Mount Holyoke College recently became the second women’s college in the United States to create a policy stating that the school will welcome transwomen, as well as other students who don’t fit within a rigid gender binary.

The first U.S. women’s college to create a clear policy of trans*-acceptance, Mills College, did so in May. Both Mills and Mount Holyoke previously accepted trans* and gender-nonconforming students on a case-by-case basis, but created the new policies to send a clear message of acceptance.

“I think that this has been a question for women’s colleges at least for the last 10 years, and I think it’s really exciting to be part of the school that has decided to answer the question and take a very forward-looking stance in relation to transgender rights,” said Priya Kandaswamy, the current chair of the Gender Identity and Expression sub-committee at Mills. “It’s really nice to see other women’s colleges going in the same direction.”

Christian Gundermann, chair of the gender studies department at Mount Holyoke, said that the reaction on campus has been enthusiastic. “There’s a lot of consensus that this is the right thing to do,” he said.

“The trans* movement has really gained a lot of visibility nationwide in the last years,” he said, “and it was about time.”

But Gundermann, stressing that he spoke as an individual and not as a Mount Holyoke spokesperson, said that in his opinion the language of the new policy leaves something to be desired.

“The language used to define who qualifies to apply at Mount Holyoke and who doesn’t using the term ‘biologically male or biologically female,’ which is just highly problematic,” he said, as such language “is very imprecise” and leaves out intersex students.

“What do they mean by biology? Are they talking about hormones, endocrinology? Are they talking about anatomy? Are they talking about chromosomes? Why not use a social constructivist term such as ‘sex assigned at birth’ as opposed to a loaded term such as ‘biologically male or female,’ that’s just imprecise and just opens up all kinds of problems,” Gundermann said.

As part of the student and faculty reaction to the new policy, a seminar for senior gender studies majors will meet with the deans and administration this semester to address the potential problems with the policy’s language, said Jennie Ochterski, a senior gender studies major.

Ochterski is also the co-founder of Open Gates, an organization formed last spring to advocate for the acceptance of transwomen at Mount Holyoke.

“It’s definitely a growing organization,” she said of Open Gates, which has been covered by BuzzFeed and other media outlets for its work. Around 30 students attended Open Gates meetings throughout the spring, and by the time the group held a visibility campaign at the school’s end-of-semester festival, a few hundred students, staff, faculty and community members signed up for the organization’s email list.

Open Gates will focus on creating a safe climate for trans* students through education and visibility, and will leave the question of legal policy to others, Ochterski said. To make sure transwomen find a safe space at Mount Holyoke, the group plans to promote conversations about correct pronoun use and tackle more complex issues like trying to eliminate everyday transmisogyny from athletics, classrooms and other campus spaces.

During the summer, Open Gates worked to gain media attention of its mission, and Ochterski thought Open Gates’ work this semester would continue to focus on raising awareness. For her, the announcement of the new policy at Mount Holyoke’s Sept. 2 convocation came as a welcome surprise.

“Many people around me were crying. I was crying. We were all just screaming, so excited and so happy that something so important to us had happened,” she said. “Maybe they’ve listened to us, maybe they’ve listened to internal or external pressures aside from us, but that shock and excitement was a wonderful way to start the year.”

Published on September 18, 2014 at 12:01 am

Contact Maggie: mmcregan@syr.edu