Bizarre trans situation at Hilary Clinton's ex college

[flyingbuttress43]

Students at the female-only college attended by Hilary Clinton (Wellesley College) are at odds with staff after they voted to let transgender men attend the institution.

www.telegraph.co.uk/world-news/2023/03/15/womens-wellesley-college-accused-co-ed-accept-transgender-men/

(Sorry, quoting as I don't seem to be able to make a share token. Can anyone help?)

The students voted in favour of accepting applications from transgender men and non-binary, regardless of their "assigned" gender at birth.

But the non-binding vote has been resisted by college president Paula Johnson, who said their are no plans to change current policy.

So what is so bizarre? Only the fact that the women-only college rules that transmen i.e. women are not eligible but that transwomen i.e. men are eligible.

Ms Johnson said that the referendum would mean rewriting Wellesley's founding mission to education women, which the college had no plans to do.

"Although there is no plan to revisit the admissions policy, the college will continue to engage all students, including transgender male and non-binary students in the important work of building an inclusive academic community where everyone feels they belong."

Some students have been holding a sit-in at the administration building and their student newspaper's editorial board wrote that "we disapprove and entirely disagree" with the president.

Ms Johnson said the debate had become unhealthy and that there was enormous social pressure for students to support the referendum.

I've been personally boed at public gatherings where I've referred to Wellesley as a women's college, which it is," she said.

Except of course it no longer is, if it is accepting transwomen, and refusing transmen.

You couldn't make it up. Except you can apparently.

The NYT article was fairly clear. It sounds like they already have lots of female students who start to identify as male while at college, and they are allowed to stay, so I suppose allowing trans-men to apply as new students is sort of logical. But allowing anyone (male or female) who identifies as trans or non-binary does rather make a mockery of the 'women's college' label, in my view.

I was interested in the quote from a trans academic at the end of the NYT article - it sounds like even people fully invested in the gender stuff are getting a bit fed up of it:

"Kaleb Goldschmitt is a music professor who transitioned while at Wellesley. The college culture is becoming more welcoming to gender diversity, but not as quickly as many students would like, said Professor Goldschmitt, who identifies as transmasculine.
Still, Professor Goldschmitt questioned the outsize attention that students were paying to the debate.
“I definitely want the trans and nonbinary and questioning students to feel welcome and loved and supported and encouraged to explore,” the professor said, “but my goodness, do I wish they would rally like this for disabled students or for other things.” "

The college wants to use the gender identity religion to define who is a woman, so it won't admit people who don't believe that they possess an abstract, inner feminine identity. You can be either sex, but you must believe in feminine people needing their own college (where the parts of femininity, i.e., submissiveness, passivity, emotionalism and nurturing are apparently accepted as defining the suitable student body).

The students who dislike this want the college to include everyone who does not have a male identity AND also does not possess a male body.

This is incoherent, of course, but is in tone with how feminism online is now. The only group to be excluded is male people who don't want to be called something else than 'men', because if that group, too, would be included, then feminism would cease to exist altogether.

Coherence by the students here would require excluding all non-binary people and all trans men if the gender identity religion is used to define 'woman', and excluding all male people however they identify if sex is the basis for defining 'woman.'

I think that 'inclusiveness' is the actual new underlying value in much of this new feminism which is a tremendous problem as it means 'practically now boundaries ever', and also would assign feminism all the problems in the whole world without any resources to address them.

It is interesting that there seems to be no actual debate about the theoretical bases for feminism. Probably the #nodebate rules? But thinking is an important aspect of being human, too.

I would very much want to learn how inclusiveness guarantees that 'everyone can thrive', given that I have never seen it used for the vast majority of people but always for tiny minorities. The null hypothesis is that the rest of us do not matter at all.

Examples of this are myriad. Girls should be comfortable undressing with males in dressing rooms, women should not mind sharing prison cells with male prisoners, women should not mind female grants going to male people etc. None of us is allowed to mind the theft of our spaces, rights, and words. If we do mind, we are to be excluded.

I expect there's some issue with the funding of the college which means that there is some token effort to exclude "men".
Non binary is such a win win choice, isn't it?

Nonbinary is very much have-your-cake-and-eat-it-too choice, for both sexes, but more so for female people as there is less cake for them to begin with.

The latter can demand all female reproductive rights to apply to them, too AND they can also demand that the group which can fall pregnant must not be called 'women and girls' as they don't hold with the sexist stereotypes about women which they posit us ordinary women adore.

It's like a private contract with the patriarchy, asking special dispensation from sexism and misogyny, yet keeping all the benefits feminism has won the female sex. It's not a contract that would be honoured, of course, but even pretending this option exists is doing harm to the rest of us by obliterating our embodied identities and by making feminism so much harder.

Female only colleges are absolutely necessary while there are still girls whose parents will not allow them to be in a mixed college.

Funny how these young transmen despise women having anything for themselves as much as some men do.

How much of a narcissist do you have to be to attend a women's college then whine because they centre women.

Seriously, if you want to pretend you are a man, fuck off and get your validation elsewhere rather than destroy things for women that want and need the single sex environment.

Brilliantly put.

So if transmen are out but non-binary are in, what about the trans non-binary FtMs?

"That is fascinating. The students want to return to an all-women campus and it is the staff who are resisting!"

Do they? It sounds like they just want to add transmen and NB to the college. Not remove transwomen.

This is happening near me and is in the news. Basically they already admit anyone non-binary and transwomen but they don't admit transmen because apparently identity trumps biology. Quite why a transman would want to attend a women's only college when they "are" a man is beyond me but then many transmen want to get pregnant, deliver a baby, breastfeed and still be some idea of a man.

The president rightly sees that if you admit both sides of the trans then you are basically admitting men and women and the idea of being a women's college is gone. I think it is gone to be honest.

Of all the things the trans debate has thrown up, I care the least about this. More worried about irreversible medical procedures on children, men in women's jails/shelters/rape crisis groups/bathrooms, eradication of women's experiences and lives and even history. But yeah, in the end Wellesley had a unique focus on women's education and experience and that is on its way out.