Gender Bender U

GENDER-BENDING SISTERHOOD?

One of the thorniest issues at elite women’s colleges these days is whether or not they will survive as single sex schools. No, it’s not because of decreasing enrollment . . .
It’s due to a burgeoning identity subculture known as
“transmen.”

Mt. Holyoke student Isaiah Bartlett told boston.com reporter Adrian Brune that in his uncomfortable former life as Allison Bartlett, “even coming out as a butch lesbian in her freshman year at Holyoke—and getting rid of those dresses for good—didn’t seem to solve the problem.”

The problem that Isaiah is referring to is the desire of a biological woman to be a man. Even though the process involves some dicey decisions about the removal of some body parts and the addition of others, there are an increasing number of sex reassignment surgeries taking place, followed by sessions with gender therapists where the transmen can discuss how they miss their lesbian identity.

This process is causing some hand-wringing at schools like Smith, Bryn Mawr and Wellesley where they are grappling with an ideological issue: “Is it sill a women’s college when some students who were female as freshmen are male by graduation day?”

This also calls into question the other “gender-diverse identities” like “transwomen,” and “genderqueers”—who apparently “consider themselves beyond or between genders.” And this is just the beginning.

There is some concern that with the growing population of transgendered students, “schools might be eventually be forced to start accepting transmen who began their transition in high school and biological males making the transition to female.”

Many students would rather not discuss this in the press, but Samantha Lewis, a Smith Republican and editor-in-chief of the conservative newspaper, says that while she understands that some students may not want to be women, the move toward transmen-ship “defeats the purpose of being at a women’s college.” To illustrate her point, Lewis noted that “The first person I met on campus was a man, who said: ‘Hi, I’m Ethan, and I use male pronouns.’”

Deborah Lambert writes the Squeaky Chalk column for Accuracy in Academia’s monthly newsletter, the Campus Report, from which this is excerpted.