A response to Ruth Padawer's 'When Women Become Men at Wellesley'.docx

So the discussion forum whatever for the week of the 24 hasn't opened up yet, so I guess I'll start the conversation about the Wellesley article here - because my copy is dripping green highlighting ink and I am full of fervor.My very first problem with the article is the yellow journalism inspired title - the kind of title that is just begging for clicks!

This title makes a lot of assumptions about gender, being transgender, and what it takes to make a man. While many of these men who are students at Wellesly may transition while at Wellesly, they all had confusion about their gender identity before attending Wellesly - and it's not surprising that these students were the age of college students before they started to transition, considered the hoops one has to jump through in order to transition. I'd be interested in the number of people who have seen the headline of the article and assumed that this all women's school was making its students into men. It's just a clunky headline/title.

As I got to the back half of the first page and got to the part, "Of all the people at a multiethnic women's college who could hold the school's "diversity" seat, the least fitting one was a white man" (emphasis not mine) all I could think about was the absence of the word cisgender between white and man. While the concept of trans-identity is central to this piece, it is at some point so conveniently left out.

I was torn, while reading this article, between assigning men-privilege to transmen and contemplating the potential transmisandry of it all (which is an odd word for me to write out - I discuss transmisogyny all the time and transphobia to a lesser degree, but because of the systematic privilege of men, I think this is the first time I've ever written out transmisandry).

As I got to the bottom of the back of the first page I reached the line, "... at Wellesley, masculine-of-center students are cultural minorities; by numbers alone..." and I wonder if that observation was the author's or Timothy's. It is commonly understood that men are, by numbers, a minority - but the use of the word culturally there is then what becomes interesting, because cultures are constructed by people, and culturally speaking - men are the ones who have the majority of power to broker. However, trans people have little to no power to broker, and make up less a part of the population then cisgender men - who have all the power, or cisgender women, who are a numerical majority. Either way you read it, however, it seems to read true, Wellesley stands to cultivate a cultural context that is for women (in Wellesley's case, maybe 'Womyn born Womyn').

Could Wellesley's mostly conservative position on transgender people be symptomatic of what it is as an institution? Could this college where 'women become men' actually just be an institution where women become women? The article states that, "... but even in the early 1960s, Wellesley, for example, taught students how to get groceries inot the back of a station wagon without exponsing their thighs."

It isn't fair to mention Wellesley as an institution that awards 'MRS' degrees, however, without also mentioning that, "Wellesley alumnae in particular are awarded more science and engineering doctorates than female graduates of any other liberal-arts college in the nation... "Akwardly, at the bottom of the front of the second page the author states, "As women's colleges challenged the conventions of womanhood, they drew a disproportionate number of students who identified as lesbian or bisexual." It is my opinion that all this sentence does is to try to conflate sexual orientation and gender identity - and to mark as similar the work it takes to accept and make room for transgender people and LGB people.

The back of page two we see the conversation of the whole 'sisterhood'/'siblinghood' conversation start. In my frank opinion - if you cannot or will not use gender-neutral and gender-inclusive language like 'siblinghood' (or 'they' versus 'he' or 'she' to address a highlighted part later in the article) then you should be blatant about that when advertising for your school, and when picking who you admit - if you only want womyn born womyn - tell that to your applicants outright.

I felt uncomfortable that the author didn't cite the statement, "Recent female graduates working full time earn far less than their male counterparts and more experienced women are often still shut out of corporate and political leadership..." (emphasis mine).

Here are some links (from the first page of the google search 'female graduates earn less than males') that I found:

http://www.telegraph.co.uk/education/universityeducation/student-life/10595641/Female-graduates-expect-to-earn-1500-less-than-male-peers.html

http://theconversation.com/male-graduates-earn-more-than-female-graduates-study-28101

http://www.womensagenda.com.au/talking-about/opinions/female-graduates-earn-less-than-their-males-peers-this-is-how-some-ceos-are-fixing-it/201406224206#.VEND4vnF8bg

http://www.abc.net.au/news/2013-01-04/female-graduate-pay-gap-doubles/4452348

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Male%E2%80%93female_income_disparity_in_the_United_States

http://educationbythenumbers.org/content/wage-gap-young-college-age-men-women-surprisingly-high_1516/

We get to the end of the back of page two... "Hollins University, a small women's college in Virginia, established a policy several years ago stating it would confer diplomas to only women. It also said that students who have surgery or begin hormone therapy to become men - or who legally take male names - will be "helped to transfer to another institution." -- That's transphobic, even, dare I say it (even to the chagrin of my trans- and cis- sisters alike) transmisandric.

But then we have Mount Holyoke and Mills College who, "... on the other hand, recently decided they will not only continue to welcome students who become trans men while at school but will also admit those who identify on their applications as trans men."

Midway down the front side of page four things get confusing for me. "Brothers had officially become Siblings and welcomed anyone anywhere on the gender spectrum except those who identified as women. Meanwhile, Jesse and some transmasculine students continued to meet unofficially as Brothers..."

Why did Jesse come back to a college he knew was a women's college at all, if what he was going to do was to seek a man's/masculine space within it?

Our popular cultural narrative says there's plenty of space for men, but does that narrative hold up for transmen? This piece doesn't suggest so.

On the front of page five, near the bottom, we see the sentence, "But Alex isn't a her, and he told me that his happiness and success includes being recognized for what he is: a man." and my literal reaction to reading this was, "WHOA! WHAT A CONCEPT!" (