Gender at Women's Colleges

The Sunday Times magazine this week had a cover story about transgender students at women's colleges. The story highlighted a tranman who originally attended Barnard, but transferred to Columbia as well as a transgender student from Wellesley College. The article largely focused on their stories and their struggles at women's colleges. It also looked at how women's colleges are often better situations for gender nonconforming students than co-ed institutions. They pointed out that this does not mean that it is always easy for these students or that all the gender conforming students accept trans students. The author spoke to some students who felt reluctant to allow trans students on campus because they felt it violated their women's college experience. Rey, the student who attended Barnard, experienced many of these sentiments and ultimately had to transfer to Columbia.

I thought that it was interesting and positive that the New York Times wrote such a lengthy article on gender nonconforming students. The unique issues of students falling outside the gender binary are often not addressed on college campuses. I particularly liked that this article focused on women's colleges and some of the debates around accepting transmen at a women's institution. The article also introduced readers to the differences between transgender, transsexual, gender nonconforming, etc. I think that this could increase people's education around this issue and bring shed a different light on gender differences on college campuses.

Link:

http://www.nytimes.com/2008/03/16/magazine/16students-t.html?pagewanted=2