Katharine Lee Bates was the President of Wellesley also.
One thing that distinguishes W from most other women’s colleges to me is that it has never had a male president. Smith, in contrast, got it’s first female president in the 70s.
Although Katherine Lee Bates attended Wellesley College and taught there she never served as President of the college. You are right, however, in noting that all of Wellesley’s 13 presidents have been women.
You are correct! Mea culpa.
I can’t answer that question PG. I have met friends of my daughter’s–classmates of hers at BMC–who identified themselves as gender queer. I had never heard the term before, but the way my D described it to me was that a person who is gender queer identifies as 1) both a man and a women OR 2) as neither a man or a woman. Both of D’s friends who identified this way had no problem with being at a women’s college and were, in fact, happy at BMC. BMC is a very open/laid back and accepting community and no one hassled these kids about their gender identity. That might not have been the case at other colleges.
“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.”
These second-hand scare stories are always about as accurate as the results of a game of telephone.
It wasn’t the “shower room”; it was a locker room. (The article is at cleveland.com, although I can’t get the actual link to open right now so I can copy it.) It wasn’t a “man” who “identified with being a woman”; it was a woman with a trans history that this person thought “looked like a man,” and “did not look like a woman.” Not a “he”; a she. And there’s no indication whatsoever in the story that there were any “male parts” showing at all, let alone that there was a naked man in the shower. The story points out that the women’s locker room in the club in question “has private changing stalls and bathroom stalls with doors.” And the complainer lost her membership because she was being disruptive in repeatedly raising the same complaint; it doesn’t sound like anyone else had a problem.
I’ve really never even heard of an actual trans woman who hadn’t had genital surgery who didn’t take extraordinary care to make sure that their anatomy was covered anyplace where anyone else could see them, whether in a bathroom, a locker room, or a dorm room. Nobody wants this kind of attention!
If all that were necessary to throw a woman out of a women’s bathroom or locker room were that someone thinks they look “like a man,” then an awful lot of women who aren’t even trans are going to get kicked out. Even here in New York City, where the law prohibits discrimination on the grounds of gender expression or identity, that happens more than one would think. Just a few years ago, a cis [non-trans] woman with a very “butch” presentation was awarded a large sum of money in her lawsuit against a restaurant that forcibly expelled her from the women’s bathroom after another customer complained that “there’s a man in there.” Even after she showed her identification. And it’s certainly happened to plenty of trans women, although I am lucky never to have had a problem. (After all, who would ever complain about someone looking like I do in my avatar?)
All of that said, I have no interest whatsoever in getting into an argument with anyone about this subject, or in debating unlikely hypothetical situations. I felt compelled to do that more than enough when I used to be here, and really don’t want to again.
“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 wonder when they introduced this. It was not the practice when I was a freshman in (gulp) 1995. Though we did have students at that time who would likely identify as gender queer nowadays. There was a student 2-3 years ahead of me whom I interpreted as a male-to-female transgender person, but another student who knew her better told me that she had actually been born a hermaphrodite. At any rate, it was accepted back in the 1990s to live at Bryn Mawr with 5 o’clock shadow and a wig.
"It wasn’t the “shower room”; it was a locker room. (The article is at cleveland.com, although I can’t get the actual link to open right now so I can copy it.) "
I know it’s all west of the Hudson and that’s all the same to NYC residents, but if the story took place in Midland, MI, a Cleveland newspaper may or may not be the best source!
“I had never heard the term before, but the way my D described it to me was that a person who is gender queer identifies as 1) both a man and a women OR 2) as neither a man or a woman. Both of D’s friends who identified this way had no problem with being at a women’s college and were, in fact, happy at BMC”
I get the definition. It begs the question as to why someone who identifies with (or is experimenting with expressing herself) both ways then deliberately chooses a women’s college. After all, it’s a heck of a lot easier to experiment and blend in at a coed college, and you won’t be offended because the student body is referred to as both men and women. I feel for the young people who are trapped in these situations and wish them nothing but the best in resolving their identities, but I can’t help but think it’s a bit of deliberate grandstanding to choose an all-women’s college to do it in. If you knew you didn’t fully identify as a woman and you deliberately chose to apply to a women’s college where you knew you’d be more visible when you presented as a man and when you knew the student body was referred to as women …
@Pizzagirl it’s a safety issue too. These people feel safer at women’s colleges, and they are.
“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.”
I’m not sure I agree. I think the housing office would work with you, but I feel pretty confident that there would be a small but vocal group of women at Wellesley who would hassle you for that decision, call you prejudiced, point out that the housing office wouldn’t just move you if you didn’t want to room with a black girl / Californian / biology major so why should a trans woman be any different, and just. overall make your life on campus unpleasant. Do not underestimate the stridency.
That’s why I wonder if they should offer trans women (who presumably have not had surgery) singles to avoid the issue in the first place, rather than capture some unsuspecting first-year in this kind of web.
Or they could ask incoming first-years if they are open to rooming with a trans woman, but then you get the same issue – “the college doesn’t ask if you’re willing to room with a black girl / Californian / bio major so why should trans woman be different.”
That’s a fair point, redpoodles. But that’s why I’m so glad Wellesley reaffirmed its identity as a women’s college. It’s identity is a place to educate women, not to serve as safe haven sanctuary for those who may be maligned elsewhere. I mean, young blsck men don’t have an enviable position in society either but that doesn’t mean Wellesley’s job is to provide sanctuary to them. That’s unfortunate, but not W’s mission.
“I know it’s all west of the Hudson and that’s all the same to NYC residents, but if the story took place in Midland, MI, a Cleveland newspaper may or may not be the best source!”
But Pizzagirl, surely as a Midwesterner you know that Cleveland.com is the website of the Cleveland Plain Dealer, which is a national newspaper? In fact, the story is from its “National Desk”: http://www.cleveland.com/business/index.ssf/2015/03/planet_fitness_bans_member_who.html !
Here’s a story from Chicago, a city which even I have heard of: http://wgntv.com/2015/03/07/planet-fitness-drops-member-for-transgender-complaint/
It’s unanimous: locker room, not shower room. Even the story in the Washington Times (not exactly a trans-friendly publication) agrees; see http://www.washingtontimes.com/news/2015/mar/7/planet-fitness-mich-revokes-womans-membership-over/
And what do you know, here’s a story from Michigan itself (a state where I’ve been at least half a dozen times, by the way, since my best friend in law school lived there): http://www.mlive.com/news/saginaw/index.ssf/2015/03/transgender_woman_says_she_onl.html
According to the trans woman herself (interviewed for the story), not only was it a locker room rather than a shower, but she was fully clothed. The complainant simply thought she “looked like a man.”
So, as I said, when it comes to horror stories about trans woman, it’s like a game of telephone. Naked “man” in shower turns out to be fully-clothed trans woman in locker room.
Also, regarding your assumption that the college would disclose a trans woman’s status to a potential roommate: that is private medical information, and it seems pretty clear to me that disclosing it without her consent would be a HIPPA violation. That said, I would suspect that most young trans women (assuming that they hadn’t had genital surgery) would either ask for a single, or would only want to share a room with someone who had specifically stated that she was open to having a trans roommate. Again, who wants to put themselves in a potentially hostile situation? It’s hard enough entering college (especially as that kind of “pioneer”) without courting difficulties. For similar reasons, when my son was filling out his roommate preference form the summer before he entered the University of Chicago, he made clear that if he had to have a roommate (his preference was for a single), he only wanted to be with someone who was gay-friendly. As it turned out, he got a single, which made life easier for him, I suspect.
I can just imagine going to the waiter or manager with my hair on fire and complaining about DonnaL: “OMG, OMG! I went into the women’s room and someone who doesn’t belong. The women’s room is for women. Not cats.” 
Chill! I was just amused at the use of a Cleveland newspaper for a Michigan story. That’s all. No harm no foul!
Here’s a more in-depth story on the Planet Fitness membership revocation.
http://www.cnn.com/2015/03/07/living/feat-planet-fitness-transgender-member/index.html
It sounds like the issue wasn’t that the member complained but that she tried to enlist other members to complain about a policy Planet Fitness was clearly not going to change. It would have gone against their very clear and heavily marketed “No judgement zone” messaging.
That woman sounds like a royal PITA to me.
Good for Planet Fitness.
This is all so interesting. I see that the women’s colleges are responding to this issue in different ways. At Wellesley, the incoming first-years aren’t asked their preferred pronoun? I thought that was typical at most LACs these days. At Mount Holyoke, not the biggest hotbed of liberalism around, I don’t think, they are. MHC also announced this fall that they’ll accept anyone “who is female or identifies as a woman.”
They’re defining that as
Biologically born female; identifies as a woman
Biologically born female; identifies as a man
Biologically born female; identifies as other/they/ze
Biologically born female; does not identify as either woman or man
Biologically born male; identifies as woman
Biologically born male; identifies as other/they/ze and when “other/they” identity includes woman
Biologically born with both male and female anatomy (Intersex); identifies as a woman
From their website “Mount Holyoke remains committed to its historic mission as a women’s college. Yet, concepts of what it means to be a woman are not static. Traditional binaries around who counts as a man or woman are being challenged by those whose gender identity does not conform to their biology. Those bringing forth these challenges recognize that such categorization is not independent of political and social ideologies. Just as early feminists argued that the reduction of women to their biological functions was a foundation for women’s oppression, we must acknowledge that gender identity is not reducible to the body. Instead, we must look at identity in terms of the external context in which the individual is situated. It is this positionality that biological and transwomen share, and it is this positionality that is relevant when women’s colleges open their gates for those aspiring to live, learn, and thrive within a community of women.”
I do see somewhat of a conflict for biological women who identify as men attending a women’s college. Maybe. I am pretty sure my daughter would argue with me about that. Come to think of it I think I’ll ask her! I do believe human sexuality is more of a continuum than a binary, but I confess to being a bit more old-fashioned about it all than my daughter’s generation. I do think we’re going to see a lot of changes in our culture in the next decade surrounding this issue as these kids become adults and policy-makers.
“Biologically born female; identifies as a woman
Biologically born female; identifies as a man
Biologically born female; identifies as other/they/ze
Biologically born female; does not identify as either woman or man
Biologically born male; identifies as woman
Biologically born male; identifies as other/they/ze and when “other/they” identity includes woman
Biologically born with both male and female anatomy (Intersex); identifies as a woman”
Give me a break. At one point, pick a side and stick with it. If you are bio born female and identify as a man, more power to you, but then why are you at a women’s college?
Mount Holyoke’s policy is pretty explicit that at this point in time they are allowing anyone who is not a cisgender man. I do see both sides of this issue. One the one hand, there is the identify as a woman, women’s college thing. On the hand, many women’s colleges are safe spaces for a lot of people that fall out of that cis-het norm spectrum. I don’t think the equivalent really exists for men, where a trans man could go and feel safe and like his gender was accepted and understood. There are also a decent amount of trans men who before realizing they are trans, still identify as non-gender conforming in some way, and could be drawn to a women’s college while identifying as, say, a butch lesbian.
As to the gym argument or the question about whether women’s colleges should admit trans women, I don’t give those any weight. Trans women are women. (And I do realize that it is giving the same respect to trans men that brings up the why are they there in the first place question).