Male transsexuals at women's colleges

Parents Forum
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At the nation’s elite women’s colleges, there is a new kind of gender trouble: students who enter as one sex and become another.....Rey’s story, though, had some unusual dimensions. The elite college he began attending last year in New York City, with its academically competitive. fresh-faced students, happened to be a women’s school, Barnard. That’s because when Rey first entered the freshman class, he was a woman.

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<p><a href="http://www.nytimes.com/2008/03/16/magazine/16students-t.html?_r=1&ref=magazine&oref=slogin%5B/url%5D"&gt;http://www.nytimes.com/2008/03/16/magazine/16students-t.html?_r=1&ref=magazine&oref=slogin&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p>

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<p>I think the big controversy over this isn't so much that a guy is in women's classes (most women's colleges have guys attending a class or two or on faculty) but the issue of roomates. I felt sorry for Rey but I understood why his female roomates would be freaked out about choosing to attend a women's college then sharing a room with a man!</p>

<p>If the housing issue is resolved, I think "transmen" would be accepted more readily on campus and would definitely add a whole new perspective to womens' studies classes!</p>

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<p>I cannot imagine why someone who thinks s/he should be a man wanted to go to a women's college in the first place. Something about 'fit'???</p>

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<p>I read that and was shocked to learn that Barnard doesn't have any single rooms. What about the girl who's allergic to everything? What about someone who's an insomniac? ...I've just never heard of such a housing situation, all other issues aside.</p>

<p>And I agree with Muffy333, the controversy definitely isn't over the question of whether a guy should be in women's classes, because Columbia men and women take classes at Barnard (and Barnard women take Columbia classes.)</p>

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<p>According to the article, here are reasons that a "transmale" might want to go to a women's college:</p>

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Indeed, as one transmale student I spoke to at Wellesley pointed out, women’s colleges are uniquely suited to transgender students. “There’s no safer place for transmen to be than a women’s college because there’s no actual physical threat to us,” he told me, adding, “I have more in common with women because of that shared experience than I do with men.” And even though Rey chose to leave Barnard for a coed school, he also says that women’s schools can — and should — act as havens for transmale students, that they are, in fact, natural beacons for trans people, because “feminists and trans activists are both interested in gender".

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