The Independent Women’s Forum (IWF) is noted for their hysterical and sometimes very incoherent ravings against feminism and shameless “groupie” pandering towards the anti-feminist/pro-Stepfordwives conservative forces in the world of politics. Their constant and absurd accusation that feminism is all about creating a “genderless-androgynous utopian society” is rich–not to mention woefully and willfully ignorant. I doubt any contemporary feminist would deny that there will always be some degree of “traditional” gender characteristics being expressed by both sexes. I really enjoy the IWF’s repeated and insidious charges against women’s only colleges who allegedly promote this “ideal” of creating a genderless-purely androgynous culture. Oh and let’s not forget the “man-hating” indoctrination too–that’s a classic. Their lastest charge against women’s only colleges; it turns girls transgender!
But I thought this was a women’s college…
A recent article in the Financial Times captured the gender confusion at Smith College:
“Signing up for a beginner’s Italian class is usually a simple enough task, but for Sebastian, a second-year student at Smith College in the US, it proved complicated. Smith has always been a school for women, which is what Sebastian was when he began a bachelor’s degree there in 2001. But since then, he has become a man. At least that is how she thinks of herself. Himself. That is how his friends think of him, too, but it isn’t necessarily how a new Italian teacher would see him. And since Italian is such a gender-specific language, Sebastian needed to let the teacher know before the semester began that there would be a new studente in class, not a studentessa.”
So the kid’s transgender-so what? Well it’s a big deal to the IWF in their pitiful attempt to equate feminism and women’s only colleges as big brainwashing facilities. I’ve seen and heard better from neanderthals.
The FT article isn’t available without an expensive (but almost worth it for this one story!) subscription, but to summarize: More and more women who attend Smith College are becoming transgender students. But you know the whole enterprise lacks seriousness — or why to they remain at a women’s college? Or maybe the whole thing is being taken too seriously…
Yes, why are you taking this seriously and what’s wrong with women wanting to attend an all-women’s college?–nothing. I don’t see the IWF railing and ridiculing men who attend all-men’s colleges like Wabash College in Indiana.
As the American Thinker notes in a wonderful article on this priceless piece:
“Smith was founded to be exclusively for women, but now is taking seriously the claims of maleness of sexually confused people with two X-chromosomes. They must be addressed as males, a class of individuals not admitted to the college. Issues of bathroom usage, and even the proper form of gender-specific languages like Italian, rile the campus. The mental gymnastics involved are formidable, and the problems endless.
“My favorite paragraph (among many hilarious examples) in the article reveals the utter self-absorption and lack of perspective of those who go off the ideological deep end:
“Just as Herbert Marcuse’s theories were important on campus in his day, gender theory is important now,” says Paisley Currah, an associate professor of political science at Brooklyn College of the City University of New York and a board member of the Transgender Law and Policy Institute.
“Earth to Professor Currah: if you want your theoretical obsessions to be taken seriously, don’t choose to compare them to those of a man who has already returned to his default position of well-deserved obscurity. Marcuse is a joke to all but a handful of feverish radicals. The comparison is apt, given that future generations will scratch their heads in amazement as to how transgender theory could ever have been taken seriously, just as they today do over the onetime popularity of Professor Marcuse’s ‘repressive tolerance’ theories, which, come to think of it, just might apply to transgenderism in a way you do not intend.”
You can’t tell how bigoted they are against Queer theory and the academia as a whole can you? Anti-feminist attacks are one thing, but bashing a field of study and it’s focal community trying to create an understanding of Queer/Gender issues and cite examples of how heterocentric/sexist our society can be is beyond sophomoric and an example of reactionary ignorance. So what’s wrong with courses discussing Queer/Gender issues and theories?–nothing. Just another incoherent cheap-shot against feminism, Queer issues, and the academia by the IWF. College is supposed to be about intellectual expansion–not a retraction to willful ignorance and narrow-thinking. And intellectual growth is what groups like the IWF fear students especially young women will experience.
Got to say one thing….I would like an adrogenous society- at least to the point where my gender would be meaningless in the professional world. And I would like any issue of biology to not be considered “less worthy” or less valid than the other gender.
We had a transgendered student – FTM – at Bryn Mawr when I was a student. It started a campus debate about the issue, and what it meant to be a women’s college. The student in question decided to transfer out before it was resolved, and I don’t know what policy, if any, the College settled on in the end, but it was an interesting discussion at the time.
Anyway, that was my musing.
There’s actually a great deal of controversy over allowing ft-? students in transition to continue attending women’s colleges. And there’s even more controversy over allowing male-identified trans students to enroll, and even more controversy over allowing mtfs at any stage of transition.
That having been said, women’s colleges are full of incredibly progressive women who take a dim view of gender-based discrimination and an even dimmer view of disenfranchisement. Of course many of them will be supportive. It follows that more people in that environment will feel comfortable being openly different. Why would it surprise anyone that there are more out trans students at Mills than at BYU? There are probably more out queer women there, too, and no one is arguing that women’s colleges turn women into dykes, are they?
Oh.
Well, at any rate, this still does not mean that women’s colleges “make” young women into ftms. I know that the IWF, like most conservative groups, prefers to believe that transsexuality is a phase and a trend. I have a hard time believing that there is significant danger of people actually transitioning and then having regrets. The process, from considering to coming out to actually starting HRT, is so long and so involved as to allow a lot of time for pondering. And the double-mastectomy–the part of ftm transition that seems to freak people out most–takes years to save up for. I’ve encountered people who identify as ftm for awhile and then stop, but none of them got anywhere near physical transition.
It’s also a little hyperbolic to say that there’s peer-pressure to transition. Younger queers are much more supportive of transpeople, particularly ftms. And there’s a lot of ftm-fetishization. But I’ve never encountered social circles where butch dykes, bois, or genderqueers were unwelcome.
And no matter how gung-ho genderqueer your peer group is, there’s the rest of the world to contend with. Like the IWF, for example. Most of the transpeople I know, myself included, had to overcome a huge amount of anxiety and self-hatred around becoming a freak.
Can I just expand on that last one? It seems to get pretty short shrift from people who think we’re a more extreme version of fashion victims.
I’ve never encountered a transperson who approached transition all, “Whee! Surgery and hormones! I get a whole new body! Changing sex is awesome!” A great many are excited about the prospect of transition once we fight through the fear. Most of us are really happy with the results. But oh, my God, do any of these people read the news?
We spend months or years wondering whether our families, friends, and lovers will disown us. Some of us know for certain that they will. And then we have to consider the reaction of society at large. We’re told that we’ll never pass. We’re told that transpeople are hideous, freakish, grotesque. We’re told that transpeople are unstable, depressive, incapable of holding down a job. We’re told that you can’t really change sex (see the article linked to in the op-ed on the IWF site). We never see ourselves on television except as the victims of brutal murder. You are ruining your life. We know that it’s not a fucking nose ring.
I have seen hundreds of transpeople tear themselves apart because of the terror that the IWF thinks we need more of. I was one of them.
I find this comment highly ironic…
Chalk it up to clumsy phrasing, then, and go back to your copy of Break, Blow, Burn.
Yes, I’m aware that women’s colleges don’t admit men. Poor, poor men. They are, however, committed to protecting their students from sexism and misogyny–transphobia is arguably a type of both.
I just got accepted to all women’s college, one of only two still running as such at Cambridge; as a bi woman I found myself more attracted to the college because of the accepting nature of the LBT community there. I’d guess that there are considerably more lesbians, bisexuals and transpeople in women-only colleges not because we all get turned by evil feminists and queer theorists when we get there, but because we actively choose accepting environments over what are more likely to be hostile ones!
You say that now, but you’ll be binding and shooting up with the rest of them. Just wait until Judith Butler gets her talons into your tender undergraduate flesh. You’ll be deconstructed before you know it!
Talons?
Sounds fun ;-)
See? It’s all fun and games until someone gets a sex change.
Now, I’ve never attended a women’s college (I wish! *fuzzy lesbian dreams*) but I effectively got a minor in women’s studies with my undergraduate degree (we didn’t have minors), have run and worked on feminist and LGBT student groups, was employed on a chancellor’s advisory committee on LGBT issues, have a graduate concentration in gender and women’s studies with my doctorate, and am working at a research centre on gender and women while I am working on my dissertation.
So, that all said, I’ve had a lot of experience with FTM’s, F2M’s, and MTF’s (although, my experience has been primarily with them as youths or into their 20’s, I don’t know about those that transition later in life), hell, one of my ex gf’s is (or, rather, was) MTF. The pain my friends went through, both internal and from their ‘friends’, families and society was just horrible (my undergraduate university was one of the first to push to get ‘gender expression’ included in the antidiscrimination charter, and I am proud to say I was running the LGBT group at the time we got that).
Why anyone that had even the most remote grasp on reality and the issue would think that these people would chose, or could simply be talked into, doing this, just boggles my mind and reveals the ultimate stupidity of these IWF wingnuts. Transgendered, intersex, and transsexual (not to mention us lesbians and gays) have been a part of history, a rich and long part of human history, and it’s simply pathetic to think that feminism has been creating them.
Of course, feminism HAS wonderfully contributed to creating spaces where people that would otherwise be hunted and tormented actually feel safe to exist, so perhaps we are to be ‘blamed’ for that. But hell, if that is being an evil influence on society and gender, I’ll take it any day, and twice on sundays :)
I don’t get why IWF is being mocked for talking about these issues.
They are right that FtM is the hip trendy thing these days*, and hip trendiness gets
extra concentrated at wimyn’s colleges, so it’s a real issue there.
* unless there’s some newer hipper thing – i’m way out of the loop.
One of the issues being confronted is that FtM people can be faced with loss of female privilege they didn’t even know they had.
As somebody who’se spent years longing for that genderless-androgynous utopian society i find FtM’s attractive but unapproachable. Who do they date? Femme lesbians? Strait women? Gay men? Probably not aardvarks.
(off-topic)
http://volokh.com/archives/archive_2005_05_15-2005_05_21.shtml#1116286876
but the reason i’m stopping by is that volokh has some numbers and ideas in reference to whether gay men shouldn’t get to be sperm donors, that i thought might of interest here.
I think he’s drasticly overstated his numbers, but that he probably has a core point that gay men are more at risk of hiv, and that shouldn’t be ignored in setting policy, because to do so would put more people at risk.
>>One of the issues being confronted is that FtM people can be faced with loss of female privilege they didn’t even know they had.>>
See my posts above on the amount of time transpeople spend thinking about what they’re about to lose.
>>As somebody who’se spent years longing for that genderless-androgynous utopian society i find FtM’s attractive but unapproachable. Who do they date? Femme lesbians? Strait women? Gay men? Probably not aardvarks.>>
Let’s switch things around a little bit, so you can see how ridiculous that statement is: I find men attractive but unapproachable. Who do they date? Women? High femmes? Gay men? Mtfs? They probably wouldn’t want me.
Look, it’s bigoted to assume that a minority group is homogenous, to attempt to cram them all into a single template. That’s stereotypical thinking, and it’s never accurate. We’re not all the same; “we” don’t have a single sexual orientation. We’re a lot like non-trans-people that way. Some ftms identify as straight men, and date straight women. Some ftms date dykes. Some ftms are gay, and they date gay men and gay ftms. Some ftms are bisexual or queer-identified, and their orientation is a little more complex. I can pretty much guarantee you that some ftms would be interested in whatever you are, ignorance notwithstanding.
Thanks piny, I was going to respond with something similar, so its good to see someone else responding to such an excessive display of ignorance :)
The ‘mocking’ (I put such in inverted commas because I think derision is only a light version of what the IWF deserves) of IWF isn’t because they raised the issue, because honestly, they didn’t. What we are mocking are them feigning the ability to talk on an issue it is obvious they know jack shit about.
As another example to the others stated above, the IWF seems to have correlation and causation completely confused (which, I might add, tends to occur alot in fundamentalist circles). As everyone else has said here, the fact that women’s colleges/universities tend to produce accepting and tolerant spaces is a slightly better explanation.
And for anyone to honestly think that a transgendered/transexxual/intersex person would honestly put themselves through all that is involved because it’s ‘popular’ is beyond insane, it’s mindboggling.
I think that greater acceptance of the idea of transgender and gendervariant people has made more people more likely to question their gender identity. Greater acceptance of queer sexualities has likewise made people more likely to question their sexual orientation. Once something is openly discussed, people will be more willing to openly discuss it. When people stop killing, assaulting, firing, and committing people for taking x option, x option becomes more attractive than when it was likely you get you killed, beaten up, fired, or committed.
Duh.
This is not to say that lots of people who are not actually transsexual or queer will decide to transition or have lust-free sex with people of the same gender; you don’t decide you want something just because it’s no longer impossible to have. I doubt any of the transphobic women at the IWF are interested in mastectomies or extra body hair, even though they know that transition is possible. Greater acceptance will, however, allow people who are transgender and queer to go after what they need and want without as much fear.
Furthermore, as SiC pointed out, “Less likely to get you killed” is not the same as “encouraged.” Transsexuality is a long way from being accepted, and transition is far from being a neutral choice.
I wonder if the nondiscrimination policy at Morehouse, Wabash, Spelman or Barnard includes gender discrimination. Could a man, who knows he is a woman (on the inside) and comes out at Wabash or Morehouse be sued for falsifying their application. Could the issue be cured by a transfer to St. Mary’s, Spelman or another all-women’s college? Would she be allowed to matriculate? If not would that violate Wellesley or Barnard’s anti-discrimination policy?
These are very interesting things to ponder. I don’t think that female colleges make lesibians or transgendered people come out. However, the general openness (I hate progressive because it is so misused) and empathy I perceive in the female gender certainly makes it more inviting for a female, even if she identifies with men. Imagine the fallout of a Transgendered person “coming out at However, isn’t discriminatory to disallow men who identify as females to matriculate? I think it depends on the policy of single gender education. If the policy is that the genders respond differently to various educational techniques and single-sex education fosters a better learning enviornment when the genders are not “influenced” by the differeing teaching methods, then disallowing female identifying males and allowing male identifying females to matriculate or continue to matriculate would be a misapplication of the policy. If the policy is to have a campus catering one “physical” gender because the difference in physiology is what guides our learning then it would contradict what is taught at most women’s colleges. All of this presumes that transgendered people are just “trapped” in a physical makeup and are actually the other gender.
(Shrug) It would depend on the language and interpretation of that anti-discrimination policy; some definitions of “woman” and “man” don’t include transwomen and transmen. Different colleges have different policies. Most states don’t protect transpeople from discrimination, so transpeople don’t have the legal right to complain if they’re not counted as men or women.
Yet another occassion where I bemoan the polarization of the debate. I don’t think there is anything wrong with asking why on earth someone who sees themselves as a man would want to attend a women’s college. Unfortunately since the IWF has now asked it in the way they asked it, real feminists will be discouraged from asking that question and shouted down and the discussion of what is a real issue is effectively stopped in its tracks.
My observation of what’s trendy right now is consistent with what the Aardvark noted, btw.
The thing is Jasper, they AREN’T asking why someone who sees themselves as a man would want to attend a women’s college. The IWF have made up their minds, and are disparaging FTM’s, lesbians, women’s colleges on their way to yet again pointing out the evils of those baby-eating feminists.
If the IWF really wanted to ask that question, they could participate reasonably in the discussions that are already going on about the place of male-identified people at women’s colleges (as an aside, most of the cases I have read about were about those that transitioned AFTER they were already attending). ‘Real’ feminists have already asked the question and the discussion is ongoing (don’t think there is even an answer yet, right piny?). There is no reasonable participation coming out of the IWF.
Oh, and as to what is popular, it’s more ‘bois’ now that are popular (think Shane off ‘The L Word” but bit more masculine) rather than F2M’s or FTM’s. But again, what is or isn’t popular is really irrelevant to those that feel the need to transition.
I think that’s really not a safe assumption. People have done far more extreme things than taking hormones as part of a trend. That doesn’t mean that the people doing it are insincere, but rather that there is a force strong enough to convince them that they really want something that 20 years ago they never would have wanted.
Who are you blaming for this polarization? It sounds like you’re complaining about people–like Amp, for example–picking up on the IWF’s idiotic framing of the issue.
I’ve encountered several discussions of ftms and trans-identified students in women’s colleges on message boards, none of which were terribly concerned with what the IWF or conservatives thought; the debate was clearly between two different strains of progressive thought, separatist and anti-binary. Two of them have been in ftm online communities, with a large number of posters coming down on the side of, “Why on Earth would someone who sees himself as a man want to attend a women’s college?”
Why do you agree with Aardvark’s belief that this is trendy right now, or rather, that a significant number of people are doing it because it’s trendy?
“Taking hormones” is an inaccurate way of describing transition. Taking hormones would be like taking birth control pills, or taking steroids. Transitioning involves going from one gender to the other; it’s not just your body that changes, but a great many things about your life. There’s a lot of potential loss, too. And you’re becoming something that society generally sees as contemptuous, freakish, ridiculous, and frightening. So it’s worth asking how social pressure can exist to become something that there’s so much social prejudice against.
Also, I’ve encountered a lot of people who try identifying as ftm and/or genderqueer for a little while, but none of them have actually transitioned. They question and explore, but they don’t really commit.
…Basic acceptance? There’s an important compared-to-what here. Transition hasn’t gone from being neutral or obscure to being popular. It’s gone from being abominated to being…more-or-less okay in relatively liberal circles. The people who didn’t transition 20 years ago aren’t necessarily people who didn’t want to transition; they’re people who couldn’t.
Jasper, I have been involved in feminist and LGBTQ politics and studies for a long long time, and I am yet to even hear of people doing something as drastic as transitioning just because it is popular. Presentations of masculine selves? Sure. Male body practices? Definitely.
I’ll admit that there might be some who do it because it might be the thing to do, after all to deny that would be silly, but actually be in anything like the numbers required to make it a viable and relevant part of the discussion on the same level as the other reasons? Nope, not a chance.
There are plenty of profoundly altering things people do because they’re supported, encouraged, or required by society, which is not quite the same as “trendy” or “popular.” The question is whether transition can be said to be supported, encouraged, or required.
Precisely piny, it’s the word ‘popular’ that I take issue with (and it’s connotations with ‘trendy’). Supported? Having a safe place? Encouraged to be themselves? Those I’ll definitely go with :)
“Who are you blaming for this polarization? It sounds like you’re complaining about people”“like Amp, for example”“picking up on the IWF’s idiotic framing of the issue. ”
Uh, piny, I wrote this post. It’s okay. Anyway–go on….
Sorry!
Anybody bother to ask the Smithies what they thought of FTM transitioning on campus? Could it be that they don’t care one way or the other, provided the individual transitioning is not a complete asshole whatever stage they happen to be at?
There’s this article on Smith from Curve magazine.
(snip)
Faria seems to be talking sense. If I was a woman at a woman’s school, then pretty much the minute someone said they were a FTM, my reaction would be “great! I hope this brings you happiness and joy. Now get out of my all-women environment.” And by the same token, you’d have to welcome any serious MTF.
…Unfortunately, many separatists aren’t that consistent.
What do you think is the proper response to someone who doesn’t identify as either gender?
jstevenson, I’m too lazy to look it up at the moment, but, I remember my alma mater’s non-disrimination policy covering just about everything but gender discrimination. I also remember it being the first non-discrimination policy that I read that covered sexual orientation.
What do you think is the proper response to someone who doesn’t identify as either gender?
Irritation, that they’re increasing the transaction costs of everyone’s mental processing!
But once that’s over with, I suppose it depends on the context. In a gendered school, I guess you’d have to say “do you identify as a woman?” and if the answer is “no” (regardless of the length of the “but” clause) then that’s that. But of course, it isn’t my prerogative in that situation.
Part of it would have to do with WHY there is the gender restriction. If it’s a men’s club, where the point is not to have women around, then it doesn’t really matter if you have someone around who isn’t a man, either – as long as you aren’t a woman, you’re cool. If it’s an environment where the desire is to have everyone share the same background or state of being, then such a person wouldn’t seem to qualify.
(In the instance of the men’s club, I remember the case of Dan(i) Bunten, the famed software developer who transitioned from male to female LOOOOONG before such things were commonplace. I was slightly acquainted with Dani, and I got the impression that she was given a bit more friendship and acceptance while trans than after she went all the way in the boy’s-club-CS-geek circles she inhabited.)
(And now I’m sad, because Dani was one sweet person.)
If I was a woman at a woman’s school, then pretty much the minute someone said they were a FTM, my reaction would be “great! I hope this brings you happiness and joy. Now get out of my all-women environment.”?
I’ve been a woman in an all-women’s group (not a school, a private club) where members were transitioning FTMs. And we decided that it wasn’t an issue. First, because where else did they have to go? Second, because we knew that once they were (or considered themselves to be) fully M, they either wouldn’t want to be around us–they’d want to be with other men–or they’d be so clearly men that there wouldn’t be any difference, really, between them and a M-born-M wanting to be in the club.
One answer I’ve heard to the first reason is, “Well, so what? There are two kinds of problems in the world, women’s problems and everyone else’s. As feminists, we have a responsibility to help women. Ftms are not women.” Although the burden on these students of having to transfer mid-transition, as a probably-not-passing transsexual who may or may not be able to legally transition, is a significant concern to me.
The second one can be reversed as Robert has done–although it really pisses me off when people honor our identities exactly insofar as it allows them to exclude and silence us. Also, I’m not sure fully-transitioned ftms in general want out of women’s space. Unless, of course, “fully-transitioned” means people who want nothing to do with women’s, er, stuff on any level.
I’m not sure you could even separate negative and positive rationales, actually, since separatism is based on the premise that focus necessitates exclusion. Gender-separatist clubs of all kinds frequently use both alternately and simultaneously. The MWMF, for example, wants a week in the woods free from men and focused solely on women. An old-fashioned men’s club could alternately use freedom from women* and celebrating men and manliness and what-have-you. Like the Boy Scouts–the founders wanted to raise up strong young men by using manly adult male role models, and it wanted to free those young men from the evil feminizing influence of their moms and schoolteachers.
There’s also the question of what you’re excluding. Is it masculinity? Is it male-identification? Is it male behavior? Entitlement? Aggression? Ignorance?
*heh.
There is a large difference between MWMF, where the point is specifically for people of the same identification to come together, and something like Smith College, where the point is for people of the same background and shared cultural values to achieve a given purpose. A major point for me is that Smith is about education. The educational experiences of those identified as male and those identified as female are very different. I believe Smith is a place for those who have had female-gendered educational experiences to have a place that supports them and their values. That is why I supported the inclusion of gender-varient students who carried those values and experiences. There are men who take classes with Smith women, but they realize they are coming in to a different environment that isn’t theirs.
As for all women’s schools “turning” people trans, I think some of their anxiety is well founded. Not because women who attend the institutions will become transgendered, but because they will question the limitations and expectations they have been saddled with simply because of their genetalia. Transitioning isn’t a fad, but not having to live up to society’s expectations of women is, just like working, voting and not being considered property. It’s a freeing and relieving experience, and does deconstruct the binary society the IWF is trying to conserve.
Oh, and this whole “women’s privilage” argument is a total load. The reason women’s colleges are different from the rest of the world is because we manage to escape our so-called privilage and be seen as individuals. If transgendered people, particularly those outside of the binary, can find equal escape I welcome them. I don’t particularly see the point of most men’s colleges, because I don’t imagine they would be significantly different than many coed spaces that have already-low populations of women, such as technical schools. Most of the pressure on men to be masculine, as far as I can tell, comes from other men. I never saw a girl beating up a little boy in the locker room for being too feminine, for example. If an all-male space removed the gendered constraints the same way all women’s spaces do I could understand their purpose. Instead they mostly seem to be used to solidified already-gendered power dynamics. However, as a women I understand that I will never share the experiences of men and thus may be entirely wrong.