Women's College -Sincere question

I don’t understand why a female that feels like they are a male would want to go to a women’s college – I cannot wrap my head around that.

@toomanyteens what state is this? Mine has info for marriage/divorce.

http://bmv.ohio.gov/dl-renewal-current.aspx

…links to a PDF with acceptable documents which says:

@OHMomof2 - NJ did not when I had to do it (not sure if it does now as I am done now!!) - I did it in 2014

@toomanyteens indeed it does: http://www.state.nj.us/mvc/drivertopics/namechange.htm

…and it actually ONLY refers to marriage/divorce, not trans changes at all.

It did not in 2014 so there could have been numerous updates in 4 years - and I wasn’t all that aware of this transgender movement then so I know I saw it; I was like WHAT??. But I am glad they have the name change information at this point.

I was pretty surprised at how onerous the name change was honestly – I definitely don’t remember it being that difficult in 1988 (my first marriage and another state)

@toomanyteens

You said, "I don’t understand why a female that feels like they are a male would want to go to a women’s college – I cannot wrap my head around that. "

It’s pretty common that anyone whose parents and home town are not accepting of their gender or orientation to hide their true self until they have achieved some distance and independence. If you grow up in that sort of environment it’s easy to ignore what your inner feelings are telling you until you meet people who have made different life choices and you realize what is possible. Many trans kids figure out who they are very early in life, but some don’t.

Has anyone actually asked the students at these colleges? I tried looking but all I see are far right-wing sites and you’ll excuse me if I don’t take their word as truth.

I know several assigned-female-at-birth who go by gender neutral pronouns. Should their wishes be ignored even if they’re legally female and may even identify as female? I also knew several individuals who identified as trans once they got to school, but not before. Should FTMs be kicked out?

Really, this seems like such a non-issue. Why is it difficult to just show respect to people and their wishes?

Also- it’s worth remembering that this was just a suggestion. No one is getting fired or kicked out for saying women.

Oh and re: the non-use of freshman. I started my “freshman” year in 2009, but I was not a freshman. I was a junior. So I called myself a first year since it was more accurate. In grad school, we go by our years, too. It’s never caused confusion.

“I know several assigned-female-at-birth who go by gender neutral pronouns. Should their wishes be ignored even if they’re legally female and may even identify as female?”

WHY? I mean seriously why does a person who is a female need to go by gender nuetral pronouns? Is there some shame in being a female?

“I started my “freshman” year in 2009, but I was not a freshman. I was a junior. So I called myself a first year since it was more accurate”

OK maybe it was, but would you really be OFFENDED if someone called you a freshman? Does it really matter that much? Do you think it is designed to insult?

All I can say is we are all very very lucky people if our biggest problem is if someone calls me by the wrong gender pronoun. It is a classis 1st world problem. I have had people now and again call me MR when I had on a hat and had very short hair and couldn’t be seen clearly as a female. I couldn’t really get all pissy at them – whatever.

"Has anyone actually asked the students at these colleges? "

@romanigypsyeyes A few current MoHo students/family members have commented here that it isn’t an issue on campus at all. It doesn’t appear it was an issue at all until some far right leaning media with an agenda decided to make it an issue.

“All I can say is we are all very very lucky people if our biggest problem is if someone calls me by the wrong gender pronoun.”

I guess we could say the same about getting in a kerfuffle about suggested wording for professors approaching a new classroom full of students… :-??

“I know several assigned-female-at-birth who go by gender neutral pronouns. Should their wishes be ignored even if they’re legally female and may even identify as female? I also knew several individuals who identified as trans once they got to school, but not before. Should FTMs be kicked out?”

I repeat, ABSOLUTELY NOONE said their wishes should be ignored and ABSOLUTELY NOONE said any one should be kicked out. Why is their such a problem that some one actually wants to be called a “woman” at a Women’s college. Why should those wishes be ignored?

Why is it so difficuly to respect all wishes. Just because someone is actually female and actually wants to identify as a woman it does NOT mean they are unaccepting or disrespectful to the transgender, or any other community. Respect needs to go in all directions.

If a woman wants to be called a woman, they can be. Did you see something different, @bhs1978 ?

The MoHo policy literally says:

https://www.mtholyoke.edu/teachinglearninginitiatives/supporting-trans-and-non-binary-students

So if I identify as female MoHo is suggesting to my professor to avoid calling me something else.

There was a thread about Mt. Holyoke and women without vaginas when this related story came out:

https://www.huffingtonpost.com/2015/01/16/vagina-monologues-mount-holyoke_n_6487302.html

“Because they were that way before, and going fully coed is a much bigger decision for the college”

This explanation for the continued existence of women’s colleges would not fly at the women’s colleges I know. At all. Somebody would have bitten your head off if you said such a thing when I was at Bryn Mawr in 1997. They aren’t all-female because they were that way before, or because going co-ed is a big transition. They are consciously, deliberately, and exclusively for women TODAY.

In contrast to the OP, I was pretty unhappy at a women’s college and transferred to a co-ed university. But I agree with the OP, who I gather is in my age cohort, that women’s colleges should be able to address their students and describe their mission in terms of women. That’s not just a matter of inertia; it’s the reason the school exists. These colleges welcome people whose womanness is one component among many (I knew an intersex student 20+ years ago). But if you are so far from womanness that you recoil at being addressed as one…maybe a school with this mission isn’t a fit for you.

If I sign up as a white student at Howard, and a professor says “Welcome to my class, a space for black excellence,” that’s fine with me. The university exists as a space for black excellence. I would never demand that my whiteness be recognized every time the mission comes up, or argue that an all-black play like “for colored girls who have considered suicide” shouldn’t run because it is not inclusive of my white Howard experience. I mean, come on.

“Mount Holyoke’s mission is to provide an intellectually adventurous education in the liberal arts and sciences through academic programs recognized internationally for their excellence and range; to draw students from all backgrounds into an exceptionally diverse and inclusive learning community with a highly accomplished, committed, and responsive faculty and staff; to continue building on the College’s historic legacy of leadership in the education of women; and to prepare students, through a liberal education integrating curriculum and careers, for lives of thoughtful, effective, and purposeful engagement in the world.”

See, this is the beauty of a private college. They can be fluid in their mission and be unique in how they change and grow. They are in charge of how they want to present themselves (within current law of course.)

If you take the original Seven Sisters, they are all different today. Was there an uproar when Vassar went coed? I am sure many alum were not pleased at all. Did Radcliff merge with Yale overnight? No, it was a process that took multiple years with multiple levels. Is Barnard a true women’s college even though the degrees are issued by Columbia? Is the relationship between Bryn Mawr and Haverford sacrilegious?

I know I have no idea what went into the decisions MoHo has made. While we on the outside can debate it all we want, it is ultimately up to them how they define themselves. What a college is when you went there will always remain, just as a 1950 grad of Vassar always be a graduate of a women’s college and a 1990 grad will be a graduate of a coeducational one.

If you mean Radcliffe, it merged with Harvard, though it was originally started because Harvard proper did not want to go coed at the time.

My bad :"> Thank you!

I can see it. I’ve always thought humans are too obsessed about gender. When D1 was a baby, I dressed her a lot in neutral pastels (yellows, greens), and purposely didn’t tell people what gender she was when we were out and about. I discovered that people HAD to know. They could not speak to her without this information, which I found fascinating. They were unable to coo baby talk or compliment her without having slotted her into a gender in their minds first.

I don’t blame some millennials for wishing we lived in a “post-gender” world, although obviously we don’t.

That said, I do have a hard time remembering the right pronouns for a few of my kid’s friends – D2 has one (who attends a women’s college, in fact) who has chosen gender neutral pronouns, and another transitioning from male to female. I occasionally slip up when talking about them with D, who just slips a correction into the conversation – and I’m fine with it. I don’t see them in person any more, so haven’t slipped up when actually speaking to them.

When I was looking for something else, I ran across Barnard’s transgender policy – which takes a different stance:

As to a student who transitions to male during time at Barnard:

See: https://barnard.edu/admissions/transgender-policy

Gender does remain an important part of the mission. Women’s Colleges were founded to provide a high-quality education to women, and remained focused on that mission even when most formerly-men’s colleges went co-ed. Even when women went to co-ed schools, they were (and in some cases are) still marginalized in the classroom. Now, we are recognizing that women are not the only category of students for whom gender might be an obstacle to receiving an excellent education, and so those students are also welcome at Mt. Holyoke. The mission has simply been expanded. This is a logical step, given the original purpose of the schools in general and Mt. Holyoke in particular.

Obviously not all women’s colleges will approach things in the same manner. Mt. Holyoke has made a decision which is widely supported by the student body and which makes sense in our particular case. The admissions policy is around three years old.

I have had precisely three brief conversations about this topic since the article was published; all of them were variations of “what was that email about?”, and post-explanation, “…huh, that’s weird. Don’t journalists have more important issues they could be addressing?”

58 [quote] That has value because cisgendered men tend to be very noisy and controlling, and they have a bunch of pathologies that make things difficult for other types of people. The so-called women's colleges are safe places for those other types of people -- the vast majority of whom, of course are . . . women

[/quote]

Mt. Holyoke should expand its mission to include all who are not cis, hetero, white men, and therefore need peace from the noise and protection from the pathologies.

“intparent: When D1 was a baby, I dressed her a lot in neutral pastels (yellows, greens), and purposely didn’t tell people what gender she was when we were out and about. I discovered that people HAD to know. They could not speak to her without this information, which I found fascinating. They were unable to coo baby talk or compliment her without having slotted her into a gender in their minds first.”

Oh, for goodness sakes. Why the need to be so coy and manipulative about people asking an obvious question? People are likely going to ask if your new baby is a girl or a boy if you play with them by withholding that basic information.

It’s the first thing a new mother asks (if she’s too tired to sit up and see), “What did I have?” It’s the first things relatives ask and share…“Our daughter (sister, mother, friend) had a baby girl!”

We have baby boys and girls, like it or not.

People are nuts if they think this will ever change.