I have thought through a lot of my premises, and I kind of am sad at the implication that you don't already assume I did before I posted this and wrote that email. I've actually been thinking about this for over a year, and trying to gather both understanding and courage along with resources. Nothing I do is gonna be perfectly thought through, but if I wait until I'm perfect to do things, I'll be dead, and there won't be much opportunity at that point.
As I said, as I understand it: BMC is currently already admitting FTM folks. I am not sure that is the world's best decision because I feel as if the college is really using one of those two explanations (or maybe both?); if I had to pick one I'd come down on the side of "you're not really a man yet, so it's still a womens' college for women." As you said, that reasoning is for crap. If that was it, I wouldn't actually support admitting FTM people as undergrads at all, because I would feel as if the college were not taking them or itself seriously--and also, I don't know why any FTM undergrad would want to go a place that obviously didn't really validate their gender identity and did their best to ignore/quash it. But then again, I am not an FTM person at BMC; there may be mitigating factors. There usually are.
The problem here is that the process of transitioning, and the timing of it, isn't such a cut-and-dried situation. What happens when you start out at college pretty sure you're a woman, and end up being a man?
This isn't just theoretical. I know two people, personally, in my class year, one of them a friend, who either transitioned or started transitioning while at college. When is BMC dealing with those folks? How? Are you really gonna kick them out in their junior year? If they get GRS? When they start hormone treatments? What's the line? Is there a line? Should there be a line, since there's not always a line IRL either? (Interesting question, which may or may not be theoretical for all I know: do you think BMC would admit an intersexed person? Why or why not? How would you feel about it?)
I know my college experience would have been way less rich and awesome without my friend, and I know that the hidden-ness of the FTM folks on campus led to at least one awkward personal misunderstandings with said friend--I tried to get them to join in the people having fun, but the way I did it only made them feel worse about being trans--but there was no way I knew that except in hindsight, because my friend hadn't come out to me.
If BMC has a policy of not having FTM students as undergrads, at whatever arbitrary cutoff point, then what happens to people like my friend? If they'd chosen to implement such a policy while you were a student, and you had FTM friends on campus who loved their professors and classes and friends, what would you do? For me, it would all come down to knowing why the administration was enacting whatever policy it chose. (For instance, if it was "you're really still a woman because you haven't had GRS," I'd advise my friend to get someplace where the administration would respect his gender identification. But would I then be consistent in my views, ask the administration to admit FTM students to an ostensibly womens' college, as opposed to just keeping the students who transitioned while undergraduates? I really don't think that's a great idea, because I don't think the administration would be able to do that and respect their mission and the applicants' gender identity at the same time. Especially as people are transitioning younger and younger, which I think is *great*, these questions must come up more and more in admissions. I kind of don't envy them, sometimes.)
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16/4/11 23:19 (UTC)As I said, as I understand it: BMC is currently already admitting FTM folks. I am not sure that is the world's best decision because I feel as if the college is really using one of those two explanations (or maybe both?); if I had to pick one I'd come down on the side of "you're not really a man yet, so it's still a womens' college for women." As you said, that reasoning is for crap. If that was it, I wouldn't actually support admitting FTM people as undergrads at all, because I would feel as if the college were not taking them or itself seriously--and also, I don't know why any FTM undergrad would want to go a place that obviously didn't really validate their gender identity and did their best to ignore/quash it. But then again, I am not an FTM person at BMC; there may be mitigating factors. There usually are.
The problem here is that the process of transitioning, and the timing of it, isn't such a cut-and-dried situation. What happens when you start out at college pretty sure you're a woman, and end up being a man?
This isn't just theoretical. I know two people, personally, in my class year, one of them a friend, who either transitioned or started transitioning while at college. When is BMC dealing with those folks? How? Are you really gonna kick them out in their junior year? If they get GRS? When they start hormone treatments? What's the line? Is there a line? Should there be a line, since there's not always a line IRL either? (Interesting question, which may or may not be theoretical for all I know: do you think BMC would admit an intersexed person? Why or why not? How would you feel about it?)
I know my college experience would have been way less rich and awesome without my friend, and I know that the hidden-ness of the FTM folks on campus led to at least one awkward personal misunderstandings with said friend--I tried to get them to join in the people having fun, but the way I did it only made them feel worse about being trans--but there was no way I knew that except in hindsight, because my friend hadn't come out to me.
If BMC has a policy of not having FTM students as undergrads, at whatever arbitrary cutoff point, then what happens to people like my friend? If they'd chosen to implement such a policy while you were a student, and you had FTM friends on campus who loved their professors and classes and friends, what would you do? For me, it would all come down to knowing why the administration was enacting whatever policy it chose. (For instance, if it was "you're really still a woman because you haven't had GRS," I'd advise my friend to get someplace where the administration would respect his gender identification. But would I then be consistent in my views, ask the administration to admit FTM students to an ostensibly womens' college, as opposed to just keeping the students who transitioned while undergraduates? I really don't think that's a great idea, because I don't think the administration would be able to do that and respect their mission and the applicants' gender identity at the same time. Especially as people are transitioning younger and younger, which I think is *great*, these questions must come up more and more in admissions. I kind of don't envy them, sometimes.)