Because
of all the knowledge that was recently made available to me during the course
in Women and Leadership, naturally an all women's college brought up a lot of
questions concerning gender equality. Leigh, the presenter of our information
session just happened to be a gender equality major, perfect! The most pressing
of these inquiries was whether or not transgender and transsexual applicants
would be allowed admission into Wellesley. As of right now, qualifications are
based on sex, or the biological, anatomical, and physiological characteristics
that define men and women at birth (technically the United States only legally
recognizes two genders-- male and female). This means that MTF (male to
female) students are currently considered ineligible to apply, but FTM (female
to male) students would be allowed admission and are generally referred to by
their individual PGPs or preferred gender pronouns (i.e. he/him/his,
she/her/hers, ze/hir/hirs. For the sake of clarification, the last set is
comprised of relatively common gender-neutral pronouns and are pronounced as
"zee", "here", and "here's"). However, many of
the Seven Sister Schools (Mount Holyoke, Smith, Vassar, Wellesley, Barnard, Bryn Mawr, and Radcliffe)-- which are all historically
women colleges, have now opened up applications to anyone who identifies as
female either by sex or gender (gender refers to the arbitrary socially
constructed roles, behaviors, characteristics, etc. that a given society has
deemed appropriate for both men and women). According to Leigh, Wellesley is
currently in the process of updating their admission policies and MTF students
will most likely be considered eligible for admission within the next ten
years!
Reflecting
on this anecdote, I am kind of surprised that this conversation ever even took
place. Before taking the Women and Leadership course, there was roughly a 0%
chance that I would have been able to come up with a question like that, much
less have been able to hold a somewhat intelligent conversation concerning the
subject. A month ago, I had never heard of most of the terms that I just used
in the previous paragraph (for example, I never realized that gender-neutral
PGPs even existed)! To be honest, when Dean Almandrez announced that this
course will forever change the way we look at things, my first thought was
"hahaha, if you say so…" but based on my experience at Wellesley, she
was absolutely right.
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| Wildflowers at Wellesley |
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