Wokies go full circle. Are trans men women?

[Comrade Luanne Platter]

Students Vote to Admit Trans Men

If it's what the students themselves support then I'm not inclined to say I know better than them, the article itself also gives a lot of history and backstory to the people who would be actually effected by these changes.

[emailking]

The solution to this is not discriminating by sex in admissions. I went to an all boys school and I thought it was a good idea because it would be less distracting. Now I think that was a big mistake. Plus it's just not fair. You're telling otherwise qualified applicants that they're just not good enough for the school because of the genitalia they were born with.

[patzer]

Worth pointing out that not all transmen look like Buck Angel. There's a large number of younger people who are biologically female, ask to be called "he" and call themselves men (or boys), and take no or few steps towards transition/trying to look like a man, just looking like any slightly quirky woman. I've come across this phenomenon a lot.

For those people it would be nonsensical to exclude those applicants solely because they don't refer to themselves as women.

[BlueSwan]

Don't really understand why a trans man would want to go to a women's college, but I can understand the motivation to not want to kick women out if they decide to start presenting as male or transition to male.  Someone deciding to transition while they're a student seems like the most likely scenario to ever trigger this condition.

This happens at Smith sometimes, and until recent years didn't usually cause furor when it did as far as I know.

I've been to talks by Smith alumni who've advocated for a "literally anyone other than cis men" policy, but they tend not to make it sound very compelling.

I'm curious, are there any educational institutions these days who has an "only cis men" policy?

[soundchaser]

Don't really understand why a trans man would want to go to a women's college, but I can understand the motivation to not want to kick women out if they decide to start presenting as male or transition to male.  Someone deciding to transition while they're a student seems like the most likely scenario to ever trigger this condition.

This happens at Smith sometimes, and until recent years didn't usually cause furor when it did as far as I know.

I've been to talks by Smith alumni who've advocated for a "literally anyone other than cis men" policy, but they tend not to make it sound very compelling.

I'm curious, are there any educational institutions these days who has an "only cis men" policy?

There exist a number of all-boys' Catholic high schools, which are implicitly "only cis men" even if not nominally.

[Tokugawa Sexgod Ieyasu]

The solution to this is not discriminating by sex in admissions. I went to an all boys school and I thought it was a good idea because it would be less distracting. Now I think that was a big mistake. Plus it's just not fair. You're telling otherwise qualified applicants that they're just not good enough for the school because of the genitalia they were born with.

I'm enough of a second-wave stick in the mud (or someone who was raised by a second-wave stick in the mud whose ideas on a lot of these things still inform my own, rather) to think that this is somewhat of a false equivalency as applied to all-male versus all-female schooling, but if we're going down this road it is a point worth considering. As DrScholl pointed out, places like Vassar and Sarah Lawrence no longer have any gender-based admissions or attendance criteria but haven't entirely lost their "Historical Landmark: Edna St. Vincent Millay Fingered Her Roommate Here!" identity.

[DaleCooper]

The solution to this is not discriminating by sex in admissions. I went to an all boys school and I thought it was a good idea because it would be less distracting. Now I think that was a big mistake. Plus it's just not fair. You're telling otherwise qualified applicants that they're just not good enough for the school because of the genitalia they were born with.

There are plenty of fair reasons to want sex-segregated facilities, activities, or even private academic institutions. It gets a little weirder when they go from discriminating based on sex to discriminating based on other identities, but I don't think it's a big deal in this case. It's just an interesting story because it demonstrates how silly and contradictory academia's beliefs on gender are for anyone who didn't already know.

[Lief 🗽]

Why are the admissions policies of a random liberal arts school front page news? Why did the NYT send me a push notification about this? Who cares??

[DaleCooper]

Why are the admissions policies of a random liberal arts school front page news? Why did the NYT send me a push notification about this? Who cares??

The vast majority of threads in U.S. General Discussion cannot be considered front page news.

[emailking]

There are plenty of fair reasons to want sex-segregated facilities, activities, or even private academic institutions.

Bathrooms and sports (I assume that's what you mean) are a little different if they always come in pairs, one for each sex.

For schools I don't think there is any reason to discriminate that promotes fairness.

[Horus]

Why are the admissions policies of a random liberal arts school front page news? Why did the NYT send me a push notification about this? Who cares??

Slow news year.

[DaleCooper]

There are plenty of fair reasons to want sex-segregated facilities, activities, or even private academic institutions.

Bathrooms and sports (I assume that's what you mean) are a little different if they always come in pairs, one for each sex.

For schools I don't think there is any reason to discriminate that promotes fairness.

Some people want to attend school without worrying about the pressures that come with trying to deal with or appeal to the opposite sex. I personally don't see the appeal, but whatever.

[emailking]

Yes that was my reason. Now I understand it does not override the injustice of disallowing half of humanity to even be considered for admissions.

[Stranger in a strange land]

Why are the admissions policies of a random liberal arts school front page news? Why did the NYT send me a push notification about this? Who cares??

Probably because a significant % of the NYT's employees either went to Wellesley themselves or know people who did.