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The Dilemmas of Our Times
Phoebe Maltz says no to letting female-to-men transgendered people into Smith. Her points are well-taken. But. I spent several years dating a Wellesley student which led on-again off-again to conversations with various people about the merits of the somewhat antiquarian institution of the all-women's college. Over the years I came to the view that this probably isn't something people should have opinions about. The sheer diversity of America's elite higher education options is a source of social benefit. Insofar as schools are operating within the basic framework of trying to hire good professors and trying to admit talented students, it's better for various places to be idiosyncratic and weird. It would be terrible if every college tried to make itself like Wellesley, but if Wellesley wants to make itself like Wellesley, then so much the better. Smith has no particular obligation to deal with transgendered students in a logical way, and there probably isn't a logical way to handle it. It just sort of goes to show that all-women's education in the present day is an inherently paradoxical enterprise. But there's merit in letting it exist as an option, and they need to make a call one way or the other, and the actual content of the call isn't a big deal.
April 18, 2005 | Permalink
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Phoebe blogs about letting female-to-male transgendered students in at Smith (or not). Matt Yglesias bases his response on the fact that he "spent several years dating a Wellesley student which led on-again off-again to conversations with various peopl... [Read More]
Tracked on Apr 19, 2005 2:09:07 PM
Comments
But there's merit in letting it exist as an option,
How does this differ from letting a "whites only" school exist as an option?
I'm not saying that it doesn't differ. I just think that your entire article overlooks the fact that we do forbid certain kinds of discrimination even by private institutions. Unless you are calling this practice into question, then it's not enough to say we just need to allow all options in order to encourage the idiosyncratic and weird.
Posted by: Paul Callahan | Apr 18, 2005 12:41:32 PM
Phoebe Maltz says no to letting female-to-men transgendered people into Smith. Her points are well-taken. But. I spent several years dating a Wellesley student...
Damn! I was hoping the last sentence was going to be "I spent several years dating a transgendered person."
Posted by: JP | Apr 18, 2005 12:41:33 PM
I'm wondering about where we should draw the line between "diversity of educational options" and "unacceptably restrictive behavior." For example, if some university wanted to ban black people, we probably wouldn't accept the diversity of options argument. Presumably some people think the transgender issue falls on the unacceptably restrictive side of the line.
Posted by: Ethical Werewolf | Apr 18, 2005 12:48:08 PM
Coming from New Orleans, where all kinds of wierdness is simply shrugged off, to living in Alabama, where the very existence of wierdness -- even in parts of the country Alabamites may never go -- is considered a very real affront, even a danger to the social fabric, I have difficulty making the pro-wierdness argument. I can say it's a matter of liberty, or that it encourages experimentation that may lead to advancement, or that it just makes life more interesting. None of these seem to work.
The truth, however, may just be that I simply expect idiosyncracy to exist everywhere, so I see it as normal. Maybe that's why there aren't nearly as many bar arguments about social issues in the Crescent City. I know we used to think it was funny when the media would get up in arms about the controversy du jour. In fact, we used to think it was the people arguing about it who were idiosyncratic. Alas, it is not so. We are the minority.
(I know New Yorkers think they're jaded, but it seems different, as if they simply ignore unusual things happening around them, as opposed to accepting them as normal.)
Posted by: Kiril | Apr 18, 2005 12:52:53 PM
Smith has an obligation to its students to deal with transgendered persons in a way that advances its mission as a women's college. There may be room for disagreement about how that mission can best be advanced (as interviews with Smith alumnae indicate, there's substantial internal debate on the issue), but to assert that if Smith acts arbitrarily other people shouldn't have opinions is silly. Exploring the different ways of handling transgendered student enrollment and articulating an opinion about what you think would be best in no way hinders Smith's ability to offer itself as part of a diverse menu of educational options.
Posted by: Amber | Apr 18, 2005 1:20:54 PM
"The sheer diversity of America's elite higher education options is a source of social benefit."
Hmmm, I agree with the sentiment here, but doesn't the fact that this diversity is concentrated at the high end have some troubling social implications, both in terms of restricting opportunities for less affluent students (as well as those who are not brilliant but thoughtful and would benefit from diverse experiences) and, perhaps even more significantly, deepening the chasm between the experiences of the elite and those of "middle America"? It's not an argument against elite diversity, just a concern.
The Smith situation seems to boil down to a chicken-and-egg type conundrum about the nature of gender (a term I hate using since I was taught that only words have gender; people have sex--though we're not talking about sex here, either): Is it fluid or set, superficial or intrinsic?
And then I wonder what Ms. Smith would think of this brave new world. She simply wanted to give women educational opportunities. Would she be pleased or perplexed by how our options have broadened?
Posted by: flip | Apr 18, 2005 1:33:50 PM
Aren't their universities that are black only?
Posted by: Adrock | Apr 18, 2005 1:56:28 PM
hey flip,
back when I was a youngun at a liberal arts college the way we were taught to draw the distinction between sex and gender was that sex was your biological status, whereas gender was the role you chose/was conferred to you. so a transgendered ftm who hasn't had an operation of any sort has a sex of female, but his gender identity is male.
Posted by: Katie | Apr 18, 2005 1:56:51 PM
Ugh...there.
Posted by: Adrock | Apr 18, 2005 1:56:55 PM
No Matt! Both men and women are harmed by this kind of thinking. Coeducation is intrinsically beneficial for the same reasons that Justice O'Connor pointed out that all kinds of affirmative-action-based diversity are valuable to the Nation and to the schools in question. And where's your appreciation of education as the great equalizer?
No one forces anyone to go to Smith, but it ought not to be the business of schools to facilitate the choice of insularity; schools are institutions committed to broadening perspectives, experiences, sensibilities.
Further, more pragmatically, these single-sex anachronisms give subtle fodder to the type of retrograde conservative activists who are seeking even now to undercut educational equity. See this recent editorial for a current example: http://www.nytimes.com/2005/04/12/opinion/12tue2.html
Posted by: inip | Apr 18, 2005 2:02:51 PM
inip, what do you propose to do about religiously affiliated colleges? Don't those facilitate insularity? Do you think Berkeley is insular? What about Hillsdale College?
You may think insularity is bad, but what do you propose to do about that? It's a lot easier to let a hundred flowers bloom than to suppress insularity in an inevitably selective fashion.
Posted by: Amber | Apr 18, 2005 2:07:22 PM
Over the years I came to the view that this probably isn't something people should have opinions about.
It would be difficult to find an idea more ridiculous than the idea that there are things that people shouldn't have opinions about.
The sheer diversity of America's elite higher education options is a source of social benefit.
This is a valid opinion, and it can be a valid opinion that, for instance, the value added by this kind of policy as a contribution to diversity outweighs any disutility it produces. That's a rather different idea than believing no one should have an opinion about it.
Posted by: cmdicely | Apr 18, 2005 2:15:35 PM
Amber, your question is extremely interesting. Here is my tentative answer. You're right that politically and religiously affiliated schools, whether formally or informally so aligned, are a natural by-product of the idiosyncratic passions of those who build and maintain large institutions. Anyone who has done so doubtless wants to impart a personal stamp on the product of his or her efforts. Partly as a result of that inevitable grounding, we ought allow these "subjective orientations", but that's a different matter from excluding applicants on the basis of group membership. Students' right to apply to the school of their choice really ought to be understood almost an extension of their citizenship itself (or if you like, of their membership in the community).
To the best of my knowledge no one is categorically excluded from Berkeley or Hillsdale because of political or religious views unpopular on the campus in question. The schools each tend to attract students who share their sensibility, but affinity-based categories are different from de jure categories.
Posted by: inip | Apr 18, 2005 2:30:10 PM
Admissions committees probably do exclude people they think would not be a "good fit" for the campus, though, which would have the effect you discuss. And to the extent that gender is also a subjective affiliation (that's what this whole dispute is about, after all), the Smith situation is not far removed from the Hillsdale/Berkeley context. (Race, to the extent that's it's based on self-identification, is similarly subjective.)
Posted by: Amber | Apr 18, 2005 2:35:34 PM
Matt,
Would love to hear what you think about the strikes going on at Columbia and Yale.
Posted by: the jerk | Apr 18, 2005 2:47:48 PM
Matt,
Would love to hear what you think about the strikes going on at Columbia and Yale.
Posted by: the jerk | Apr 18, 2005 2:48:14 PM
Adrock, all the "black universities" I know of admit white people. Usually they have a higher percentage of whites than mainstream universities do of blacks. Maybe there are some all-black places, but I don't know of them.
Posted by: Ethical Werewolf | Apr 18, 2005 2:52:39 PM
In AA, the rule of thumb is that females sponsor females and males sponsor males. So, naturally, this question came up. Who sponsors a transgendered person? We asked an old-timer, and her sage advice was treat 'em like they dress. Precisely Phoebe Maltz' point, just a bit more succinct.
Posted by: Raenelle | Apr 18, 2005 2:58:39 PM
Right, and given the large and growing female-male imbalance in higher education, all female institutions perform the valuable social functions of helping to soak up some of the 'excess' thereby making co-ed institutions somewhat more balanced and making the imbalance less visible to most people.
Because if people were generally aware of the 3:2 disparity (perhaps on its way to 2:1?) they might become concerned and demand something be done about it...and we can't have that.
Posted by: mw | Apr 18, 2005 3:11:43 PM
They're referred to as "Historically Black Colleges." The student body may be majority African-American, but they do not exclude white students, or Asians or Latinos for that matter.
I don't know whether the racial breakdown of the studenty body differs radically from the profile of those who apply to the school.
Posted by: Brittain33 | Apr 18, 2005 3:25:36 PM
Matt makes a compelling case as to why the Supreme Court had no business compelling VMI to admit female cadets.
Posted by: MJ | Apr 18, 2005 4:18:18 PM
First, the transgendered question-- I find the transgender issue very interesting in this particular context. If a female-born person transitions into a man and they want their transition to be treated respectfully and authentically, it makes sense that Smith College considers them "male" for purposes of admission. What makes it trickier is defining what is "male" and "female" as many f2m folks get top surgery and not bottom surgery, as bottom surgery is a) prohibitevely expensive and b) not as good a result as m2f bottom surgery. The "Third Sex" used to be a gendery theory, but now it is a physical reality for a lot of f2m's.
On women-only colleges-- I didn't attend a woman's only school, but I went to a school that had both Smith and Mount Holyoke as part of the consortium. I spent time at Smith. It is a different experience, in a very meaningful way. As long as the legacy of sexism exists in this country there is place for women's only schools, same goes for HBCUs.
Also, women's colleges and HBCUs weren't created because they thought they were better than white men schools, but because white men schools didn't allow women or non-white men. So it's really not the same thing, saying "what if someone wanted a white's-only" school. That would be going back to the way things used to be. To me it's apples and oranges. Also, there are still a few private men's colleges around-- for instance, www.wabash.edu.
Posted by: zoe kentucky | Apr 18, 2005 4:25:40 PM
this would have been a better post if you had spent 'several years dating a wellesley' transgender... hell, it'd be a better blog...
:)
Posted by: travy | Apr 18, 2005 4:34:57 PM
Mj,
No, he doesn't. Smith isn't a state school, so it doesn't have the same restrictions on it that VMI does. Not that there's no controversy about that, but this is about what a private college can do.
Posted by: Kendall | Apr 18, 2005 4:39:06 PM
The sheer diversity of America's elite higher education options is a source of social benefit. Insofar as schools are ... trying to admit talented students, it's better for various places to be idiosyncratic and weird.
Why exclude stupid students, or even average ones? It seems a bit silly to say diversity is so valuable and then say that way more than half the population could never be admitted.
Posted by: Bernard Yomtov | Apr 18, 2005 4:51:16 PM
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