Do your conservative parents know that, and, if so, are they ok with it?
If not, tread very carefully.
As someone who prefers gender neutral housing, my response to this would be: why not? I don’t care who I live with so why not do gender-neutral housing?
- As long as you are the one paying for it, no problem!
But if someone else is paying for it, then they have a say.
If you aren’t ready to come out to your parents or to fully explain why gender-neutral housing is important to you, then I really don’t know how you’ll win them over.
Some options… you can request a single room for this reason (though they can be scarce and certainly more expensive.) You can write your situation down in your housing survey and hope they match you with someone in a similar situation or at least accepting. Better yet, you could CALL the housing department for some advice on how to handle it. Most likely, the gender neutral housing is simply a floor in a larger dormitory. Perhaps you could be placed on a co-ed floor in the same building and allowed to participate in that floors community, use of common rooms and bathrooms. These may not be the options you want but if you are financially dependent and your parents won’t pay for gender neutral housing, then you’ll need to be flexible and brave.
As to your parents, meeting close mindedness with close mindedness never works. Coming to them with the attitude that they are pathetic will get you nowhere. They are inexperienced and many don’t get over their hang-ups until they have a personal reason to do so. Every generation has a social issue to come to terms with… every single one. Your generation will be no different and your children will likely not understand your hang-ups.
Well spoken @turtletime. I am taking what you and what everyone else has said into deep consideration.
I wonder if your parents are thinking of that 1970s movie “The Harrad Experiment” that starred a young Don Johnson.
I lived in single sex housing, coed housing, and had a female roommate 1 year in grad school. Mixed gender wins hands down. My roommate and I remained close friends for years through each others’ relationship ups and downs, never got involved, eventually attended each others’ wedding. I really hope your parents come around, minohi.
@minohi: I totally understand your desire to live in a gender-neutral dorm. It is likely to attract other students who share your desire to get beyond gender as a defining quality of identity, and that would be an enriching experience. I wish the college that my son is about to attend had that option. I’m sorry your parents don’t understand this. Not knowing them or their potential reactions, it is hard for any of us to advise you about when and how to share your bisexuality with them. But maybe you could test the waters by trying to explain why the idea of a gender-neutral dorm appeals to you more generally.
Well, I’m not usually the one to raise this point, but nobody else has: who’s paying for this housing?
I hate the argument of who’s paying for it. Would we condone a parent controlling which ECs to do, or which major, or which roommate, or which summer job? Sure, give advice and opinions, but regardless of who is paying, this is the student’s gig.
I think remembering who is paying for all of this might help the student approach his parents with the right degree of humility in starting the conversation.
ok, Hunt, that I’ll accept.
Even though most people on these forums would not approve of parents being as controlling as you describe, the reality of college financing for traditional students attending right after high school is that the parents have absolute veto power over the student’s college choices until the student is age 24, married, or a military veteran, or the student has a full ride merit scholarship that does not require parent cooperation on financial aid forms.
Obviously, such parents risk endangering their future relationships with their college student kids if they are excessively controlling.
Perhaps this is not a battle worth fighting. There is far more freedom in conventional co-ed housing than you may realize. Although gender-neutral housing could be an interesting experience, I don’t think it’s an essential one or even particularly important unless you’re trans, which apparently you are not.
There may come times when you may need to go down to the wire to defend your choices. But this may not be one of those times.
I’ve lived in many mixed-gender apartments and dorms, with people who are gay and straight, and don’t see it as an issue. I feel perfectly comfortable having everyone pile into one room or one tent when traveling, usually to save money. I would not, however, want to live in the same ROOM with a guy in college. I would feel fine rooming with a trans woman. Whether the individual was straight, bi, or gay/lesbian would have little or no effect on me.
This is really a matter of personal comfort at a gut level, not an intellectual exercise. If people are comfortable in a gender-neutral room, more power to them.
I do not think that this is something that you should press upon your parents at this stage, though. You may or may not be bi–I’ve known a number of men who at one point identified as bi but eventually realized that they were actually gay–whatever you are at any point in your life is fine. But I resist the idea that people have to identify themselves as somewhere on the gender/sexuality spectrum. More fluidity and less rigidity is a good thing, IMHO.
I can therefore understand why the gender-neutral housing appeals to you. But I think that it might be too much to handle for your parents right now. My advice would be to try the options outlined by turtletime in post #22.
My parents are very generously paying for my entire undergraduate college experience. They will be paying for all 4 years and for most of my needed supplies. This is not something I take for granted as I see some of my friends and other peers on CC struggling to pay for college independently. Even though my parents can’t contribute just any amount, we both came to a consensus on price and picked a school based on that. Both my parents and I love the school I’ve ended up at, The College of Wooster.
While I do understand that this is coming entirely from my parents pocket, it will not cost a penny more to live in gender neutral housing than it would to live in a traditional male-male arrangement. To the person who asked why I even brought it up to my parents in the first place, I did so because they are the ones who are swinging the cost and I thus need their permission before running off and acting against their will. 4 years of college tuition is at stake. While I’m sure that no matter what happens they won’t refuse to pay for my college, I still want to tread on the safe side. I love both of my parents, I just wish that they could be a little more open-minded to the process. I know that as I’m the first and last to go off to college that it’ll be very scary for them, so I want to ease them into everything as smoothly as possible. However, I really want to do so in a way that meets my needs as well.
All of your accounts about living in a male-female dorm will prove very useful in constructing a counter-argument to my parents’ wishes. I feel that as long as I be respectful to my parents and produce an argument in a very controlled, civilized way, I should be able to choose gender neutral housing. If they still refuse, I agree to live in traditional housing. Though its not optimal, they’re paying for my college, and as such I pretty much have to do everything they want me to.
Thank you all again for your help! Any more comments are welcome and appreciated.
Edit: @consolation I previously identified as gay for a couple of years but after dating both girls and boys am confident in my sexuality being bi. I do not believe that I am using it transitionally, though that may actually prove to be the case.
Minohi, as a sidenote- I was confident of my bisexuality through high school and early college but sexuality (and gender) is fluid. I now identify as queer because bi seems unnecessarily binary. There is a whole range of gender identity well beyond the male/female binary (as you know).
Completely not relevant to your OP but an FYI
https://www.wooster.edu/_media/files/students/reslife/housing/fall-newsletter.pdf (guide for returning students intending to live in the dorms) indicates that the gender-neutral housing will be in Kenarden, which is an upper-class hall (as opposed to one where first year students are placed). If first year students are not even eligible for the gender-neutral housing option, then there is no point in bringing it up and possibly causing conflict with your conservative parents.
@dessie411 Imagine it from the perspective of most parents. There aren’t many parents comfortable with their teengage daughter room in with a strange man and vice versa.
Tell your parents coed dorms are less wild
@ucbalumnus I’m aware of this but am a little confused since my overnight host stated that he lived in gender neutral housing when he was a freshman. Maybe the policy has changed in the last couple of years? Normal residence halls for Freshmen at Wooster are co-ed but are separated by floors I believe. I’ll have to look further into it I suppose.
Edit: Looking at the descriptions on the link you’ve provided, it appears to me that any student can live in gender neutral housing regardless of grade. However, the housing unit they stay in is occupied otherwise by upperclassmen, which I’m not sure I want. I think it’d be good for me to live with people in my own grade, even if that means single-sex floors. I’m now more conflicted than before, haha. At this particular moment in time I’m leaning toward traditional housing simply because I really want to make friends within my own grade before I do other years, but I don’t know yet. I’ll probably just end up in traditional as it’ll appease my parents anyway.
I’m agreeing with the parents on this one. They are paying, they are having to make adjustments too, and sometimes, just sometimes, parents know what is best for our kids. I steered DD1 into a more traditional dorm arrangement and that has worked out well. She likes having a co-ed dorm, but also likes coming back to her single sex floor/room.
DD2 decided to live with her teammates, and that was semi against my wishes. I thought it would be too much time together, and that has proven to be the case. When there are squabbles, they carry onto the field. When there are team issues, they bring them home to their suite. She is lucky in that she has made a lot of friends outside of her team so she escapes with those friends. Next year she wanted to live off campus with a group of these teammates and I said no, the rules are that she live on campus through sophomore year and she’s going to follow the rules. Turns out these kids are having trouble getting the permission to live off campus anyway, but I’m glad we’re not part of the argument and won’t be part of the issue now of where they will live on campus since they are late to make the request for the ‘good’ dorm. DD is just going to room with other athletes, from other teams, and the drama is reduced.
Kids don’t get to have everything they want just because they want it. I, as the parent, still get to say no, I’m not paying to go visit your boyfriend for a week just because that’s what you want to do instead of the family vacation. I do still get to say no, I don’t want you waiting tables in a strip joint that you work in past midnight. I still get to say no, you can’t take a road trip to Vegas with 10 guys if you still want me to pay for your education. My money, my rules. I do want my kids to be happy and to be making decisions about their lives, but I still get input into the decisions and sometimes kids are just wrong.
For this year, just sign up for traditional housing (which may not be as strict as you think or that your parents would like). When you see how everything works at school, then next year perhaps fight for a different arrangement. You don’t have to experience all freedoms the first week of school. Ease into your new life.