Enrollment of trans-masculine students has Wellesley College questioning what exactly it means to be an all-female college in 2014.
The traditional ideal behind womens’ colleges is to be a safe space where marginalized members of society have the chance to succeed.
While this debate opens a lot of questions about gender, we believe that trans students need a safe space, too.
In a lot of the cases of trans-masculine students at Wellesley, they had not yet come out as male-identifying when they applied to the school.
Even if they had, most colleges have places on their application to specify what gender a person identifies with, as opposed to what their biological sex is.
Universities need to have genderqueer options for trans students who wish to enroll, and they need to be able to collect all relevant medical data about their ?students.
The reason trans men often opt for all-womens’ schools is because they desire a safer and more open-minded environment, according to a New York Times editorial published Oct. 15.
They believe they will be more easily accepted into the community at an all-female college, even though they use male pronouns.
The argument against male trans students at an all-women’s college centers on the idea that the colleges exist to allow women to excel in a space that is not tempered by the typical patriarchal systems that most co-ed spaces carry.
So, female trans students fit into this agenda very well — as identifying females, they also will struggle with overcoming the masculine-leaning power structure.
However, for trans-male students, who will in theory benefit from these masculine structures as a side effect of their new gender identities, some think it is masculinity imposing itself on a female space.
Some students believe bringing trans-male students onto the campus will force the women of the college to once again cater to masculine needs at their own ?expense.
The problem with this reasoning is assuming that trans-male students will have all the benefits and privilege of a cis-male, meaning a biological man who identifies his gender as male and is heterosexual.
There is a reason trans-male students seek out the safety of an all-women’s college, and that is because they often face prejudice and sometimes violence at the hands of the same oppressors that women do.
Trans-men are marginalized as well, and through the traditional ideals of all-womens’ colleges, they need a safe space to be allowed to succeed.
Wellesley, and any women’s college, should step up to be this safe place.
For a women’s college to expel students who transition to male while attending their school only serves to perpetuate the idea of the exclusive gender binary.
It supports the idea that you can either be a man or a woman, and if you aren’t one, then you have to be the other.
This idea is false and harmful to students everywhere who are questioning their gender identities or recognizing them as fluid on the gender scale.
Perhaps the real question is whether the time for gendered schools is past, not because of the lack of need for safe spaces for marginalized groups, but for the gender exclusivity they suggest.
