If my aunt had testicles, she'd have never graduated Wellesley.
(In completely unconnected links, Arthur Chu had a piece about how Gamergate is making him sad that I liked, but don't have anything much to say about.)
You could say "so I'll just stomp on one of Heebie's upcoming posts"?
That Chu article is something, all right.
I do not find that Chu article sympathetic.
If Heebie's planning to actually post about it, it probably makes sense to save discussion for her post.
Eh, I had the link flagged, but I hadn't written anything yet. Discuss away!
I would like to calmly discuss the ways in which single sex colleges should handle students and prospective students who are transitioning gender. Except I can't deal with the issue of people transitioning gender without defensive humor because transitioning gender can, in some circumstances if not the ones in the article, involve cutting off balls.
You've said all I would want to say, LB. Transitioned trans men should be allowed to stay because, as you said, transferring sucks. But if we accept that a women's college is a worthwhile thing in and of itself, and they are self-acknowledged not-women, I don't think they should expect much special treatment from it. (If we don't think women's colleges are worthwhile, this is probably not the hill that many will die on and there are more direct arguments.)
Then again, my bias is that trans people have it so horrid on gender to begin with that it's okay to bend the rules to bring their treatment up to decency, even if that doesn't exactly line up with the way cis people of either gender are treated. But this doesn't seem to quite fall into that unless their goal is to redefine "women's college" to not be a space for women only but a non-cis-men space (not unreasonable).
And on whatever gripping hand I'm on, my other bias is to assume that Wellesley gender politics are rather silly because that dude-in-his-underwear-freezing-to-death-statute tempest was a bit much.
On Arthur Chu: Oh man, reading his Twitter feed is just too sad. He's redoubled his efforts and it just doesn't stop.
But if we accept that a women's college is a worthwhile thing in and of itself... If we don't think women's colleges are worthwhile....
This is the wrong occasion for a "fall on your sword" joke.
if you're a student at a women's college who's looking for more recognition of your status as a man, you're either saying that it's wrong of the college to continue to be a women's college (which is a possible argument, but one that should be made straightforwardly, and the end result of which is the admission of cis men), or you're saying that while you're a man, you're the kind of man who is entitled to be treated as a woman when it suits him (that is, that you are the category of person that a women's college should be recognizing and whose specific needs a women's college should be attending to)
Or you're saying that "women's college" could/should evolve to be something like "college for women and gender non-conforming" without losing much of their purpose and mission. Arguably that's what making their purpose and mission current would entail. Sure, making principled distinctions about who gets included and what that means will be hard, but we're already in a world where this stuff is going to be constantly rethought and renegotiated going forward.
(Yes, I did just start a pretty long comment with "You've said all I'd want to". Christ. Need coffee.)
Actually reading the Chu article: I think it's targeted especially towards people who see a bit of themselves in Arthur. The fawning on Day is weird (I mean not that weird because I do it too butnevermindthat) and I think it would have been stronger if he didn't try so hard to get us to associate with his everyman-failing-actor-in-LA-who-actually-did-okay-on-a-quiz-show character.
I find the strangest things when I google myself these days.
"You've said all I'd want to," for varying values of "you", would be my default comment on a lot of threads these days. Which is one reason I don't comment as much as I used to.
The case that I thought was interesting was the male raised who identified as female and the argument that at 18 they might not have made enough of a transition to be safe for a woman's college. This was one that at least one FtoM trans seemed to be advocating.
I've watched "The Guild" and I saw Chu on Jeopardy. I thought his article was from the heart, and his testimony about being a nerd resonates with me, as a nerd and a game player (I fear that "gamer" is being polluted as a self-identification by the excesses of GG).
15: I thought it was from the heart, too, was just trying to see why someone wouldn't find it sympathetic. I if anything overidentify as a gamer, so I've been bothered by that; I'm fine with "socially inept loser" but not with "reactionary misogynist that likes internet harassment". But if that's the way it's going, in the grand scheme of things it's not much of a loss. I'll still play video games and partake in some aspects of the culture that surrounds them. Having a shorthand that the idiots in my community self-identify with is useful.
Yesterday I was riding in a subway car with a dude who was playing a loud video game on some kind of tablet or portable console or something and carrying on a shouted conversation with his friend seated across the aisle about their pride in being gamers and how much ass they were going to kick that night. There was plenty of empty space for them to sit near each other and converse in normal tones. It was basically the weird antisocial behavior you see in gamergate threads all over the internet, appearing in real life.
And a few days before, I was eating lunch somewhere near campus and at the next table there were several young women and one young man, maybe grad student age, talking about gamergate and all saying basically reasonable things until they got to the point of collectively moaning about how betrayed they felt by Adam Baldwin because they had all fallen in love with him because of Firefly.
Just like when the older Baldwin got fired from Thomas the Tank Engine for being an asshole.
If Firefly fans straight-up murdered Baldwin out of their sense of betrayal, then that show will have served its world-historical purpose.
17: They should get one of those "I have medical condition" signs.
I'd like to declare a moratorium on all discussion of Gamergate* until somebody presents a convincing model whereby mainstream center-left disapprobation will change any misogynist geek's mind about anything, ever.
* I fully recognize the folly a proposing a moratorium on discussion in this forum.
I think we should start a sub-unfogged where we can discuss knitting the modal hermeneutics of attempts to limit discussion in the main forum.
Or you're saying that "women's college" could/should evolve to be something like "college for women and gender non-conforming" without losing much of their purpose and mission. Arguably that's what making their purpose and mission current would entail.
The answer here may be that consistency isn't something to be valued at all. But I think there's an inevitable tension between what I understand to be the commonly held position in the trans community that trans men and trans women should socially be treated simply as men and women for all purposes, and that wanting to draw distinctions, e.g., between cis women and trans women for the purpose of maintaining spaces for cis women only, is inevitably hostile to trans people, and a position that trans men should be firmly distinguished from cis men as 'gender nonconforming' and therefore proper subjects of concern for a women's college. I can see Wellesley sensibly extending its mission to include genderqueer students -- students who don't identify as women in an uncomplicated way. Students who identify as men, though -- respecting that identity as men seems incompatible with maintaining a mission that doesn't include serving men.
18: Oh, Adam Baldwin is the guy from Firefly with the hat. I did not realize that.
I'd like to declare a moratorium on all discussion of Gamergate* until somebody presents a convincing model whereby mainstream center-left disapprobation will change any misogynist geek's mind about anything, ever.
What got to me about the Chu piece was his identification as a member of the lonely geeky kinda loserish demographic, and his sadness at the way 'lonely geeky and loserish' is turning into a synonym for 'scarily misogynist'. Not that it was aimed as misogynist geeks, but at the non-misogynist geeks out there and people who might end up interacting with them.
I get frustrated with Gamergate because its somehow either about "ethics" in some way I don't understand or its about rape threats, via a hyperspace jump that I also don't understand. The whole thing makes my head hurt.
... and now it's pulling in beloved character actor Adam Baldwin in some way I don't understand!
I'd like to thank the Wellesley community for making sure we have all our corner cases covered. How do they feel about trans women?
My understanding from the article is that they haven't ever admitted any, largely because it's very very rare for someone to have transitioned by when college applications are due senior year of high school. But that there's not a firm position from the school that they definitely wouldn't.
Adam Baldwin is also not a Baldwin Brother. He isn't even the religious one.
27: But we've always known there are misogynistic, racist, and otherwise shitty geeks. Vocal ones, at that. We've known this since we met That One Weird Guy in our friend group, or at latest the first time we played any sort of competitive game online. Given how prolific it is we shouldn't be surprised that people associate the identity with that behavior.
Wait, 29 -> 26.last. LB slipped another comment in. How to ruin an already hackneyed joke.
34.1: Really. We can't have two groups of Balwins running around.
That's a solution. Let's call this guy "Balwin".
34.2: I think that when geeky interests went mainstream in the late 90s/early 2000s, tthere was a hope that the "that guy" identity would become more marginal. Which I suppose it has, and gamergate is a furious counter reaction.
But we've always known there are misogynistic, racist, and otherwise shitty geeks. Vocal ones, at that. We've known this since we met That One Weird Guy in our friend group, or at latest the first time we played any sort of competitive game online. Given how prolific it is we shouldn't be surprised that people associate the identity with that behavior.
I think what Chu is being sad about is the difference between a world where it's completely unsurprising that a certain number of geeky guys with poor social skills are scarily misogynist, because it's just sort of a general truth that a certain number of guys in any broadly defined social group are going to be scarily misogynist, and a world where scary misogyny is accepted as something that is a necessarily valued part of being a geeky guy. In the second case, you can be loyal to your geeky gamer roots or you can not hate women, but you can't do both.
How is it that one sentence at the end of the post is what most people are discussing? I keep refreshing, hoping to find more discussion of trans people at Wellesley, and I just see stuff about gaming.
A "college for everyone but cis-men" seems appealing, because it is collecting together everyone who is in some way on the subaltern side of the gender binary, but...
The college really would be just saying "We aren't trying to create a separate community or identity as women. We just don't want you cis-men around." I'm not sure women's colleges want to really be defining themselves that negatively.
40: I don't feel I'm entitled to an opinion on where trans people belong or how women's colleges operate. Angry geeks, I have thoughts on.
As a white cis-male, I find I have few insights to offer regarding the challenges faced by trans students at Wellesley, or other ["so-called"?] women's colleges.
Yeah, as a cis woman I feel kind of sketchy having an opinion at all, myself. Mostly I was hoping to attract people in better positions to think about this stuff, to inform me.
Actually reading the Chu article: I think it's targeted especially towards people who see a bit of themselves in Arthur.
Maybe if I identified with him more I could have summoned more interest. I'm a little disturbed that so much seems to turn on one person having been nice to him one time, but I was doing well to make it through the article skimming, so maybe I missed the point.
I think in my generation and younger there's a kneejerk assumption that trans-inclusivity is always going to be the right position, and so I'm sort of interested in how administrators at the colleges (so essentially my age and older) are dealing with this from different perspectives. It's very hard for me to stomach saying that no, transmen can't be in a place where they feel safe, and yet I've known the value of women-only spaces, whether or not they have included transwomen. It does seem complicated emotionally as well as politically, which I realize just about everyone in the article was getting at, but I think the No Cis Men position is probably the way to go and what I'd personally feel most comfortable with, though I didn't attend a women's college.
40. I blame heebie (ref. 6) for not getting all her proposed posts off of her queue. Sabbatical, schmabattical.
27. Not that it was aimed as misogynist geeks, but at the non-misogynist geeks out there and people who might end up interacting with them.
He does kinda say "I could have gone that way, except I was treated nicely by my geek crush." That's kind of putting it back on women, rather than accepting that being an asshole is about yourself, not about other people.
IME trans issues are a minefield because trans people themselves don't agree on the details of how things ought to be done, and there's a penumbra of self righteous allies who'll insist that their flavor of the day is self evidently the only way to go, regardless of the details of the issue.
Personally, I think if you're transitioning to being male part of the graduation process ought to be leaving a famale-only environment. I'd have though that would be the same way the people transitioning feel, but apparently not. Being supportive of someone going through an enormously difficult period of life seems to me to trump consistency, though. OTOH trying to change the whole mission of the college from "women only" to "everyone but cisgendered males" seems like reaching a bit too far.
45: I thought his point was, sort of, that he had had this personally important experience of contact with a stranger who felt comfortable with him because of their shared interests, and that it is really sad for him that Day, the specific individual who he had this meaningful contact with, had publicly said that due to Gamergate, she doesn't feel safe and comfortable with strange gamers anymore. Not that she's unreasonable, but that Gamergate was shutting down the future possibility of interactions between other people like the one he'd had with Day.
I believe, yes, it's really directed towards bitter GG types, and telling them to knock it the fuck off and that they are making their own world (as well as the world of people they allegedly admire) a worse place, but, you know, from a place of sympathy.
As a white cis-male, I have no trouble offering my opinion about things I know nothing about.
46. 48: Like I said, as a straight cis woman I feel a little sketchy about having a strong opinion about this. But where I find myself wanting to split the hair in question is somewhere around the point where I think that women's colleges should maybe serve everybody but cis men, except with less focus and attention the more the student identifies as male. That is, if you think that Wellesley should be a place that recognizes that there are students who don't identify as women -- a place for women and others -- that seems reasonable to me. Explicit recognition of it as a place for women and men seems like a bridge too far.
There was some development along these lines at Mt. Holyoke a few months ago, but I can't remember what it was at all. My sister and (soon to be ex-, alas) SIL are alumnae, and SIL posted something about how MHC was handling. IIRC, it was about MtF attending, which, at least from a gender politics POV, seems fairly straightforward.
Holyoke, at least, has long had the occasional male student. I've never understood the mechanism, but there was, for whatever reason, one guy there while my sister was. That would suggest that accommodation could be made, but I don't know how you fairly formalize it.
Or, to put it another way, if it's important to you that your college institutionally recognize and support your identity as a man, that might not be a reasonable expectation to have from a women's college.
Though I don't feel especially qualified to comment [per 43], I would like to highlight the following paragraphs from the linked article:
Trans bodies are seen as an in-between option, Timothy said. "So no matter your sexuality, a trans person becomes safe to flirt with, to explore with. But it's not really the person you're interested in, it's the novelty. For lesbians, there's the safety of 'I may be attracted to this person, but they're "really" a woman, so I'm not actually bi or straight.' And for straight people, it's 'I may be attracted to a woman's body, but he's a male, so I'm not really lesbian or bi.' "
Kaden Mohamed said he felt downright objectified when he returned from summer break last year, after five months of testosterone had lowered his voice, defined his arm muscles and reshaped his torso. It was attention that he had never experienced before he transitioned. But as his body changed, students he didn't even know would run their hands over his biceps. Once at the school pub, an intoxicated Wellesley woman even grabbed his crotch and that of another trans man.
"It's this very bizarre reversal of what happens in the real world," Kaden said. "In the real world, it's women who get fetishized, catcalled, sexually harassed, grabbed. At Wellesley, it's trans men who do. If I were to go up to someone I just met and touch her body, I'd get grief from the entire Wellesley community, because they'd say it's assault -- and it is. But for some reason, when it's done to trans men here, it doesn't get read the same way. It's like a free pass, that suddenly it's O.K. to talk about or touch someone's body as long as they're not a woman."
Ah, to be young and in college again . . .
I think there are things intrinsic to the current geek experience (power fantasies! explicit childish exclusion of women! objectification impossible in the physical world!) that are pretty misogynist, and it's on us to fix that; until that happens, we shouldn't have any presumptions that our hobby isn't a misogynist cesspool. And it's something we've (myself included) been really bad about for a long time; sure, things are a bit better now and the current unpleasantness is a reaction to that, but I don't think we're off the hook yet. If the view of what we do is going to be polluted, so be it. (I guess liberal geeks could also try rebranding under a different title, e.g. self-identification as SJWs.)
I think in my generation and younger there's a kneejerk assumption that trans-inclusivity is always going to be the right position
This is self-evidently the case for trans women, hence the backlash against trans-exclusionary feminists. I see why women would have trouble with trans men (and possibly non-binary people?) and of course my opinion doesn't matter, but I think opening some women's colleges up to all non-cis-men will happen and allow them to continue their mission. There's also a financial benefit to women's colleges being as inviting as possible (our local women's university voted to become co-ed a few months ago), although I dunno if the demographics are such to actually make much of a difference.
Holyoke, at least, has long had the occasional male student
Article explains their current policy and approach (pasted below), which seems to me the right one (it's also probably good if different women's colleges adopt different policies to let 1000 gendered education flowers bloom). I wanna say more, but maybe when I either complete or give up on work today.
Last month, Mount Holyoke College announced a more far-reaching policy: It would admit all academically qualified students regardless of their anatomy or self-proclaimed gender, except for those biologically male at birth who still identify as male. In a list that reflects just how much traditional notions of gender have been upended, Mount Holyoke said eligible candidates now include anyone born biologically female, whether identified as woman, man, neither or "other" and anyone born biologically male who identifies as a woman or "other." The school president, Lynn Pasquerella, said she and her officers made the decision after concluding it was an issue of civil rights.
But Pasquerella said accommodations for trans students will not include changing the school's mission. "We're first and foremost committed to being a women's college," she told me. "I'm not going to stop using the language of sisterhood." She mentioned she taught a class in critical race theory two years ago and told her students, "When I use the term 'sisterhood,' I'm using it in a way that acknowledges the fact that not everybody here identifies as a woman. It is a rhetorical device . . . , but it is not intended to exclude anybody."
I said her explanation seemed like the one for using "he" as a generic pronoun for a male or female. She offered a different analogy, noting the parallel between women's colleges and historically black colleges and universities. "Isn't it still legitimate to speak of being a community of color even if you have half a dozen students who aren't individuals of color?" she asked. "The same might be said about women's colleges. Our mission was built upon education for women, and while we recognize that not everyone identifies this way, this is who we are and how we talk about things."
.
My reaction to the main issue in the OP is that no one actually participating in this debate looks obviously unreasonable -- for example, excluding trans men entirely would be unreasonable for the reasons LB gives. Instead the debate seems to be over what formal or informal recognition should be given to a subset of the larger Wellesley community. The only solution to that is going to be ongoing, hopefully respectful dialogue between the members of the various groups at Wellesley that are affected. The solution really is the dialogue itself rather than any particular outcome, and so it's even less possible for outsiders to make any contribution to that than one would usually expect.
And because these are students, who are constantly graduating and being replaced by new students, the issues are going to get discussed and rediscussed every few years. So the dialogue may well change over time, and probably will change over time in the direction of more trans-inclusion, because that's how things are going generally in society.
Last three paragraphs in 58 should be in italics.
I should know this, but I'm curious whether it's an issue at the high school level too. So many children are making social transitions at very young ages, and I'd expect them to be able to continue their schooling in that gender, but like one of the people in the article I'd be a little nervous about someone who (I'm not even sure what word to use!) publicly moves onto the trans spectrum at, say, starting freshman year in a single-sex school. But who am I to run things? etc.
and probably will change over time in the direction of more trans-inclusion, because that's how things are going generally in society.
Again, to the extent that society is moving toward treating trans women simply as women, and trans men simply as men (which I think it is and probably should), that's 'the direction of more trans-inclusion' but is seriously in tension with treating trans men as a central part of the mission of a women's college. That's what's I find interesting about this situation specifically; that the positions on gender that I associate with trans activism generally seem to push in a direction incompatible with the individual interests of the trans men at women's colleges.
62 is true but I think it misses out on all the more genderqueer/genderfuck stuff going on. When I was taking those couples communication classes at work I had an interesting conversation with several "stud" (=butch) women about how strongly they identify as women but just as masculine women and how frustrating it was to have people suggest they should transition or consider taking on more male identities. (And then we all talked about how we've had or plan to have uterine ablations, no five dollars.) But there are other church members who identify as male at church and female professionally or have mapped out more space in between, and remember that these are largely poor black people who have a lot less leeway to "play" with this sort of thing than a lot of the students at elite colleges. I think there's going to be a lot more awareness of the middle ground over time.
Since nobody else has yet pointed this out, it clearly falls to me:
"While no one asked me, this seems like either kind of an asshole thing to do, or kind of unserious about one's own gender identity"
The following both makes more sense and is (IMHO) more stylistically accurate:
"While no one asked me, this seems either kind of dickish, or kind of unserious about one's own gender identity"
Holyoke, at least, has long had the occasional male student.
Wellesley has male students for semester-long visits. I only know this because my friend A. was the RA for the one co-ed floor.
If you aren't going to be an asshole to women, I question your commitment to maleness.
Yeah, I was trying to nod at those issues in 53, talking about women and others, but I do recognize that they are complicated and that I don't have a strong sense of how to handle them in context.
62: It really does seem to be a "can't have your cake and eat it too" situation.
I don't think it's completely clear, at this point, whether "society is moving toward treating trans women simply as women, and trans men simply as men" (as many trans-activists would like), or whether society is moving towards a redefinition of gender as non-binary, or towards . . . who knows what. As a cis-male who doesn't feel that my identity is threatened by any of the possible outcomes, I feel like saying "You all go sort it out, and let me know what you've decided."
Again, to the extent that society is moving toward treating trans women simply as women, and trans men simply as men
I have the sense that this is really only going to be a waystation. It is a natural step toward inclusiveness. But I think in the long run we are just going to wind up with so much gender fluidity and so many gender identities that no one will bother to keep track of it anymore. But maybe that's just my version of utopian thinking.
69.2: I really think it will be both that happen, which is fine with me!
I feel like saying "You all go sort it out, and let me know what you've decided."
I think that's really the only thing people like you and me should be saying. I just wind up saying more because I find it interesting. I'm fine with people ignoring me.
I should be an expert on this topic because I read Adam by Ariel Schrag which is about a cis-gendered male teenager who pretends to be a 20-something ftm trans, so he can get it on with a 20-something lesbian.
I enjoyed this book a lot, but I suspect it may enrage some people who actually know something about the topic.
I enjoyed this book a lot, but I suspect it may enrage some people who are slapping themselves on the forehead, saying "Why didn't I think of that?!"
I do think society is moving towards a redefinition of gender as non-binary and that as that movement continues, institutions that rely on a binary definition of gender (such as women's colleges) may wind up redefining their historical purposes.
But that is a long way in the future, and it may not ever happen; and even if we assume that it is, there is going to be a long interim period of "tension," as 62 puts it. I agree with that formulation -- tension, not necessarily conflict.
65: My girls' school had a couple of boys from our brother school spend a semester there. I think that they were Seniors.
I thought that there was value in single sex education for some kids when I was that age (maybe more for girls than for boys and at least for day schools). And I seriously thought about Wellesley, Smith and Bryn Mawr. Bryn Mawr actually has Ph.D. programs in the humanities, and I know that there are men who attend them. The father of a friend of mine has a Ph.D. in English from there. Smith and Mt. Holyoke are part of the 5-college consortium, so there are some male students on campus. Occasionally a highschool boy will take classes there too. Men weren't unheard of.
73: It's gotten fairly good reviews, I thought, though I haven't read it yet.
I had kind of a bad experience recently where a transitioning friend came over and watched the Project Runway finale with us and Lee asked about four times whether one of the women contestants was "really a man," until I finally said that it was offensive and wtf? She apologized to my friend, who hadn't actually been offended, but who does that??? But she's not of my generation and comfortable with cross-dressing because she's been around it in gay bars for years, but challenged by transgender stuff way more than I would have guessed.
I'd have though that would be the same way the people transitioning feel, but apparently not.
But remember, women's colleges are, almost definitionally, douchebag-free zones, and that's a highly desirable environment for anyonesomebody who's dealing with a lot of complicated and fraught gender shit. Specifically in the case of Seven Sisters colleges, it's a pretty unique* environment in that there's a very specific sort of history, and their male counterparts offer a decidedly not douchebag-free environment. That is, it's not as if one would say, "if you would value the Smith experience but happen to be a man, Amherst is basically the same." So I can see where these men would feel very reluctant to leave Wellesley, because they're not going to get that experience anywhere else (not that there aren't coed liberal arts schools that are in many ways similar, but similar≠same). Or I dunno, maybe Vassar?
*my mother's ghost reminds me that one shouldn't modify "unique"
As I have said above, as a cis woman I feel sketchy having strong opinions about this. But total rejection of the gender binary as an ideal seems to me to cause similar problems for social justice as "I don't even see color" (yeah, analogy. Deal with it.). Once the system of white supremacy/racial hierarchy has been completely dismantled, then ignoring skin color and so on as unimportant facts about someone will make sense. But 'color blindness' isn't a particularly productive way to get there, because it leaves all of the structures of racial hierarchy in place, but you lose the tools you need for questioning and disassembling them.
Like, this: As a cis-male who doesn't feel that my identity is threatened by any of the possible outcomes, I feel like saying "You all go sort it out, and let me know what you've decided." I'm sure it's absolutely well meant, and intended to be unintrusive on matters where your interests don't need to be considered, and so on. But it sounds to me a bit like something that could be said from a position where the underlying thinking is that your gender identity is privileged and nothing plausibly is going to change that, so every one else whose gender identity is problematic, like women and trans people and whoever, should go and work it out among themselves.
Eh. My thoughts on this are not well organized. I just find the idea of moving beyond the gender binary as an ideal, before the bulk of the people who control power in our society have done so, to be seriously worrisome.
douchebag-free zones
I have difficulty believing this really exists, at least once one allows for the possibility of female douchebags.
said from a position where the underlying thinking is that your gender identity is privileged and nothing plausibly is going to change that, so every one else whose gender identity is problematic, like women and trans people and whoever, should go and work it out among themselves.
I think it's more innocent - like saying "I'm on board with whatever the proposed solution is (even if it upends my status quo), but I don't think I should get a vote in the process."
79: The analogy did occur to me as well, and I think it does shed some light here. But that's exactly why I get back to dialogue among the members of the concerned communities and sub-communities as an solution rather than resolving these issues as a matter of principle, because everything important depends on socially contingent facts.
Fifty or a hundred years ago, this conversation wouldn't have taken place at all, or at least not in public, because binary gender was not openly questioned. Today, it's going to be an ongoing issue for colleges such as Wellesley, because the gender binary is no longer unquestioned, but still very socially important -- and so there's still a significant need for what Wellesley is doing.[1] In fifty or a hundred years from now, who knows?
[1] Not that they need my permission, or that I have any right to judge, and so forth. If you prefer, read as "many members of the relevant communities continue to believe that there's still a significant need."
81: I absolutely buy that that was the intended meaning.
79.2: I had a bit of the same reaction, TBH. I don't think it was ill-intended, but we're definitely in a situation where cis-men need to be helping to man the barricades.
Now the problem - and this is where MAE and rob are coming from, I think - is that nobody knows exactly where the barricades should be set up, and manning the wrong one risks doing social harm.
My take/practice has been to do my small part, as a cis male who's perfectly comfortable with a pretty traditional masculinity, to not police gender, and to disrupt traditional gender with whatever small opportunities I have. Basically, as everyone whose gender/identity isn't privileged works out their end of the deal, we who are privileged need to be working to break down that privilege, or at least eliminate the sense of gender solidarity among all cis-males. If your stereotypical manly-man no longer believes that he's on the same team with every het male he sees, once he finishes lashing out, he'll know that his choice is to loosen his rigid definitions or shrink into a tiny rump that basically isn't privileged anymore.
There's related fraught issues about alums. Wellesley doesn't let male alums do interviews, for example.
we're definitely in a situation where cis-men need to be helping to man the barricades
Ahem.
Staff the barricades? Fight on the barricades?
Does "person" (as a verb) still mean "impersonate"?
91: I assume interviews with prospective students, not media outlets.
90: That usage sounds archaic to me, but if you're thinking of "person the barricades" it does bring to mind that you could use "people the barricades" pretty easily.
Surely, if there's any time when one could safely say "man the barricades", it's when specifically addressing cis men?
Yes, I meant interviews with prospective students. I have a facebook friend who is a male Wellesley alum and is very angry at Wellesley about these kinds of issues. (He did not transition until well after graduation, so the direct issue discussed by the article isn't relevant in his case.)
his sadness at the way 'lonely geeky and loserish' is turning into a synonym for 'scarily misogynist'
This is maybe happening more generally? That is, framing underdogs as immoral villeins is getting stronger, instead of seeing them as Charlie Brown, or Sad Sack, or, uh, some more highbrow reference.
If only I'd read Piketty more closely I'd know which Balzac allusion you want.
Normally I could do a Trollope one, though his support of the hobbledehoy makes me wonder where he'd be on gamers.
Even Charlie Brown is getting a rethink. (Slate link.) Apparently, he yells at Lucy for flubbing a punt and tells her girls don't belong on football fields.
The Mt. Holyoke policy is pretty thorough: https://www.mtholyoke.edu/policies/admission-transgender-students
I expect all this publicity is going to lead to conservative trolls doing some admissions process performance art.
103.1 is cool, if unwittingly insensitive to intersex persons who identify is other/they/ze.
As for 103.2, obviously Gamergate is going to mean eventually schools will have to get more supportive of trolls and their particular needs, but I think we haven't quite reached critical mass on that yet.
(OT but tonight's the night Lee teaches in the evening, and when someone knocked on the door while I was putting Selah to bed and I found myself yelling to the other girls to not go anywhere near the door while my heart pounded and I wanted to cry even though I knew it would be something election-related and of course it was, I knew to be grateful someone mentioned anti-anxiety meds in the SOOBC. I'm going to call my doctor tomorrow. This week feels like it's been about a month long and I'm still way too much on edge, which is not healthy for any of us. No real resolution on the Rowan situation, not that the detective has been in touch with my mom or me either. We do know a little more about what went on and why, but not what happens next or when.)
Is it at all practical to spend a week or two with the kids somewhere else, like at your parents?
No, because I'd need more medication for that! But also they don't know that anything is wrong and it would be really destabilizing for Nia in particular but Mara too if they started thinking of our home as unsafe after all the work we've done to counteract those fears. I really, honestly think I am in essentially zero danger, but I simultaneously feel the need to be vigilant, if that makes any sense.
And this is mostly old whatever-lite-version-of-PTSD being triggered, not just a response to what's going on now. But part of it is also what I just mentioned, that I feel awful about having spent so much time convincing Nia how good our windows and locks and noisy dog are at keeping her safe only to have people brandish guns right below where she's being put to bed. Nothing bad happened and I'm not playing the past-contrary-to-fact mental game the way Lee is, but I sort of feel like I failed her by not being more honest all along even though I think I told her what she needed and so on. It sucks is all.
Feel better. I hope the meds work for you and things calm down.
Sorry to hear that things are rough, Thorn. I must have missed what happened--do you feel like talking about it?
Details start here. I don't know that I'm really up to rehashing tonight, though doing better than I was before and now getting ready for bed.
Sending warm and fuzzy thoughts your way, then.
I read this post yesterday but only just read the original article, and it made me quite angry and upset. I agree with LB and marcel - it seems dickish to me.
"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" - oh just fuck off, men.
But Wellesley not admitting biologically-male-but-identify-as-female people seems equally twattish.
I've got a boy and a girl in single sex (secondary) schools, and two girls in mixed schools. The three schools are very different places. I don't have an opinion about which is better, there are pros and cons of both (e.g. girls are 3 times more likely to carry on with Physics in their last two years of school if they are at a single sex school), but they're definitely different and people should be allowed to choose something without worrying about whether it's going to change.
And apologies if I've offended anyone. I surprised myself a bit with my reaction to it, and that comment was posted without any filter. I do feel quite old-fashioned sometimes these days on these sort of issues. Took my older daughters to see a feminist comedian last week and they were muttering about her cissexism on the way home because at one point she'd said something like "women - like men, except we have vaginas instead of penises". My instinctive feeling is that women's spaces are for those who identify as women (I'm not bothered about biology). I don't even understand why you would WANT to be at a women's college if you are a man.
(Although I can see it's probably a lot safer for trans men than some other places.)
they were muttering about her cissexism on the way home because at one point she'd said something like "women - like men, except we have vaginas instead of penises".
I get really puzzled about this kind of reaction (that is, sometimes I agree with it, sometimes I fairly strongly disagree with it, and I'm not exactly sure where I'm drawing the line). Someone saying to a trans woman "You're not a woman because you have a penis" is being a jerk, likewise someone who explicitly says that anyone without a vagina is not a woman. But if gender means anything, surely you have to be able to talk about typical experiences and characteristics, even if they're not universal, and having, e.g., the biological potential for childbirth is typical of women, even if it's not true of every woman, cis or trans. A reaction to the identification of a women's health clinic under that name as cissexist because there are trans men who need the care provided there seems misplaced to me.
116.last: They objected to that? Then they're fuckheads.
"They" isn't particularly well defined -- that came from someone on the internet I saw a while back, and of course there are people being silly all over the internet. I'm not actually sure how common a reaction that would be among trans activists, but I'm fairly sure it wouldn't be universal.
Right, I just didn't want to casually impute a position I disagree with to everyone who's interested in trans issues, and I realized I kind of had.
I thought you were referring to the people in the article linked in the OP, which I hadn't read because it didn't involve kittens.
No, that's something I read somewhere a couple of months ago and probably couldn't find again.