First Steps

[eredien]

So, I just wrote the BMC admissions office asking for their policies on admitting transgender students, as I couldn't find them outlined anywhere on the admissions website, and have found some other info suggesting that the Transgender Task Force convened to make recommendations about this very issue a few years ago recommended the current possible admissions policy, which is admitting FTM students (great! (edit: or more like, "hm, are we actually respecting these students' gender identity when we admit them as women, if they're identifiying as men? But are we really gonna kick out students who transition to male in the middle of their undergraduate years?") but not MTF students (ugh).

I've been thinking about doing that for a long time, but I held off because I was scared. But I realized holding off wasn't going to do anything except stop me from making a decision and dealing with its consequences for as long as possible--I'd still eventually have to make the decision and deal with the fallout, and the longer I delayed the harder it would be for me to make a good decision because I'd have been worrying about the potential consequences for years, and my head wouldn't be in a good place to deal with the actual decision making and its actual consequences after that.

I wanna change that policy, if in fact that is still the official college policy, and asked how to get involved. I also wanted confirmation from the source itself--who knows, the policy might have changed in the last few years (one can hope). I don't know if the task force is even still around, for instance--and those were some of the questions I asked.

I am pretty much setting myself up for a firestorm here, but hey, if there's one thing that I learned at college, it was to be unashamed of the person I am, and stand up for myself as a woman and as a thinker, and stand up for others as a woman and a thinker, unafraid. If Bryn Mawr's goal is really to allow women to stand up for themselves and be taken seriously as human beings and as intellectuals, then they need to stop deliberately denying MTF women a chance to reach that goal during the applications process itself. To say that's their goal for all women, but deliberately encourage that goal for only some women and discourage it for others, is just sad.

I don't support other organizations with such exclusionary policies with my time or money, even if they mean a lot to me otherwise. Why continue to support this one? I'm not about drawing lines between "real Mawrters" and "fake" ones, then trying to support only the people I agree with while demonizing those I don't, such that those people in turn have a reason to label and demonize me.

It's taken a while for me to decide this, as I'm back in Boston now and I'd sure like to get involved with the BMC Boston folks again, but I certainly won't donate to or volunteer any more with the school until they change this policy (unless they want me on the Transgender Task Force, which I'd be happy to volunteer my time and effort for).

Every woman (and FTM persons, too) should have the opportunity to have Bryn Mawr mean as much to her as it did to me, but they don't, because as far as I can tell, the college has deliberately cut them out of those opportunities from the very beginning. That's not right.

I will post more when I hear back from the admissions office, because I want to make sure that I have the current and accurate facts in line. (Really, the first thing I want to try and get them to do is post their current policies somewhere people can find them).

Comments

[eredien]

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.)

Part 2

[eredien]

I think if you're going to allow people who entered as women and left as trans men to remain enrolled and graduate, then you've got to be consistent. What if somebody applies as a woman, is accepted, and then transitions to male spring and summer their senior year of high school? Are you going to rescind their admission? That'd be a fun public-relations circus.
Okay, let's say that they decide to rescind admissions for that person. What if somebody applies as a woman, is accepted, and then begins transitioning the fall and winter of their freshman year? Will the college rescind their admission, even though the difference between the two cases can be stated literally in terms of a month?

It looks to me like right now, they'd admit a trans man who'd possibly started hormone treatments at any time during the admissions/acceptance/student/graduation process, but not had GRS. However, it is unclear to me if they'd rescind admission (or kick somebody out who was already enrolled) if that person managed to somehow magically afford GRS while in college. This is fascinating, and I want to confirm or deny that theory with the admissions office and powers that be.

One of the reasons that I want to confirm or deny their admittance criteria for FTM students is because then I think then there'd be more of a basis for understanding and hopefully clarifiying what BMC considers to be the real admittance "criteria" for "woman". Is it really "current state of genitalia," as I fear it might be? Would they accept an MTF woman who'd had hormone treatments, but not GRS? Would they only take a MTF woman if she'd had GRS? Why? When? If not, on what grounds can they admit an FTM student in the analogous but opposite position?

These are the questions I kind of want to start asking.

I'm also trying to network with some Smith students and alums who have apparently started a group to get Smith to take a look at these issues. :) Thanks for your support and thoughts.

Re: Part 2

[ceruleanst.livejournal.com]

Yeah, I suspect if you force an answer it will come down to the "safe space" argument.

Re: Part 2

[eredien]

But, there are two safe-space arguments here coming into conflict. One is: "we want to create a safe space for "women," where "women" is "people who identify as women."" The other safe-space argument is "we want to create a safe space for "women," where "women" is "people with genitals x, but who may define themselves as either men or women."" Who are we committed to creating a safe space for?

The more I think about it, the more I wonder if this isn't the same argument that the Michigan's Womyn's Music Festival has every single year...there's more on the next post about this, "baby steps."