<p>If you are Catholic (which you mention in one of your posts), you might want to look at Trinity Washington University in DC. It was until very recently women only (and still has fewer than 10% male students) and is a Catholic institution. It isn’t as Conservative as Regis (which has also started to admit men) and is right across the street from CUA. Although it is also not a “Sister,” Scripps also strikes me as being less ideological than some of the East Coast women’s colleges.</p>
<p>There are in-your-face feminists at all women’s colleges–they’ve got them at coed colleges as well. How strongly you feel that these are women you want to avoid at all costs can only be gauged by visiting the women’s colleges that interest you.</p>
<p>My D graduated from Bryn Mawr and there were certainly in-your-face feminists as well as all kinds of other personalities on campus. The culture at Bryn Mawr is very accepting and there’s a real live-and-let-live attitude. While I’d guess the majority of students are politically liberal, someone who isn’t would get along fine and could find her own group of friends.</p>
<p>My daughter is at Mount Holyoke, and I had to drag her to look at it initially. While she is indeed a feminist, she is as “mainstream” as they come, and was not looking for a women’s college. She shared, to a degree, some of your concerns. After touring many schools, she just couldn’t deny that the Sisters are fantastic, exceptional institutions of higher learning where girls go after high school and grow into fabulous women! </p>
<p>She did experience a little culture shock at first–especially with the gender language to which you refer, although nobody was ever confrontational about it. The campus culture is definitely PC (as most excellent liberal arts colleges will be), and there are a few occasions on which students are asked to indicate their “preferred gender pronoun”. She learned to value these experiences as true education–a genuine broadening of her world, and she had never sought a college culture that would feel as homogenous as high school anyway. </p>
<p>She has all kinds of friends, including some “in your face” feminist lesbians who are wonderful, kind people who embrace her for who she is. Mount Holyoke is extremely diverse- in every possible way, and the students are VERY accepting of each other. Many different religions are represented there, and appear to be central to many students’ lives. It is a wonderful place, and she is getting a top-notch education.</p>
<p>I don’t consider myself particularly feminist, and while I was at Barnard I found many other like-minded students. I wasn’t particularly “sporty,” but I did play a sport for my first two years, and I never felt out of place because of that. Of course there are radical feminists at any women’s college, but because of the nature of Barnard (being in NYC, part of Columbia, etc.) one never feels stuck in a hyper-political atmosphere. There isn’t much of a campus vibe at Barnard anyway, because, hell, New York IS our campus! So whether you are a radical feminist or an evangelical Christian (…ok, maybe not THAT conservative), you can find a niche at Barnard. I would say the two largest groups at Barnard, if there are any, are the chic, sophisticated city-types and the Orthodox Jewish women. But if you’re not a radical feminist, Barnard could be the place for you.</p>
<p>I’ll be going to Bryn Mawr next year and what really drew me to the school, as englishivy said before, is how diverse all the students are. Although I get the impression that it is a very liberal community, you can pretty much find something for everyone there.</p>
<p>Vassar is a seven sister school. I graduated from there and I found it “feminist” in a nonobtrusive way. I didn’t realize that Vassar was “feminist” until I left Vassar and had to get a job. Every job I applied for (entry management level) asked me to do reception or administrative assistance work. My male roommates in NYC were never asked to test for these skills when applying for similar jobs in the Wall Street area. That’s when I realized that Vassar was feminist in that a person was looked at in terms of their skills and qualifications first there, rather than their gender. Literally: I never thought about my gender at Vassar, except in the sense of “Which bathroom do I use?” Only after I left did I realize that this was a radical environment, to consider quality or work and ideas before anything else. Sure there are campus groups that focus more explicitly on gender. I wasn’t interested, personally. </p>
<p>BTW, this article talks about the struggle to attract men to colleges in general. There’s an important point about single-sex education. The article mentions Bryn Mawr and Mt. Holyoke, saying that they attract significant portions of their student bodies from socially conservative countries, that prefer single-sex education. <a href=“http://www.mindingthecampus.com/originals/2010/06/the_quiet_preference_for_men_i.html”>http://www.mindingthecampus.com/originals/2010/06/the_quiet_preference_for_men_i.html</a></p>
<p>Dustyfeathers, I vividly recall my shock at the level of sexism in the English Department at the U of C when I went there after graduating from W. At the time, I seem to recall that the U of C had precisely one female professor of English. :)</p>