“I am She as You are She as You are Me and We are All Together”:

The Politics of Gender Identity on Women's Campuses

If you read the comment threads that grow in response to

articles on trans issues published on the web, you will probably

notice violent exchanges between trans activists and those who

question the validity of trans identities. The most violent seem to

occur between non-trans women who argue that the claim of male-to-

female transsexuals to be women violates their own identities as

women, and male-to-female transsexuals who argue that those who deny

they are women violate their right to be ho they know are. The

arguments often mirror each other. For example, like anti-trans

feminists who argue that accepting people born male as women is

inherently misogynist, some trans activists argue that equating

womanhood with female biology is inherently transphobic. These

commentators disagree about what “woman” means, but they seem to

agree that anyone who asserts a definition contrary to their own,

even among the comments of an online blog, is committing an act of

violence against everyone they define as a woman.

In a world in which both trans and non-trans women face many

life-threatening problems, including the constant threat of physical

Ladin 1

violence, why do the opinions of strangers matter so much? As my

gender therapist taught me when I was just beginning gender

transition, “What other people think about you is none of your

business,” she said. At first, I was outraged, and then I realized

that she was right: none of us can control what others think of us,

and if my sense of self depended on what others thought of me, I

would never survive.

I learned this lesson well enough to return to my teaching

position at an Orthodox Jewish college as a woman after receiving

tenure as a man. But I still have a visceral response when anyone

questions the validity of trans identity, as though, without

universal agreement, I can't be who I am. Why do semi-literate

comments from online strangers who have no actual control over my

life seem to threaten my existence? And why would women who aren't

trans feel that my assertions of female gender identity threaten

their ability to be who they are? How could anyone think that male-

to-female transsexuals, a tiny but fabulously downtrodden minority,

might wield such power?

To explore these questions, I started to read these comments

more seriously, and began to realize that the sense of violation they

expressed was not merely transphobia or the sort of paranoid

Ladin 2

fantasies Janice Raymond, a founding figure of anti-trans feminism,

spun in her book The Transsexual Empire. Trigger warning: I am about to

read and discuss one of these comments in detail. Anyone who finds

anti-trans perspectives too disturbing for academic analysis should

insert their ear buds now.

A couple of years ago, the Huffington Post published a chapter from

my memoir of gender transition. The original title of the chapter was

“Being a Man”; they changed it “Transgender: Why I Chose to Become a

Woman.” In response, Rose Verbena, a commenter who identified herself

as a lesbian, voiced a perspective I've often heard not only from

anti-trans feminists but from women who would be appalled to think

they had anything in common with either lesbians or feminists.

According to Rose Verbena,

The man in this story – like every other "trans woman" – is a

biological male. His sex is male. That's what he is. Male.

There's nothing he can do about that but accept it. If he wants

to cross-dress or behave in non-masculine ways, who is stopping

him? But he will never be a woman, because he's male. The

whole "trans" movement is based on the most delusional,

oppressive, sexist interpretation of what it means to be a

woman, and women are sick to death of this, especially lesbians.

Ladin 3

Lesbians have had enough of MEN "mansplaining" to us what it

means to be a woman. News flash, guys: you'll never know.

Because you'll never, ever be one.

Go find a different obsession and leave women out of it.

According to this view, physical sex and gender identity are

inextricably linked. If I am biologically male – and no matter how

long I live as a woman, every cell of my body will always include a Y

chromosome that marks it as male – then I can “never be a woman.”

It's easy to argue that Rose Verbena is confusing two different

things, and that gender (as any lesbian should know) is a cultural

construct, while sex is a biological condition. But Rose Verbena

speaks for many when she insists that the term “woman” refers to an

essential fusion of biology, socialization, and personal history.

When Rose Verbena says she is a woman, she is referring to an

identity forged over a life lived as someone born, raised and always

seen as female.

Even if she admits that biology isn't the same as gender, Rose

Verbena would argue that gender is inseparable from biology, because

biology assigns us to the socially constructed gender categories that

crucially shape our lives. For women like Rose Verbena, being a

woman entails physical and social experiences that I will never know.

Ladin 4

She has no choice but to be a woman, no matter what that identity

brings her; I, on the other hand, am exercising the ultimate in male

privilege by not only choosing to present myself as a woman but

demanding that she and others who were born, raised and always lived

as girls and women accept me among them.

This isn't just a matter of gender theory or political ideology.

If Rose Verbena has to accept me as a woman, then there won't be any

public women's-only spaces in which she and others born female can be

sure they won't encounter people they see as men. A sexual abuse

survivor explained it to me bluntly: “I want to know,” she said,

“that when I go to a women's space, I won't see anyone who reminds me

of my abusers.” In this sense, and in many others, accepting someone

like me as a woman redefines “woman” in ways that affects everyone

who identifies as a woman.

It's easy to dismiss Rose Verbena and those who share her views.

I can ignore them, as my therapist suggested, or ridicule them, as

others on the comment thread did; I could censor them, demanding that

they be expunged from comment threads on my essays; I could name and

shame them as transphobes on social media, even – as too many trans

activists do – verbally abuse them in my own comments, even threaten

them with violence. But to realize how easy it is dismiss Rose

Ladin 5

Verbena's views is to realize how little actual power voices like

hers have over my life. Rose Verbena's comment didn't stop me from

living as a woman, or keep others from accepting my gender identity;

her words didn't enact legislation preventing me from using public

restrooms, or inspire mobs to assault me. Indeed, in response to what

she said, others in the thread voiced their support and compassion.

That's the way free speech is to supposed to work: by inspiring more

free speech.

Moreover, I don't want to dismiss Rose Verbena's comment,

because, despite the profound differences in what we mean by “woman,”

Rose Verbena and I have lot in common. Like her, I feel oppressed

when other people define me; like her, I am deeply invested in the

category “woman,” and see it as central to my identity, my life

story, the deepest truths about myself and my place in the world –

and like Rose Verbena, I become enraged when others define “woman” in

ways that are not compatible with what “woman” means to me. To both

of us, assertions of gender identity represent an extraordinarily

powerful form of language – language that we use to define ourselves,

our lives, our places in the world, and our relationships to others.

Since Judith Butler's Gender Trouble, it has been common to talk

about gender in terms of performativity – that is, as symbolic action

Ladin 6

that effects real change in identity. The idea was introduced by a

linguist, J.L. Austin, who, unlike Butler and many who have followed

her in talking about gender as performative, was focused on

specifically on declarative sentences, such as those we find in a

wedding ceremony, which, Austin noted, transform single people into

spouses. When I got married this past January, I experienced the

power of performative language first-hand; once I said, “I do,” I

became a wife, an identity that others are legally compelled to

recognize whether or not they think I look or act like a wife,

approve of my relationship, or support gay marriage. That is the

power of performative language.

Declarations of gender identity are not performative. My saying

“I am a woman” doesn't compel Rose Verbena or anyone else to

recognize me as a woman; by the same token, I am not transformed into

a man when Rose Verbena calls me a man. Declarations of gender

identity are constitutive, rather than performative: we use this

language to constitute – create, develop and maintain – identities

that connect us to others who identify themselves in the same terms

we do. Both Rose Verbena and I – along innumerable other people –

depend on the word “woman” to constitute our identities, but none of

us can compel others to accept what we mean by “woman.

Ladin 7

The psychological and political stakes surrounding declarations

of gender identity are so high that is difficult to talk about how

the language of gender identity works without becoming embroiled in

painful, sometimes violent conflicts – which is why I gave a “trigger

warning” before reading Rose Verbena's comment. To examine this kind

of language without becoming enmeshed in such conflicts, let's turn

to a fictional declaration of gender identity: the first line of the

Beatles' song, “I am the Walrus:” “I am he as you are he as you are

me and we are all together,” Since I hate saying “I am he” even for

demonstration purposes (such is the constitutive power of gender

identity declarations), I will take the liberty of rewriting the line

as “I am she as you are she as you are me and we are all together.”

John Lennon probably wasn't thinking about gender when he sang

this line, but this peculiar sentence exemplifies how the

constitutive language of gender identity works. As we see here, the

first step in constituting a gender identity is to say “I am” – to

declare that one exists as an individual. But that declaration of

individuality is immediately qualified by defining oneself in terms

of a shared gender category: “I am she.” “I am she” is both a

declaration of who I am in myself, and a declaration of who I am in

relation to others. The combination of those two declarations

Ladin 8

constitutes my gender identity. But as “I am she as you are she as

you are me” makes clear, when we constitute our gender identities

through such declarations, we are not only defining who we are, but

defining those with whom we identify ourselves. When I declare “I am

she,” I am saying that “I am she” in the same way as “you” [others

who identify as she] are ‘she,” which means that, with respect gender

identity, I am saying that “you” – anyone who identifies as “she” –

are “me”; that is, I am saying that my declaration of gender identity

makes us identical. That's what an identity is: an assertion of

sameness despite difference. And that is why, when I say “I am she,”

I am saying that “we” – everyone who identifies as “she” – are “all

together,” connecting by the identity-constituting terms we share.

That isn't a problem as long as everyone agrees on what it means

to be “she,” but as feminists have discovered with respect not only

to male-to-female transsexuals but women from different economic

classes, races, ethnicities and cultures, even people who have two XX

chromosomes and no Y chromosomes often very different definitions of

what it means to be a woman – what it means to be “she.” Those

differences dog every effort to constitute women as a single,

homogenous political group. We see the same problems cropping up

wherever we find identity politics, including within what is

Ladin 9

euphemistically or wishfully called “the transgender community.” For

example, some transsexuals feel they little in common with those who

have non-binary gender identities and resent being lumped into the

same “we”; even transsexuals who identify as transgender are often

criticized by those with non-binary identities for perpetuating the

oppression associated with male and female identities. The term

“transgender” includes so many relationships to gender that when I

say “I am transgender,” I hardly feel I am constituting my identity

at all.

But when I say “I am she,” I am constituting my identity by

claiming kinship with others who say “I am she” – a claim that Rose

Verbena finds delusional and insulting, given our differences in

biology, socialization and personal history. But what really upsets

her is that, thanks to the constitutive nature of declarations of

gender identity, when I say “I am she,” she also hears me as saying

“you are me,” defining not only who I am but who she is. Like most

people, Rose Verbena doesn't want anyone else to define her – which

is why she experiences my saying “I am she” as “sexist” and

“oppressive” to her and to all people who identify as “she” in the

way she identifies as “she.” I am not trying to oppress Rose Verbena

by presenting myself as a woman, and Rose Verbena, as she makes

Ladin 10

clear, isn't trying to oppress me – as she says, she isn't trying to

stop me from “cross-dress[ing] or behav[ing] in non-masculine ways.”

But the constitutive nature of declarations of gender identity means

that, for better and for worse, all of us who say “I am she” are “all

together,” no matter how differently we define “she.”

But as we have seen, declarations of gender identity are not

just a matter of nouns and pronouns. Rose Verbena and I disagree

about what it means to say “I am she,” but we agree about what I call

“the syntax of identity,” the system of identifications and

differentiations through which constitute our sense of ourselves in

relationship to others. To both of us, for example, saying “I am she”

means both “I am not a man” and “I am fundamentally like all others

who are women.” And when we say “I am she,” both of us are expressing

gender identities that we experience as essential, unalterable givens

of our existence.

Though views like Rose Verbena's are often dismissed as “gender

essentialism,” I and many transsexuals and trans-activists rely on an

implicit essentialism in arguing that trans people not only have a

right but a need to express our gender identities, and that our

gender expressions should be perceived and respected as expressions

of who we truly are. When I say, as I have often said, “I can't live

Ladin 11

as a man because I am not a man, and I had to start living as a woman

because that was the only way to be my true self,” I am saying that I

experience my gender identity as a fixed essence. Indeed, for me, the

fact that my female gender identity is at odds with my body and male

socialization proves how fixed and essential that gender identity is

to me: if I could have changed my gender identity to fit my body and

social role, I would have, because it was so hard, so dangerous, so

painful to those I loved, so seemingly crazy, to insist, despite all

the available evidence, that “I am she.”

But gender essentialism gets messy when we tie the idea that our

individual gender identities are unchangeable to the idea that

everyone who shares the same gender identification is essentially

similar with regard to gender.

As Rose Verbena points out, there are many ways in which I

differ from her and the vast majority of people who identify as

women. Before I began living as a woman, my female gender identity

was all I could point to support my sense that I was she, and I was

acutely aware that I had no way to tell if my sense of being female

gender was anything like that of people who were born, raised female

and identifying as women. Like many transsexuals, I spent much of my

life before transition tormenting myself with such questions,

Ladin 12

attempting to establish, once and for all, whether my sense of female

gender identity represented something in me that made me essentially

like non-trans women.

Once I began to live as a woman, my focus, and my anxieties,

shifted from essence to performance. Phenomenological problems were

translated into practical problems: could I talk, move, think, love,

write, dress, and otherwise live in ways that proved I was a “real”

woman, that, given a chance to express my gender identity, I could be

she as other shes are she? The answer, of course, is “no.” Apart from

being heard as a man on phone calls, I usually “pass” as a woman well

enough to get through daily life without being harassed or assaulted.

But it was both disappointing and a relief to realize that no matter

how I present myself, there is nothing I do can to prove that my

female gender identity is the same as those born and raised and

identifying as female. I feel, as I have always felt, that “I am

she,” but no matter how I live as a woman, in important ways, I will

never be “she” in ways that make me similar to the vast majority of

those who identify as women.

Unlike me, Rose Verbena has a lot in common with the majority of

those who say “I am she,” though those similarities are not as great

nor as universal as binary gender identities encourage us to assume.

Ladin 13

Many people born, raised and identifying as female have uteruses,

breasts, menstrual cycles, bodies that produce much more estrogen

than testosterone, and so on, but many of those whom Rose Verbena

would unhesitatingly accept as women do not have these primary sex

characteristics. Many women who were raised female share certain

forms of socialization, but socialization varies so greatly by class,

ethnicity, community, religion and historical period, among other

variables, that those who were “raised female” may have little in

common beyond the fact that when they were growing up, they were

socialized in whatever ways their families, communities, cultures and

so on considered appropriate for females – and, alas, their local

version of misogyny. In some cultures, Rose Verbena's sexuality would

disqualify her from being seen as a “real woman.” Certainly, when

Rose Verbena says “I am she,” that declaration means something

different from what heteronormative women – those who take

heretosexuality as the standard or “correct” sexual orientation –

mean, as was clear when one of her fellow commenters, a self-

identified conservative Christian woman, said I wasn't a “real woman”

because I would never know what it was to spend my life cooking and

cleaning for an unappreciative man.

And when it comes to female gender identity, Rose Verbena and

Ladin 14

others born, raised and identifying as female are no more able than I

am to prove that their sense of female gender identity is the same

anyone else's. For all of us, then, the assertion “I am she as you

are she as you are me” represents an act of imagination, a

translation of our own individuality into shared terms that identify

us with billions of people whose ways of being “she” may differ

significantly from ours. Though transsexuals tend to be more aware of

it, everyone to whom female gender identity is important lives with

uncertainty about how akin our gender identities really are to others

– or rather, we all live with the certainty that there are people who

mean something very different when they say “I am she” than we do.

That shared sense of uncertainty fuels the ferocity of fights

over who is “really” a woman. This ferocity is further fueled by the

fact that we constitute our gender identities not only by claiming

kinship with others who are like us, but by distinguishing ourselves

from those who are not like us. Both Rose Verbena and I define our

female gender identities in opposition to male gender identities.

Because we live in a world where misogyny and violence against

women are rampant, the stakes in distinguishing a female “us” from a

male “them” are not only personal but political, and, all too often,

a matter of life and death: in many situations, women distinguish a

Ladin 15

female “us” from a male “them” in order to identify possible dangers.

For male-to-female transsexuals too, distinctions between male and

female can be crucial. If we are seen as women, we are subject to the

same threats and discrimination as anyone seen as a woman. If we are

seen as men presenting ourselves as women, we are even more likely to

be targeted for violence and harassment.

Though less drastic, the social implications of distinguishing

men from women are, for many of us, also very important. Most people

in most societies, including ours, are homosocial, socializing most

frequently and intimately with those they perceive as being of the

same gender even in mixed-gender situations. Homosociality is the

basis for institutions, like women's colleges, where membership is

based on shared gender identification.

But it is hard to create homosocial events, spaces and

institutions if we don't have a clear, shared understanding of what

it means to say “I am she” or “I am he.” Both Rose Verbena and I rely

on the constitutive power of gender identity to help us create

relationships that are based on those identities. It is both tragic

and comic that even though we both prize female gender identity, our

conflicting definitions of what it means to say “I am she” undermine

the shared understanding of female gender identity and diminish its

Ladin 16

constitutive power.

As some of you have probably been thinking, the conflicts

between Rose Verbena and me reflect old-fashioned commitments to the

gender binary. That binary turns gender identity into a high-stakes,

zero-sum game by forcing everyone to identify and live only as male

or female. If we could smash the gender binary, or at least declare

it obsolete, no one would have to (or be able to) fight over who is a

man and who is a woman, worry about measuring up to gender

expectations, or suffer misogynist oppression.

This is a utopian idea, by which I mean not that it is ideal,

but that it is, for the foreseeable future, impossible, just as

Supreme Court Justice John Robert's idea that we can eliminate racism

and racial discrimination by eliminating laws protecting voting

rights and affirmative action laws is impossible. No one, not even

the Supreme Court, can simply erase categories of identity on which

people have long relied to define themselves and others. We have been

using racial distinctions to constitute identities, relationships and

institutions in this country for centuries; but human beings around

the world have been relying on binary gender distinctions for

thousands, or tens of thousands, of years. Today, there are upwards

of six billion people on this planet who define themselves as male or

Ladin 17

female; even if we could somehow “smash the gender binary,” we would

be violating billions of people's right to define and express

identities as they understand them. To me – someone with an old-

fashioned binary gender identity – that sounds more like totalitarian

oppression than liberation.

But what if, instead, we focus on freeing individuals to define

and express gender identities however they choose? Trans theorists

and trans activists often link individual freedom to define gender

identity and expression with utopian visions of a post-gender-binary

world. But as we see at Mount Holyoke and many other institutions, it

is possible to extend individual gender freedom without eliminating

binary gender.

This idea has been translated into social practice in the ritual

of declaring pronoun preferences when introducing oneself. This

ritual is common at transgender gatherings, and is increasingly

practiced in any gatherings that welcome those who identify as

transgender. Declarations of pronoun preferences free trans and non-

trans people alike to determine, name and express their gender

identities however they choose at any given event.

Such practices, and the radically individualistic theories of

gender self-determination that stand behind them, seem like breaks

Ladin 18

with cultural tradition, but Americans can trace them back to the

early nineteenth century, when they were famously expressed in Ralph

Waldo Emerson's essay “Self-Reliance.” Like contemporary transgender

theorists and activists, Emerson argued that individuals need not and

should not “conform” to socially agreed-upon categories and

conventions that misrepresent who they truly are. “No law can be

sacred to me but that of my nature” Emerson proclaimed. “[T]he only

right is what is after my constitution; the only wrong what is

against it.”

Emerson not only argues that his individual “nature” trumps the

“sacredness” and “right” of social norms; he argues against any

subordination or accommodation of individuality to social convention

or others' expectations, an argument that directly anticipate Sandy

Stone's call in “The Empire Strikes Back: a Post-Transsexual

Manifesto” for transsexuals to ignore binary gender conventions that

require them to deny or distort aspects of their physiology and

personal history. Stone argues that transsexuals shouldn't try to

“pass,” to fit binary gender conventions that make them seem “like”

others who identify as men and women. Emerson goes even further,

arguing that no one's identity should signify anything but an

individuality that “reminds [us] of nothing else.” Both recognize,

Ladin 19

embrace and celebrate the unintelligibility of the identities those

who refuse to present themselves in terms of accepted conventions.

Stone sees that unintelligibility as a way to “reconstitute”

“conventional gender discourse … into new and unexpected geometries”;

Emerson says simply, “To be great is to be misunderstood.”

The practice of declaring pronoun preferences reflects these

quintessentially Emersonian assumptions. When we declare our own

pronoun preferences, we agree that we won't infer individuals' gender

identities from how they look or act. Instead, we will accept

whatever gender identities individuals express, whether they identify

themselves through traditional binary terms, through recently minted

terms, such as “zhe,” or through words they have made up themselves.

But declaring pronoun preferences not only frees individuals to

define themselves; it changes the meaning of both gender and

identity. For example, when I declare that my preferred pronouns are

“she/her,” it is understood that I am not necessarily saying that I

have always identified, or will always identify, as “she/her.” It

doesn't imply that I have a permanent female gender identity, or that

I embrace feminine modes of gender expression. The declaration means

only that right now, and until declaring otherwise, I wish to be

referred to as “she/her.” And because it is understood that I can

Ladin 20

define the terms of my gender identity however I choose, even if I

say “I am she,” I am not claiming that I am like anyone else who says

“I am she.” Both Rose Verbena and I could sit in the same circle,

declaring the same pronoun preferences, secure in the knowledge that

they mean whatever we personally take them to mean.

Emerson couldn't guess that his doctrine of self-reliance would

eventually blossom into the theory and practice of individual gender

self-determination, but he did anticipate the social problems that

would be faced by those who refuse to constitute their identities in

terms of shared conventions and insist on their absolute

individuality. He even offers a model coming-out statement, one whose

arguments will be familiar to many trans people:

Say to [those you love], O father, O mother, O wife, O brother,

O friend, I have lived with you after appearances hitherto.

Henceforward I am the truth’s.... I shall endeavor to nourish my

parents, to support my family...—but these relations I must fill

after a new and unprecedented way.... I must be myself. I cannot

break myself any longer for you... If you can love me for what I

am, we shall be happier.... [but] I must be myself. .... I do

this not selfishly but humbly and truly. It is alike your

interest, and mine, and all men’s [sic], however long we have Ladin 21

dwelt in lies, to live in truth. Does this sound harsh to-day?

You will soon love what is dictated by your nature as well as

mine, and if we follow the truth it will bring us out safe at

last.

Emerson's terms eerily anticipate those in which I, and many trans

people, have announced our determination to stop living “after

appearances” and express gender identities that contradict the

genders we were assigned at birth and upon which we have built our

familial, social and professional relationships. He knew that others

would find our refusal to conform to socially sanctioned identities

hard to understand, and he recommends that we rely in our coming-out

conversations on what have become the twin pillars of assertions of

trans identity: that we must be true to ourselves, and that we can no

longer endure “living after appearances” that misrepresent who we

are.

As I noted above, Emerson and contemporary transgender theorists

like Stone not only accept but celebrate the unintelligibility of

identities that are purely self-determined. Certainly, there are

people whose gender identities don't fit within the gender binary and

have no choice but to express those identities in terms that are not

widely understood. But as W.H. Auden said, to be free is often to be Ladin 22

lonely. Many transgender people want not only to be free to express

their identities, but for others to understand the identities we

express. Moreover, many non-transgender people find it hard to relate

to those whose identities are unintelligible to them. And though we

have seen a veritable explosion of new terms for gender identities,

if gender is really completely self-determined, such inventions are

self-defeating: no matter how many new terms we develop, once we

agree on what they mean, they become “conventions” that, as Emerson

argues, may misrepresent the individuals they are used to describe.

We cannot know whether any individual will embrace these terms, or,

if they do, what those terms might mean to them. The result is a

“Tower of Babel” effect – the transformation of gender from a widely

shared identity-constituting language into innumerable individual,

mutually unintelligible languages that make it impossible for gender

to fulfill its traditional social and psychological functions. As I

noted with regard to my participation in the pronoun-preference

ritual, that Tower-of-Babel effect extends even to those like me who

assert binary gender identities. For example, the pronoun-choosing

ritual reflects the understanding that someone who “looks” like a man

or a woman may identify very differently, and, contrary to the “I am

she as you are she as you are me” syntax of the gender binary, that

Ladin 23

bodies, clothing and other forms of gender expression may tell us

nothing about individuals' gender identities. This is true of some

people – when I lived as a man, it was true of me – but it is not

true of me today. But there is no way for me to assert the durable,

life-long meaning of “she” for me in a context, like the pronoun-

preference ritual, where it is understood that my gender identity is

nothing more than what I say it is at a given moment.

Defining gender as a matter of self-determination moots the kind

of conflicts that arise between Rose Verbena and me about what

affirmations of binary gender mean, but it creates conflicts between

those who see gender as completely self-determined and, like Emerson,

happily accept the social consequences of expressing an identity that

others don't understand, and those who value having gender identities

that relate us to others, and accept the sacrifice of individuality

that defining ourselves in shared terms requires. This tension

between individual freedom and communal belonging is built into

social system. Too often, that tension has been ignored by trans

theorists and activists, who present individual freedom as an

absolute necessity, without regard for those who want and need gender

identities that make sense to and relate them to others – just as

those who insist that everyone must conform to traditional

Ladin 24

definitions of male and female ignore the fact that no individuals

ever perfectly fit those definitions, and that some can't fit them at

all.

Affirming gender diversity requires us to recognize that there

are people whose gender identities and expressions are more

complicated than the gender binary conventions allow, but it also

requires us to recognize the diversity of ways in which people

understand gender and identity. We are accustomed to such diversity

in terms of religious beliefs. Christians who believe that Jesus was

the Messiah and Jews and Muslims who don't have views of history that

directly contradict one another. Such contradictions can't be

resolved through learned debates, scientific research, or even wars

of extermination. We have to learn to live with them. If we are

smart, we not only acknowledge that different people may hold very

different views of gender and identity, but try to learn from these

differences, because those who hold views other than ours also hold

pieces of the puzzle of what it means to be human.

Mount Holyoke and other women's colleges that have wrestled with

the questions raised by transgender students and applicants are on

the cutting edge of efforts to reckon institutionally with gender

diversity. To get a sense of the state of the art – and right now, itLadin 25

is an art rather than a science – let's examine Mount Holyoke's

admissions policy as presented on the college website's FAQ:

Mount Holyoke College’s policy on the admission of transgender

students states that it welcomes applications for its

undergraduate program from any qualified student who is female

or identifies as a woman. Can you clarify “who is female or

identifies as a woman”?

The following academically qualified students can apply for admission consideration: Biologically born female; identifies as a woman Biologically born female; identifies as a man Biologically born female; identifies as other/they/ze Biologically born female; does not identify as either womanor man Biologically born male; identifies as woman Biologically born male; identifies as other/they/ze and when “other/they” identity includes woman Biologically born with both male and female anatomy (Intersex); identifies as a woman

The following academically qualified students cannot apply for admission consideration: Biologically born male; identifies as man

I suspect that Mount Holyoke's founder, Mary Lyon, would find

Ladin 26

much of this policy baffling – particularly the distinction between

physical sex and gender identification. Of course, she was intimately

familiar with women who rebelled against conforming to their

culturally assigned roles and other forms of gender expresssion. As a

scientist and champion of women's education, she herself was such a

woman. For her, though, defiance of conventions of gender expression

did not signify that women were not women. As for many feminists

today, the refusal of biologically born female adults to “act like

women” challenged conventional understandings of what it meant to be

a woman rather than signifying that the individuals involved had

different gender identities.

But while Mary Lyon would have found many aspects of this

admissions policy hard to understand, she would have felt right at

home with the policy's emphasis on biological sex. Every gender

category in this policy is first defined in terms of the body – how

one is “biologically born” – and only secondarily by gender

identification. Indeed, if she had skipped to the final part of the

policy, she might have felt that nothing had changed at all. “The

following academically qualified students cannot apply for admission

consideration: Biologically born male; identifies as man.” Who is

considered a woman for purposes of admission to Mount Holyoke? Anyone

Ladin 27

who is not a man.

The gender binary lives.

But though gender binary language and assumptions are woven

throughout Mount Holyoke's admissions policy, that policy combines

them with individualist (perhaps Mary Lyon would say “Emersonian”)

understandings of gender which defy conventional binary assumptions

and cannot be expressed in binary terms. That combination – marked

here by semi-colons – signals broad acknowledgment and acceptance of

diversity of gender identity and expression, but it does not address

the differences in understandings about gender and identity

represented on either side of the semi-colons.

Like Mount Holyoke, most institutions working to accommodate

gender diversity have focused on helping those with non-conventional

gender identities or expressions feel safe, welcome and included.

This is crucial, sometimes life-saving work, but it doesn't address

this other form of gender diversity: diversity of understandings of

gender and identity. That form of diversity tends to be discussed

only when it precipitates public conflicts, such as the controversy

over whether “The Vagina Monologues” is transphobic, or the political

battles over which bathrooms should be used by trans school children.

Ladin 28

We often talk about these conflicts in terms of civil rights:

the right of equal access and protection, the right to freedom of

expression, the right to freedom of religion, the right to feel safe

in public institutions. But no matter how apt they may be legally or

politically, civil rights terms make it harder to address the

differences in understandings of gender and identity that underlie

these conflicts. The language of civil rights implies that those who

disagree with us are uncivilly wrong, an implication that makes it

difficult to discuss or be respectful of those differences. The lack

of respectful discussion not only fuels conflict and vitriol; it

makes it hard for those enmeshed in these conflicts to recognize what

our different understanding gender and identity may have in common.

As Muslims, Jews and Christians who engage in interfaith work have

found, there is often common ground to be found among otherwise

irreconciliable beliefs. That common ground can become the basis for

dialogue, tolerance, peaceful co-existence, and, even cooperation.

Though Rose Verbena and I will never agree on what it means to say “I

am she,” we both value female gender identity, the relationships that

identity helps us build, the sense of solidarity with others that it

fosters. We have both suffered for saying “I am she,” and we have

both persisted in the face of gender-based discrimination and

Ladin 29

violence in affirming our female gender identities. Even if she and I

never feel that “we are all together,” surely we can learn to live

side by side; even even though I will never be she as she is she,

surely we can cooperate in efforts to improve the status of women.

It may take decades for our culture to learn to reckon with

gender diversity and to develop laws, policies and social etiquette

that assures everyone, regardless of gender identification or

expression, equal rights, protection, access, opportunities, and

dignity. After all, we are still far from achieving these goals with

respect to other, more familiar forms of difference, such as race and

class, and for that matter, binary sex. But if our goals are equal

respect, protection, access and opportunity for everyone, we must

practice our principles in the ways we treat one another, including

those who hold very different views of gender and identity. We will

never come to a single understanding of gender and identity, but we

already understand what it means to treat others, including those we

disagree with, with respect, with kindness, with compassion. When we

do, we nudge ourselves, and one another, toward a humanity so

capacious that, whatever our differences, “we are all together.”

Ladin 30

Ladin 31