Sarah Fraas, Trans Women at Smith: The Complexities of Checking “Female”

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As part of a successful campaign regarding admissions for transgender students who identify as female, this article appeared in April 2014 in the Sophian, the weekly independent, official, student-run newspaper of Smith College, in Northampton, Massachusetts. (Sophia is the Greek word for “wisdom,” and Sophia was the goddess of wisdom in ancient Greece.) Smith is a private liberal arts college for women, and the largest of the Seven Sisters, an association of seven liberal arts colleges in New England that were traditionally women’s colleges. Sarah Fraas was a sophomore when she wrote this piece, with, as she noted, the assistance of several friends; she is majoring in sociology and women’s and gender studies. Ultimately, this selection focuses on an issue many campuses are studying: how best to include and meet the needs of their transgender students. It is, understandably, an especially complex issue for women’s colleges. In May 2015, Smith announced that it would broaden its policy to begin admitting trans women in the fall. It would not admit trans men, that is, “those assigned female at birth but who now identify as male” or genderqueer or gender non-binary applicants because of its focus on women’s education. As you read this selection, consider the definitional arguments it both makes and presupposes.

Trans Women at Smith: The Complexities of Checking “Female”

SARAH FRAAS, CONTRIBUTING WRITER

April 24, 2014

(Written with the help of Raven Fowlkes-Witten, Maggie Peebles-Dorrin, and Jason McGourty)

Imagine a women’s college that accepts all women. A feminist institution that supports women no matter what gender they were assigned at birth, or what legal documents they have, or whether or not their parent or high school supports them.

It might surprise some that this women’s college does in fact exist — in Oakland, Calif. Mills College is open to “all women who claim a female gender identity.” Yes, Mills accepts trans women without checking their papers and, no, the sky has not fallen.

Smith and other women’s colleges need to follow this example.

How is Smith’s current policy different from this?

Every applicant has to have all female gender markers on four materials: the Common Application, their high school transcript, their midyear academic report, and three letters of recommendation.

Easy enough, right? Well, no. Not for a lot of young women.

For starters, what if your teachers refuse to use “she” pronouns in your recommendation letters? What if you live in one of the countless school districts that don’t allow gender changes on transcripts? What if you live in Washington, which has the official policy that schools are free to reject gender-marker changes as they please? What if changing your gender markers requires a $10,000+ surgery with months of painful and debilitating recovery time behind it, and what if that’s a surgery you don’t even want?

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A student at Mount Holyoke, another of the Seven Sisters, makes a quick definitional argument.
Megan Haaga, for Open Gates, by permission

Sarah Fraas proposes a series of hypothetical eventualities to build pathos, followed immediately by a fact from a recognizable authority. How does this contribute to the effectiveness of her argument? For more, see “Offering Evidence and Good Reasons” in Chapter 7.

Essentially, the only trans women who can reasonably hope to apply have a supportive family, attend a supportive school, and have the luxury of free time to navigate bureaucratic processes.

A recent study by the National Gay and Lesbian Task Force found that less than half of trans high school students have been able to update their school documents. Eleven percent tried to do so and were flat-out denied.

Let’s factor in school climate as well:

10 In another study of transgender K–12 students, 31 percent reported verbal harassment by teachers or staff for their gender. Another 5 percent reported physical assault by teachers and 3 percent reported sexual assault. The more harassment that students faced, the less likely they were to maintain higher GPAs, attend all their classes, and plan for college. But transmisogyny doesn’t just affect education — it’s a life and death issue. In fact, 53 percent of those lost to anti-queer hate murders in 2012 were trans women.

In the words of Bet Power, Director of the Sexual Minorities Archives: “Trans girls dream big for their futures. There is no luxury in that. Education is the only chance at survival while living as trans.”

Smith Q&A is not asking that Smith suddenly adopt Mills’s policy, although we hope to work toward that goal. We are simply demanding that Smith accept the proposal of a supplement to allow women with non-female gender markers on their documents to go here.

Smith Q&A drafted this proposal when the group was first formed. It suggests that if an application has “male” gender markers, Smith can request “letters of support or explanation from health providers, school administrators, teachers, guidance counselors, social workers, advisors, clergy, family, employers, etc.” Smith admissions has always been concerned that someone might assert that they’re a woman for the “wrong reasons” — this eliminates that risk as it would be hard to imagine two trusted adults getting in on such a “scheme.”

Although we know that not every single trans woman will have two adults willing to affirm her identity, it’s certainly a start.

15 That’s why over one hundred students got up at 8:30 in the morning on Thursday, April 24, to rally in support of their trans sisters — to help make Smith an institution that empowers all women for the world.

However, I have to address criticisms that are often hurled at student organizers: that we’re too aggressive, that the administration is trying its best.

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To that, I would say that of course this is not a personal attack on Smith administrators. We are all — myself included — a product of the ideologies we have been taught to believe are common sense. These often include inaccurate or harmful ideas about sex and gender that we have to unlearn. We know that many Smith administrators have good intentions and see themselves only as concerned with preserving Smith’s status as a women’s college.

However, the fact remains that Q&A has spent a year and a half trying to get this gender supplement proposal accepted. We met with higher education law experts who validated our sense that this was not actually a legal, or Title IX, issue — Smith College will not lose its status as a women’s college by accepting our proposal. Heartened by this, Q&A conducted several negotiations with administrators, which did result in the change that gender markers no longer matter for Disability and Financial Aid application materials. This year, a trans woman applied to Smith, was accepted, and is now a student here. Once at Smith, she personally explained to administrators why Smith’s policy is exclusionary. She urged them to accept the gender supplement proposal. Their reply was that they can’t simply make a supplement for every specific situation in which a student cannot meet their requirements. The big difference here is that these requirements shouldn’t even exist in the first place — womanhood does not reside in documentation.

In other words, a huge part of the problem is that Smith sees it as the applicant’s responsibility to meet set-in-stone requirements, instead of Smith thinking about how to create a system that accommodates all women, particularly those who truly need it the most.

I hope you will stand with us. If “women for the world” doesn’t mean all women, it doesn’t mean anything.

RESPOND •

  1. In what senses does this selection represent a definitional argument? What is being defined, and what are the competing definitions that are the source of the argument? (See Chapter 9 for a discussion of definitional arguments.)

  2. What evidence does Fraas offer for why the current definition of who may apply to Smith is problematic? What kinds of appeals does this evidence represent? (See Chapter 1 for a discussion of kinds of appeals.)

  3. In what senses is this selection a proposal argument? What is being proposed? How does the evidence discussed in response to question 2 support or fail to support the proposal that is made? (Chapter 12 will help you understand proposal arguments.)

  4. The following information appears on the current Web site for Mount Holyoke College, another of the Seven Sisters, which has a different policy from Smith’s policy with respect to this issue. (Ze is a gender-neutral pronoun; unlike he or she, ze does not indicate the biological sex or gender identity of the person to whom it refers. It is one of several pronouns that transgender individuals sometimes use.)

    Mount Holyoke College’s policy on the admission of transgender students states that it welcomes applications for its undergraduate program from any qualified student who is female or identifies as a woman. Can you clarify “who is female or identifies as a woman”?

    The following academically qualified students can apply for admission consideration:

    • 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

    The following academically qualified students cannot apply for admission consideration:

    • Biologically born male; identifies as man

    Source: http://bit.ly/1rKYeDJ

    In what ways does this list constitute a definitional argument? What kind of definition is it — a formal definition, an operational definition, or a definition by example? What criteria are involved? Why are they relevant in this case? Studying the information given in the headnote for this article (or consulting Smith’s most recent FAQ on admissions), assess the extent to which Smith and Mount Holyoke define “female” in the same way.

  5. The Web site quoted in question 4 a lso includes the following question and answer. (Positionality is a term from feminist theory; it focuses on how society positions [and values] individuals who are members of a socially constructed category. Thus, each of the following groups is differently positioned [and valued] in our society: women/men; bisexuals/asexuals/lesbians/gay men/heterosexuals; people of different ethnic or racial backgrounds; people from different social classes; the able-bodied and the differently able; etc.)

    Is Mount Holyoke College changing the fundamental nature of its mission as a women’s college by admitting transgender students?

    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 trans women 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.

    What arguments is Mount Holyoke making for the inclusion of trans women in its institution? How do these arguments link to the college’s understanding of its historical mission? How do they help us appreciate the complexity of this issue?

  6. Although the admission of transgender students represents a particular challenge to institutions that have traditionally accepted only women or only men, transgender students face challenges on all campuses. Investigate how your college or university is or is not attempting to assist transgender students as members of your community. This investigation may include consulting print or electronic resources, interviewing individuals in various campus organizations — transgender advocacy, queer student organizations, student services, health and counseling services on campus. You may wish to focus simply on information gathering (leading you to write an argument of fact), but likely far more interesting will be efforts to trace the ways that members of your school’s community have been challenged to rethink their own ideas about gender and identity and about the ways this rethinking has or has not resulted in changed policies. In this latter case, you’ll likely write a causal argument of some sort. (Chapter 8 considers arguments of fact, while Chapter 11 examines causal arguments.) As in some previous cases, your class may find it useful to divide into pairs or small groups, each of which focuses on a different aspect of campus life. Be aware that this issue is by and large a new one for most of us, so we all have a great deal to learn about it. Likewise, if there appear to be no transgender students on your campus, it does not mean that they are not there; they may simply not have disclosed the relevant information. If your campus has not dealt with this issue, imagine how it might.

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