Surviving A Transphobic Woman’s University As A Trans Man
Read More: college life, Hollins University, non-binary, pussy-hat feminism, TERFs, Transgender, women's colleges, women's universities
From 2015 to 2018, I attended Hollins University, a women’s university in Roanoke, Virginia. When I applied to the school, I understood myself as a nonbinary person who was primarily attracted to women. However, I was in a relationship with a man for the first time, and I still had a lot to figure out about myself. When I was looking at colleges and universities, I, like many other 17 year olds, was malleable. People influenced me simply because they were kind, or said they understood my perspective.
I was first told about Hollins by a friend of mine at the age of 16. She’d changed my self-perception after we’d had a meaningful and important conversation about gender and sexuality when I was 15, and I had grown to trust her perspective. However, as I would later realize, just because a person understands the difference between gender (how one self-identifies) and sex characteristics (such as genitalia, body hair, etc.), that person is not necessarily void of transphobia. Someone who speaks well, who speaks with compassion, and who looks like me is not necessarily someone I should look up to.
I visited Hollins twice during high school, and it was my top choice when applying to colleges. I visited the friend who had initially told me about the university on both visits. During my second visit, she’d moved from a small single in the freshman dorms to a luxurious art dormitory called Near East Fine Arts (NEFA). The graffiti-coated room full of glitter and art supplies, along with the Arts Association meeting in which art lovers came together to share poetry, visual pieces, and music, made strong impressions on me. I was surrounded by lesbians and queer women who smiled at me, welcoming me into their group. At the naive age of 17, I was convinced that this was the right place for me.
But then, during the summer before my first semester at college, I found myself grappling with the possibility that I might not be a lesbian after all. Even as I continued to be involved with my first-ever male partner, bisexuality was becoming more of a reality for me. I tried to believe that I was still a queer woman, and he was just an exception to my true sexuality. In the social environment I was in, I was painted as a “lost lesbian,” someone who was mistakenly dating an evil man.
As the man I was dating started to fit less and less with the picture that those around me at Hollins were forming of me, my relationship became toxic. My cisgender female friends labeled my partner the source of corruption and evil in my life, one they could fix. I was constantly surrounded by anti-man language that affected my perception of gender, forcing me deeper into the closet about my gender and sexuality. After our eventual breakup, I dated two lesbians at Hollins, and continued to surround myself with cisgender women — an inevitability at a women’s university. But I wasn’t content with the way things were.
By 2017, I was spending a lot of time blasting My Chemical Romance in my dorm room as my non-binary roommate and I discussed the blatant transphobia we encountered at Hollins: incidents such as a cisgender girl stating that she did not “believe” in transgender people, and comparing trans people to “grasskin,” meaning people who identify as grass, a joke(?) identity that had recently gotten traction on tumblr.
Then, around 2017, I met some trans men on campus. They welcomed my ideas and perceptions about Hollins and its limitations with open arms. I soon began to relate more and more to not only their feelings about transphobia but their presentations of gender as well. I remember one particular social media post from my friend James — a photo of himself in feminine booty-shorts.
This was a surreal moment for me, as I suddenly realized that I could be a feminine man. I could wear the makeup I always wore, be attracted to feminine characteristics prevalent in women, have a masculine haircut, and be attracted to men, all while being the queer person I have always been. All of the things I wanted were possible. But were they possible at Hollins?
Officially, Hollins has made attempts to cater towards its current trans population. However, these efforts are simply not enough to offset the pre-existing hostile environment. Last year, the Board of Trustees met with the current student body and certain alumni to discuss changes to the transgender policy. However, transgender people are still barred from some of the most vital meetings in which they could communicate the needs of the transgender community to the Hollins Administration and Board of Trustees. From current students and alumni to former students who’d left the university to protect themselves, there was a demand for change. But our demands weren’t being heard.
During the beginning of 2018, I created a Facebook page called, “Attention Hollins University: Transgender Policy Manifesto.” I hoped it would catch the attention of the university. However, it seems most do not want to pay attention. The page only ever got 19 likes; the post delivering the manifesto of the group garnered only 108 views.
The current Hollins University trans policy only allows for acceptance of trans women to this women’s university if they have “completed the surgical process [...] and legal transformation from male to female.” After they have demonstrated proof of doing so, trans female applicants “will be evaluated for acceptance to the undergraduate program on the same basis as other women candidates.” These surgical and legal processes aren’t clarified further; what they mean in practical terms is left to the discretion of the admissions department and the Board of Trustees.
Things look a bit different for trans men, though. Those identified as trans men by the university are required to transfer to a different university as soon as is possible without hurting their academic career. Hollins’ trans policy states that “the university considers sex reassignment to have occurred when an undergraduate student ‘self-identifies’ as a male and initiates any of the following processes: 1) undergoes hormone therapy with the intent to transform anatomically from female to male; 2) undergoes any surgical process (procedure) to transform from female to male; or, 3) changes legal name with the intent of identifying as a man.”
Self-identification and beginning hormone therapy is enough to make a trans man count as a man, but any trans woman who wants to be seen as a woman by this women’s university is going to have to go a lot farther than that, including engaging in surgical processes that are sometimes financially prohibitive or medically unnecessary.
As for non-binary people, be they assigned female at birth, assigned male at birth, or intersex, they are not mentioned in the policy at all.
It was during my junior year, on December 11th, 2017, when I made an Instagram post that was too acute, and too direct. I was about to move out of NEFA and I was feeling confident about where I was going. I was becoming more confident in my trans-centered political positions, and I was sick of living around transphobic people and feeling unheard. I needed a safe space to vent, so I took to social media. I posted a selfie with the following as a caption: “um full offense but if u talk or hang around transphobes pls do not interact with me why do i have to say this so damn much why does the trans person have to make it clear to y’all what is or isn’t transphobic god.”
I followed the initial post with a clarifying comment that said, “if ur against the term “femme” ur dismissing non binary femme ppl / if u think being trans is oppressing others or the trans person themself / if u think women and trans women should be separated / if u think trans genitalia is ever relevant in conversation / if u forget about intersex people / if u think “dressing butch” automatically makes someone a lesbian over trans / ok basically if ur cis and u negatively talk about gender or masculinity vs. femininity presentation u make me uncomfortable n that’s ‘the tea’.”
Let me expand on this comment a bit. To begin with, I know it’s full of unfinished sentences, stances left unexplained, and erratic grammar in general. You may not be able to understand everything I’m saying within it, but you’ll certainly understand that I’m experiencing real anger and pain.
As a trans person, here is my perspective: where transgender issues are concerned, Hollins University is a toxic and transphobic environment. The following beliefs are frequently espoused by cisgender people there:
- that Hollins is for cis women only
- that transgender people were oppressing the cis women of Hollins
- that trans people do not belong at Hollins
- that trans women should be considered a separate category from women as a whole
- that cis people should have a right to know what sort of genitalia trans people have
- that intersex people only exist as an anomaly and do not deserve status as a group
- that people who were assigned female at birth but have masculine presentations are always cisgender lesbians and are deluded when they see themselves as transmasculine or as other trans or non-binary identities
- that the opinions of cis gay people about trans issues are always more valid than my own opinions as a queer trans person
All of these were things I was complaining about in that instagram post. I wish I could have worded them as clearly then, but in my defense, I was upset, and posted quickly and emotionally.
After I made that post, I was officially ostracized from my friends. I only heard from them via social media comments and messages. They told me how incorrect the post was, that I was not being accommodating enough towards lesbians and their history with the terms “femme” and “butch,” that I was being “lesbophobic” and “homophobic.”
The backlash extended well beyond the internet. For my work-study job, I put up posters around campus that pictured Alok Vaid-Menon, a gender-nonconforming poet; they were torn down later that same day. I taped more posters on the bathroom stalls in the art building, only to have them taken down again. I remember once while I was taping up one of the larger posters in the cafeteria, two cisgender girls walked up beside me, looked at the poster, then groaned in annoyance at it.
The upper-level cafeteria is the hub of Hollins’ social scene. Walking in, you’re met with the sight of quite a few cisgender women, with a variety of different gender presentations. Yet there are always several members of the student body walking through the crowd wearing cherry earrings and white t-shirts with red text. The text reads, in all caps, “I’M MENSTRUATING,” and the earrings seem intended to represent menstrual blood.*
T-shirts and other fashion statements like this are common at women’s universities. At Hollins, they are produced and sold by a cisgender student who designs the products and sells them through her online store, Period.icals. Products like these are intended to be empowering for women, but the equation of vaginas and menstrual periods with womanhood derails feminism into the land of trans-exclusionary oppression. Products like these discuss womanhood in a manner that cuts transgender women out of the loop, as well as potentially triggering trans men and non-binary people for whom their menstrual period is a dysphoric experience.
When I see a group of cisgender women dressed in t-shirts pushing for menstruation-centered empowerment, I know transgender people are disenfranchised. This sort of “pussy-hat feminism” is copied over and over again amongst cisgender women searching for much-needed empowerment. But when their empowerment campaigns are triggering to trans people, they need to be rethought.
There is a way to focus on the nuances of a woman’s experience, including menstruation, vaginas, ovaries, and everything else predominantly experienced by cis women, while also having more open-minded discussions that allow for all women’s experiences to be included. What’s more, transgender women’s voices are some of the most powerful voices we have to speak against patriarchal oppression and violence.
By not calling out transphobic issues like these, we perpetuate transphobia. Calling out means direct action, whether that means standing up agaisnt blatant harassment or asking people to adjust their language to avoid engaging in microaggressions. No one person is in charge of stopping transphobic violence, but if we as a community cannot communicate with one another about our experiences, than we are doing an injustice to other LGBTQ folks.
Hollins University has a lot of work to do in order to keep from causing further damage to transgender and non-binary students of their institution. While every step toward inclusion is positive and worthy of praise, when trans people are still excluded from meetings about changing their policy toward transgender students, not enough is being done. The damage to myself, and to all other transgender and nonbinary people at women’s institutions, is something that cannot be taken back. It’s time to put an end to it.
*–Correction: The original text of this story said that the cherry earrings were intended to represent “blood-filled ovaries,” an obvious biological inaccuracy, but one we weren’t sure whether to attribute to our writer or the company producing the earrings. The owner of Period.icals has since emailed us to let us know that she knows menstruation doesn’t work this way. Therefore, the error was on our end. Our apologies. We’ve updated the text to reflect an accurate understanding of how menstruation works. Also, the Period.icals owner told us, “The cherry earrings are just cherries.” –the editors
Top image courtesy of the author
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