All-Women’s College Wellesley To Accept Transgender Women

[Behind the Aegis]

Source: BuzzFeed

Wellesley, a liberal arts college for Women located outside of Boston, announced in a letter to the school community Thursday that it would begin accepting transgender women.


The decision was lauded by many students, alumni, professors, and faculty, but others said it did not go far enough to be inclusive, the Boston Globe reported.

The letter said anyone who “lives as a woman and consistently identifies as a woman” would be considered for admission. It also said anyone who is considered a female at birth who identifies as neither male nor female is eligible.

Those who identify as men are not eligible for admission. The letter said any students who no longer identify as women will be allowed to graduate, but those who wish to transfer out of Wellesley will be assisted by the school.


Read more: http://www.buzzfeed.com/mbvd/all-womens-college-wellesley-to-accept-transgender-students#.qrY4jmQJK

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[Humanist_Activist]

1. Great news! And on this positive note, I'm going to bed...

Progress is slow, but at least its progressing.

[Skittles]

2. I have worked with transgendered women - they're WOMEN!!

[Heidi]

3. Good!

[azmom]

4. Woohoo. Great news.

[starroute]

5. It's not going to work in the long run, though

The decision itself seems insanely Talmudic. For example, it seems to say that if you were born male but identify as female, you're okay. If you were born female and identify as neither male nor female, you're okay. But if you were born male and identify as neither male nor female, you're not okay. And if you were born female and identify as male, you're only semi-okay.

And what underlies all these twists and turns is that in a society where there is still pervasive discrimination against women in the classroom and the workplace, there are still valid reasons for having all-women's colleges. But it isn't clear in the current tangle of gender roles who deserves those special protections.

My hope is that in another generation or so, much of this will have been sorted out. And at that point, the Wellesley ruling will appear as a quaint artifact of the early 21st century rather than as a long-term solution.

[Behind the Aegis]

6. "insanely Talmudic"?

What an insanely odd remark.

The college is a female-only institution. Therefore, the classifications do matter and why they have to look at a number of factors. The college is doing what it can to preserve the female nature of the institution. It appears you are claiming that transgender women aren't women. Is this the case or not?

[starroute]

7. I'm saying they depend on hair-splitting

They indicate that gender at birth doesn't matter in the case of transgender women or transgender men -- but that it does matter in the case of people who choose to be non-gendered. I don't understand how you can have it both ways.

[Yo_Mama]

8. Because in that case neither the biological gender nor the gender identification are

suitable for a woman's college??

That seems perfectly sensible to me.

[Yo_Mama]

9. Actually, if you are female and strongly identify as male

they don't want to admit you, and I suspect they don't have applicants who strongly identify as male.

They're just saying that they won't pitch you out if you are admitted and come to identify as male during your undergraduate career.

[starroute]

11. The ambiguity I see isn't about transgender men

It's about individuals who choose to identify as non-gendered. How can you admit some but not others depending on their biological birth identity?

I'm thinking particularly of this case.

http://www.nytimes.com/2015/02/01/magazine/the-fire-on-the-57-bus-in-oakland.html

It was close to 5 o’clock on the afternoon of Nov. 4, 2013, and Sasha Fleischman was riding the 57 bus home from school. An 18-year-old senior at a small private high school, Sasha wore a T-shirt, a black fleece jacket, a gray newsboy cap and a gauzy white skirt. For much of the long bus ride through Oakland, Calif., Sasha — who identifies as agender, neither male nor female — had been reading a paperback copy of “Anna Karenina,” but eventually the teenager drifted into sleep, skirt draped over the edge of the bus seat.

As Sasha slept, three teenage boys laughed and joked nearby. Then one surreptitiously flicked a lighter. The skirt went up in a ball of flame. Sasha leapt up, screaming, “I’m on fire!” Two other passengers threw Sasha to the ground and extinguished the flames, but Sasha’s legs were left charred and peeling. Taken by ambulance to a San Francisco burn unit, Sasha would spend the next three and a half weeks undergoing multiple operations to treat the second- and third-degree burns that ran from thigh to calf.


http://www.nbcbayarea.com/news/local/Berkeley-High-School-Students-Wear-Students-to-Honor-Sasha-Fleischman-231140321.html

Students at a high school in Berkeley showed up wearing skirts to campus on Friday to honor an "agender" 18-year-old whose own skirt was set on fire during an AC Transit bus ride earlier this week in an attack that's now been charged as a hate crime.

Gonzer and the rest of Fleischman's friends at Maybeck High School wanted to show support for their peer, who identifies asagender, and does not like to go by either "he" or "she." Other terms for this identification can be "nonbinary" gender or non-conforming gender. The students planned to send the photo to St. Francis Hospital in San Francisco, where two classmates said Fleischman is in "remarkably good spirits" after one of several anticipated surgeries to repair the teen's burned thighs that were set on fire Monday evening on an AC Transit bus. In addition, people hung rainbow flags along the Oakland bus route where Fleischman was burned as a tribute they called "Rainbows for Sasha."

[realFedUp]

10. A check box for transgender?

I can't believe that transgender students haven't been re admitted prior to this.