-identifies as a woman, regardless of her sex or gender assignment at birth, becoming the first women’s college to do so.
I applaud this historic decision and welcome the news that not far from Boston, Mount Holyoke College, in South Hadley, Mass., announced even more inclusive policies in September. Mount Holyoke will accept qualified applicants regardless of anatomy or self-identified gender, except for biological males who identify as men.
These decisions are controversial and agonizing for many. Ruth Padawer provides a sensitive account of the experiences of trans and genderqueer students (who reject the gender binary altogether) as well as other students, faculty, and administrators at Wellesley College in a story in Sunday’s New York Times. (Wellesley currently maintains its policy of admitting only “female applicants.”) I sympathize with the many voices Padawer records, and believe that there will be losses as well as gains when women’s colleges change their admissions policies. We need to be having these agonizing conversations, because gender is a source of agony for many.
Those opposed to admitting trans and genderqueer students tend to argue that women’s colleges were founded to offer educational opportunities for women in a culture that has often defined them as inferior to men, particularly in intellectual capacity. I agree that this mission should be defended. In 2005, just before I began teaching at BU, Lawrence Summers, then president of Harvard, infamously suggested that women were underrepresented in science and engineering due to “different availability of aptitude at the high end” rather than discrimination. He resigned a year later after a no-confidence vote by Harvard’s faculty, and I would like to imagine that he was a rogue outlier who destroyed his credibility or even that higher education has transformed itself since 2005. Unfortunately, he articulated a prejudice that is held by many who would never say it publicly. And as for his irreparable credibility, he went on to be appointed director of the US National Economic Council by President Barack Obama.
The mission of women’s colleges and the specific form of education they provide is worthy and deserves protection. But, that mission will not be served by exclusionary admissions practices that echo the exclusions women have experienced from higher education. When the US Congress enacted Title IX of the US Educational Amendments Act of 1972, which prohibits discrimination “on the basis of sex,” some educational institutions (including Harvard) successfully lobbied for exemptions for single-sex educational missions. The US Department of Education issued a laudable new directive this year stating explicitly that Title IX protects transgender students from discrimination. If women’s colleges respond by petitioning for exemptions, they repeat the actions of misogynistic institutions in the 1970s.
Women’s colleges cannot bolster their educational mission by offering incoherent definitions of “women” or ignoring the insights of feminist and gender theory. One of the foundational feminist arguments was that an individual’s biological sex should not limit her/his opportunities. By refusing to admit students whose original sex designation was not female, women’s colleges are defining “women” by the genitals with which they were born—or at least suggesting genitals are the most significant factor determining what kind of person can apply to a women’s college. A poll of students in CAS WS 101 Gender and Sexuality: An Interdisciplinary Introduction on one of our first days of class indicated that most students believe the letter on a birth certificate does not define what it means to be a “woman,” a “man,” or another gendered category. The course goes on to consider the ways biological sex categories are also far more complicated than the F/M designation at birth with the help of our WS 101 teaching team, including Karen Warkentin (a College of Arts & Sciences associate professor of biology) and Ashley Mears (a CAS assistant professor of sociology), and readings like Jeffrey Eugenides’ Middlesex, a novel about an intersex individual.
The admission of trans students to women’s colleges will not undermine their unique educational mission. When women’s college administrators defend the practice of excluding trans women, they sometimes imagine an almost inconceivable enemy. Early in the discussion on the issue at Mount Holyoke, the college’s president, Lynn Pasquerella, asked, “What would prevent a male child of a faculty member who gets a tuition break for getting admitted from saying, ‘Well, I identify as female, so I want to go here and get a free education’?”
Do we really need to ask what would prevent an 18-year old boy from pretending to be a trans woman? Deterrents obviously include the prejudice against women and the extreme, even deadly, trans-phobia around the world. If that’s not enough, I trust the students at Mount Holyoke can hold their own against that imaginary faculty son.
I celebrate that Pasquerella changed her mind and announced Mount Holyoke’s new and more inclusive policy in a convocation address this fall, which was met by the cheers of students.
Student activists at Mount Holyoke influenced their college by organizing teach-ins, rallies, and demonstrations in support of admitting trans women. Since becoming a professor at BU, I have been repeatedly amazed and humbled by the students who have organized to change our University. I watched student activists establish the Women’s Resource Center in 2008 after years of advocacy. Recognizing that they were serving a wonderfully diverse student population in the space they had created out of a storage closet in the basement of the George Sherman Union, the leaders changed the name to the Center for Gender, Sexuality, and Activism. The center, as the space is now known, has recently revised its mission statement again, as it will unveil at its sixth birthday celebration later this month. Students similarly organized to fight rape and sexual misconduct, and their work contributed to the founding of the Sexual Assault Response and Prevention Center in 2011. A year later, BU students were promoting gender neutral housing, and that housing option is now available to all.
Student activists for gender justice keep teaching me how our colleges and universities can better serve our students and our world. Mills College and Mount Holyoke listened to their students stand up for trans rights and responded by changing their policies—and their gender definitions. I hope more women’s colleges will follow their leadership.
Carrie Preston, a College of Arts & Sciences associate professor of English and director of the Women’s, Gender, and Sexuality Studies Program, can be reached at cjpresto@bu.edu.
“POV” is an opinion page that provides timely commentaries from students, faculty, and staff on a variety of issues: on-campus, local, state, national, or international. Anyone interested in submitting a piece, which should be about 700 words long, should contact Rich Barlow at barlowr@bu.edu.
9 Comments
Re Wellesley College:
You state that Wellesley is one of the schools that needs to change, but I think their policies are much more relaxed than what you read. Last year they graduated a student who was male for all four years. They seem to be much more open minded than the official policy would make you think.
“But, that mission will not be served by exclusionary admissions practices that echo the exclusions women have experienced from higher education. When the US Congress enacted Title IX of the US Educational Amendments Act of 1972, which prohibits discrimination “on the basis of sex,” some educational institutions (including Harvard) successfully lobbied for exemptions for single-sex educational missions.”
Based on the faulty assumption that women are now treated equally to men… Discriminating against men in a patriarchal society is not “the same” as discriminating against women. Let’s not forget context when it comes to talking about gender, sex, and admissions on college campuses.
In a world that is extremely hostile to women, female-born women have the right to a safe space unto themselves.
I support anyone who currently identifies as a woman being admitted to women’s colleges, and I also don’t think they should kick out someone who decides to transition to being a man during the course of their college career there. I want to be clear on that and do not want to align myself with anyone who supports trans woman-exclusive policies.
That said, Mt. Holyoke’s policy is, in fact, eroding at the institution of women’s colleges and women’s safe spaces. Their policy is literally “everyone but cisgender men.” And in that way, it is another hit in a long line of people insisting that women expand their spaces to include everyone. Again, I have NO ISSUE with us expanding our idea of “woman,” but that’s not what Mt. Holyoke is doing. They, like some others, are re-defining “woman” to mean “not a cis man.” This is not far off from bathrooms divided into “men” and “unisex” (not men’s, women’s, and unisex OR just unisex) or asking why women’s shelters aren’t helping everyone else, too (nevermind that they are but having the right to put their primary focus on women). Or! For example! “Women’s Studies” programs being forced to change to “Gender Studies” and offer classes on masculinity. Privileged white men get to retain their spaces–women, an already vulnerable group, must give up theirs for anyone and everyone else.
Plus, it’s actually not actually honoring trans identities. If you’ve been living as a boy/man since you were 13? That’s fine–you were *born* with the right parts. And somehow *that’s* not reducing someone to their genitals?
It’s hilariously ironic that men’s colleges have been opening the doors to women since at least the 70s, yet few (if any) women’s colleges are able to reciprocate, even for trans students. And yet we are labeled as bigoted.
Yes, so ironic that men took ages to allow HALF THE POPULATION admittance, whereas something established as another option for women is struggling with something only recently gaining traction. Checkmate, feminists!
That’s an awfully verbose way to describe what is essentially sex discrimination.
The fact remains, that the sole remaining institutions engaging in any sort of sex discrimination are exclusively female ones, which is incredibly ironic and hypocritical.
There’s no amount of red herrings or counterexamples that are going to spin that in a positive light, it’s a huge stain on whatever movement you think you are promoting.
You mention that gender neutral housing is available to all students at BU, but this is sadly not the case. Freshmen are excluded from the policy, and I have several friends who were unable to secure gender neutral spots due to the lack of spaces that were designated GN. There is still MUCH room for improvement in the policy, and saying that it’s mere existence is enough doesn’t cut it in my book.
I can’t stand how this article acts like BU is some haven for trans people.
In addition to the lie about gender neutral housing, health services is painfully discriminatory toward trans students, to the point where I pay a high copay to go to a dr I prefer rather than dealing with them any longer. They also don’t have a preferred name option in their system so trans students must out themselves to every professor and TA if they want to go by a name that matches their identity. And there are almost no gender neutral bathrooms on campus.
We aren’t special. We aren’t even very good.
In her piece in the New York Times, Ruth Padawer focuses on the issue of women’s colleges admitting, and conferring diplomas on, transmen. In other words, should women’s colleges admit people who identify as men but who are biologically female? This is a very different question from the issue of admitting transwomen. Padawer explores the question of whether women’s colleges will survive, in light of our evolving understandings of gender. For better or for worse, the answer seems to be that they will not.