doG, I remember that. What an ordeal!
Amherst - there are not trans women currently at W.
There are a handful of trans men - who started their W life as women and during their time there, started to transition to male.
Donna - you were an adult. You had the freedom to buy the clothing, etc you wanted. The ability of an 18 yo trans woman to have all her ducks in a row is likely quite limited. It will be interesting to see what “requirements” on living as a woman they will have to consider someone’s candidacy. A doctor’s note? Parental approval if under age?
“The ability of an 18 yo trans woman to have all her ducks in a row is likely quite limited.” Exactly; that’s why I believe there won’t be many trans women in high school who will be able to meet Wellesley’s requirement that in order to be admitted, an applicant must be someone “who lives as a woman and consistently identifies as a woman.” It’s not phrased in the disjunctive; both are required. And “lives as a woman,” in ordinary parlance as applied to trans people, means 24/7 – not just in school or out of school, but all the time. Which a doctor’s note obviously doesn’t suffice to prove, and which obviously requires parental acceptance for anyone but an emancipated minor. It’s not only about clothing; at a minimum, it seems to me that that would require a name change (unless someone happens to have an androgynous name already) – something that would require parental consent in the first place for a minor – and enrollment in school under the new name (which the school could confirm), as well as evidence (as by parental affidavit) that the person is, in fact, living 24/7 as their desired gender. How many trans kids in high school have parents who are that accepting? Not many.
DonnaL, assuming that Wellesley wanted to admit trans girls to their freshman class, what would be a good, fair way? Presumably they’d want to eliminate male liars who applied but who were lying about being trans—or maybe that wouldn’t be a problem.
I can’t imagine that that’s going to be a problem. I guess I could imagine a hypothetical male applicant who’s trying to make some kind of political point, but the odds that this person would be otherwise admissible at Wellesley stretches my credence. There really isn’t a phenomenon of non-trans people claiming to be trans in order to get some perceived benefit. This is still an incredibly stigmatized status.
I’m sure it is a small population, but I have a friend whose child transitioned beginning around age 13 and was fully living as a trans woman by the end of high school. My sense is that transitioning in adolescence or even before is becoming more typical even though still rare.
Right, Hanna, so I was wondering what policy would a forward-looking Wellesley think of adopting that would open up spots not only to trans women who are already living as women, but to young people who aren’t quite all the way to living as women.
@my3girls, I have the same sense that it is becoming more common, although still far from common.
I can see more trans women applying as transfers or perhaps after a gap year to start with.
I think that the transgendered population will always be small.
Personally, I tend to think that all humans live on some sort of gender and sexuality continuum. I resist the idea that individuals ought to have to pick a gender or a sexuality as fixed points. I’d like to see us get beyond that.
Some day, perhaps.
my3girls, transition at a younger age is definitely more common than it once was. Especially for trans girls, it’s become noticeably more common even in the last decade. Ten years ago, I think at least 90% of (openly) trans college students were trans guys, not girls, probably because fluidity in gender presentation has traditionally been more highly stigmatized, and less likely to be tolerated as “just a phase,” among people assigned male at birth than people assigned female. (Early transitioning trans girls tended to come more from from poorer and more marginalized communities, and made up a substantial percentage of homeless youth in NYC and other cities. In other words, kids who didn’t have as much to lose.) But that’s definitely changing, because transness, as stigmatized as it still is, has become a little bit more acceptable in society. (Not to everyone, obviously, as shown by the continuing epidemic of suicides and attempted suicides among trans people of all races and ages, and of violence against trans women of color especially, as well as the continuing high rates of homelessness and unemployment among trans people.)
But early transition is still relatively rare; and transitioning in childhood (i.e., before adolescence), even though there have been a lot of stories in the news about it in the last few years, is even rarer. In any event, I would suspect that anyone who has completed their transition before high school, and has had all their documentation changed before then, wouldn’t even need to disclose their trans history when applying to college if they didn’t want to. Why would anyone have to know?
Cardinal Fang, I suspect that none of these schools now changing their policies to admit trans women is likely to relax the requirement of already living as a woman 24/7 at the time of application, before seeing how this initital change works out. Perhaps ultimately they might consider admitting someone who plans to live as a woman 24/7 by the time they enter college, even if they haven’t done so yet when they’re in high school. And I don’t know how they would ever solve the problem of someone who wants to do that, but can’t because they’re minors and/or financially dependent upon their parents, and their parents refuse to allow it.
The “male liar” who pretends to be a girl in high school so he can attend Wellesley and get hot chicks that way? So he can watch college girls having naked pillow fights every night in the dorm? Maybe leading a double life so he can be his inamorata’s roommate as a girl and her boyfriend as a guy, while she has no idea that her roommate and boyfriend are the same person? That sounds like several really bad movies that have been made, and is about as realistic as Lois Lane never figuring out that Clark Kent is Superman with a pair of glasses added to his face. But choosing to be a member of a highly stigmatized and marginalized group you’re not actually part of isn’t reality. Especially given that it would be a rare “male liar” who would enjoy the effects of medical transition, which is hardly conducive to continued male prowess! After all, it’s almost 40 years since people predicted that if Renee Richards were allowed to play tennis against non-trans women, there would be an epidemic of young male tennis stars transitioning to make lots of money on the women’s circuit. Guess how many times that’s happened. Zero.
And what if someone changes their mind after matriculating, and proceeds to “de-transition” and go back to living as a guy? Even apart from the fact that that rarely happens (less than 5% of the time, from everything I know), it would be essentially the same as the situation of trans guys transitioning after matriculation, and could be treated the same way.
I don’t think anyone ever seriously thought there would be an epidemic of male-pretenders-wanting-the-dorm-pillow-fights. They will be sadly disappointed! I do think it’s legit to wonder how they will separate the serious-about-living-as-a-woman from the experimenting-with-it.
Consolation, my D’s very first class at W taught about 7 shades of gender identity, from male to female. I have to confess, I’m not quite sure I believe it, and I’m not sure my D did either, but it wasn’t worth challenging the prof over.
My D was the Bryn Mawr equivalent of an RA–when she had the first of the semester floor meetings she would always have the residents introduce themselves, which included name, class status (freshman, sophomore, etc.) and how they gender identified.
I think that’s freakin’ ridiculous. If you don’t identify as a woman, then why are you at a women’s college?
So there was a woman in Michigan who walked into the shower room of her fitness club and saw a man. But he identified with being a woman, so he was allowed and she lost her membership for complaining about it.
For many women it would be uncomfortable to see, let’s say, Bruce Jenner, who now identifies as a woman in an area where one expects female privacy. Seeing male parts in the women’s shower area would make a lot of modest women very uncomfortable.
So long as there is a way to deal with these privacy issues having males, whether trans or not, at a college should not be a problem at all.
So should the incoming first-years be asked whether they are willing to room with a trans woman? Should they be offered singles as a matter of course? Lots of things to consider.
“The language of sisterhood” says it all. I think Wellesley came down on the side of common sense and compassion. My daughter, a sophomore, says that most of her fellow students seem to be very happy with this outcome, and she, personally, is relieved not to have to ask new acquaintances “what pronouns” they use to describe themselves for fear of giving offense or, worse, being accused of “cis-gender bias.” There clearly is a need for women’s colleges and I am glad Wellesley decided to remain true to its mission of educating women, whether they were born that way or now identify as one.
Wellesley has male exchange students from the 12-College Exchange, or at least we did when I was there. We called them “coeds.” B-)
At the time they were usually clustered in several dorms in an area that lent itself to that and had their own bathroom.
This whole bathroom/locker room privacy thing always gets me, because it is so easy to avoid by having showers or bathtubs in their own cubicles. That’s what we had. When I was in HS we NEVER showered after gym because there was no privacy at all, and they didn’t leave us time, anyway. I have no idea what the girls on athletic teams did. In my experience women just are very unlikely to parade around naked in front of other women, much less men. I don’t recall ever seeing a naked woman in the bathroom at college. People showered or bathed, and either put on a robe or dressed in their cubicle. In the gyms I’ve belonged to women are discreet about nakedness. I literally can remember only ONE person who habitually did her hair and makeup in the nude. It was strange, since she would be the only one who wasn’t wearing a towel or dressing. I gather than men often parade around in the nude in their locker rooms. What that is about I have no idea. 
@Amherst5168, I don’t think Wellesley has yet knowingly admitted any trans women (those born XY but who identify as XX). However, there are trans men on campus (those born XX, who applied to Wellesley as women, then during their time there, felt that they were XY). I’m reasonably confident that if you were assigned a trans woman roommate and felt uncomfortable, the housing office would work with you to change. However, you can head the whole thing off by being very clear on your questionnaire and by using the Facebook group for your class to find a roommate before the housing office assigns you one. My daughter and many of her classmates did this, with good results. (A student created a much more in-depth questionnaire that made it easier to find someone compatible.)
Well, consolation, I will be happy to report the language of sisterhood this May at graduation
Traditionally, at graduation students sing “America the Beautiful” (written by Wellesley alum Katharine Lee Bates) with the word “sisterhood” substituted for “brotherhood.” In recent years apparently they have been singing “siblinghood.” It will be interesting to see how they do it going forward.
I hope Wellesley will remain all-women. The news about Sweet Briar saddened me. Wellesley has great advantages; another poster on CC a while ago remarked that if Wellesley ever went co-ed, it would leap over Amherst, Williams etc. in popularity due to its resources and location. I think that’s true. So I don’t imagine that Wellesley will ever be closing its doors anytime soon. Nonetheless, something unique and special would be lost. I didn’t go to Wellesley because it was all-women; I went for other reasons. But along with most other alumnae, I want it to remain single-sex if possible.