“The Genius of Women” inauguration of a new college president = not the best time to be a tranny at a women’s college. I did some queer visibility speak-up time during a panel discussion and at the fancy luncheon today, but exercised some genius myself this evening by absenteeing my non-woman self from all further events. There are still so many barriers that women face and I appreciate that an event celebrating a space primarily home to cisgender women may want to address those. But listening to calls for women to speak up and step into positions of leadership, I’ve felt ashamed by my presence (the rainbow, fauwkawked sheep of the Scripps family, so to speak). I’ve tried to do the feminist guy step-down and realize that not everything is about you, but it’s harder to do that when theoretically, the group being talked about (“Scripps women”) is meant to include you.
I’ve been thinking a lot today about whether there’s a way for me to own this space or whether existing as a feminist trans guy here means I need to do a privilege check and step back. I’ve posted on this issue before, but I thought I’d post an article my favorite professor and adviser, Leigh Gilmore, wrote because she’s a spectacular ally and because she addresses the inauguration theme directly.
An excerpt:
“”Genius” is one of those words with something of the Trojan horse about it: a desirable appearance with an enemy hidden inside. “Women” is, too. It has been used as an insult, a mark of degradation, a stigmatized position in culture. Women have even been required to argue their way into the category when forced outside it by slavery, racism, and homophobia. Sojourner Truth’s ringing question — “Ain’t I a woman?” — lets us see that being identified as “women” is hardly simple. It helps to remember that a woman in the 1920s in the U.S. with a brow furrowed in thought and ink stained fingers appeared to be as sex variant within the category of “women” as a transgendered Scripps student fully engaged in the conversation of what a women’s college can mean to him and all of us.”
