Sororities to allow all female-identifying students to rush
 

Have any NPC groups established guidelines regarding this? If not, it will be interesting to see what happens (this particular case is at Brown University).

http://www.browndailyherald.com/2016...dents-to-rush/

Hm, I don't agree with this. I guess we'll see what their reactions and responses will be, because yes, I think each national organization will have one.

One more reason I am thankful Zeta is not at Brown.

Some might look at the situation from another perspective: would you or your NPC group shun or remove from membership any fully initiated member if she began identifying as a man, yet continued maintaining the high standards of your group.

And if each individual NPC group creates their own decision/policy statements on this issue, a fully-unified statement from NPC is not anticipated.

Do you mean you don't agree with her statement that national NPC groups defer to their individual chapters?

How on earth are the national hqs going to know anyway?

So I actually have some second-hand experience with this-a friend had two transgender women register for recruitment when she was Panhellenic president at a school very different from my own. The first girl dropped out before recruitment started, but the second was set on continuing and so the following things happened:

-Panhel prez had to call each of the national orgs on her campus (none of the ones at Brown) and ask what their specific membership policy was with regards to transgender women. Some said they would allow anyone who identified as female to receive a bid, while others said they would only allow biological women to join.
-Panhel prez had to inform the PNM that she would be cut by chapters she could not receive a bid from after the first round, same as if she didn't make a minimum GPA for some chapters but not others. She was never told which chapters could not take her.
-She did receive some invites but was eventually cut by all chapters-according to my friend she wasn't the most stellar PNM in terms of grades, involvement, etc anyways so it's not as though sororities were passing on an otherwise superstar PNM because of her biological gender.

If a woman is still legally male and has not changed her name legally the HQ might see an obviously-gendered name on their roster and ask questions.

I disagree wholeheartedly that the national orgs will just let Brown chapters do whatever they want. I applaud their move to inclusivity but it's wishful thinking on their part if there's any pushback whatsoever from their nationals to think they can keep a girl nationals won't allow and not run into trouble. Also incredibly silly that their Panhellenic president just assumed there's no way to know what nationals thinks. If she called them she would definitely have gotten answers, even if she didn't like them.

Each national org DOES set their own membership requirements. One would think that Brown Panhellenic would know this.

Crossing the female membership requirement line might open up our orgs to males identifying as males seeking sorority membership. I like the NPC sororities as they are now, founded by women for women.

There are plenty of females out there with male names....and there are names like Ashley and Evelyn that used to be exclusively male and are now female. Point being, unless they really wanted to dig into it they still couldn't tell. I think in today's climate digging obsessively would be more trouble than it's worth.

1. Transwomen are women.

2. Title IX does not govern individual membership policies. A sorority could welcome transwomen and still bar men from joining without any legal repercussion. Title IX allows schools to recognize social fraternities and sororities regardless of individual gender policies, as opposed to other types of GLOs, which are not exempt.

3. Social fraternities and sororities could welcome opposite-gender people if they wanted to and still not lose their right to determine their own membership. I know a woman who pledged an NIC fraternity as a male freshman and then transitioned to being a woman. As far as I know, she still maintains her membership.

Anyway, good for Brown!

https://www.campuspride.org/wp-conte...DOE-Letter.pdf
https://www.campuspride.org/wp-conte...s-Title-IX.pdf

Transgender women are women. Full stop.

Do they have XX chromosomes?

This is where I foresee there being more problems than anything else. I agree that trans women are women and I would support my organization welcoming them with open arms into membership! But my concern would be that, especially with all NPC membership selection processes being private, it could get into a very sticky situation. It would take one less-than-stellar PNM being dropped from recruitment to go on Twitter and say they were dropped for being trans before the entire Greek system was raked over the coals.

That's NOT to say that all trans PNMs would do that, but if someone did, I feel like it would be blown out of proportion and all Greeks would be made by the media to look like transphobic idiots when, in reality, we have membership standards we uphold for every PNM, cisgendered or transgendered. What's the solution? I'm not sure. And do I think this is reason enough to not allow trans students to participate in recruitment? No. I think we'd really have to work on making sure all PNMs feel welcomed to kind of avoid them feeling like they were singled out for being trans.

For scientific clarification:

The three ways of determining biological sex are chromosomes, gonads (penis, vagina, testes, ovaries, etc) and hormone levels. Some women have levels of testosterone that fall into the acceptable range for men but still consider themselves women, such as the case of South African track athlete Caster Semenya. Others, such as women with androgen insensitivity syndrome, have male gonads, but those gonads are undescended and their bodies cannot process testosterone. These women look, for all intents and purposes, like "biological" women but are chromosomally male and to some extent gonadally as well. There are even people with extra or fewer sex chromosomes than most, but the vast majority of these people fall into one social designation of gender or the other.

We don't peek down the pants of a PNM, demand their bloodwork before offering a bid for membership or require genetic testing because a woman is a woman if she believes herself to be one and presents herself as one, not if she passes some sort of biological checklist. Sex and gender are different concepts.

^^^Isn't this a determination of biological SEX, not gender?

I'm embarrassed, I took a class on this and everything and I still goofed them up. I'll change it in the original post but leave this here for posterity.

Here's what was put to me. First, look up Lizard Man. In a nutshell, he had every inch of his body tattooed with green scales. He had his tongue surgically forked and he only eats lizard foods like insects. He says that he is definitely a lizard. Now decide:

1. Is Lizard Man a man or a lizard?
2. If you think he's a man, is this any different from someone claiming to be a different sex?

I think a better question would be what you hope to accomplish by repeatedly telling this guy he isn't a lizard if that's what makes him happy.

What they were saying is that if you accept that a person is a girl because he or she says they're a girl, it's only fair to accept Lizard Man as a lizard because he says he's one.

Same with the transabled folks.

I live in a city that just passed an "all-gender restroom ordinance". This is very new to all us, so it provides a learning experience for everyone.

I'm wondering whether sororities - and fraternities, as well - would be ready to accept transgender women into their communities. Is it a topic that is ever discussed at chapter meetings, or something advisers discuss with chapter officers?

In order for a transgender woman to be accepted into a community - in this case a Greek community of 18-22 yo people, where the vast majority would likely identify themselves as straight - she would have to welcomed as a woman. My point is, and it's something I ran into recently, that some men in our society don't even understand what transgender is; they confuse them as drag queens, or as men "pretending" to be women. Progression requires education and awareness.

Are you recommending genetics testing before giving out bids? Or just before initiation?

Well said!

Hi everyone, I think this is an interesting debate so I'll just give it my two cents:

1) As to the Brown University Panhellenic unilaterally allowing female-identifying students to rush, that doesn't necessarily mean that the individual chapters themselves can or will offer membership to trans PNMs. A similar situation happens at A&M and UT Austin where Panhellenic allowed community college students who take a few classes at the 4-year college to rush. I remember there was such a big brouhaha over Panhellenic "forcing" chapters to accept Blinn TEAM/PACE students, but ultimately, it was the individual sorority's decision whether to accept or not. There was a big debate over whether it was "allowed" or not. There was a big debate over Panhellenic "forcing." But as far as I know, every single sorority at A&M this past year has accepted a Blinn TEAM member.

2) As to whether trans women are really women, I believe Clemongirl gave a much better explanation than I ever could as to the biological delineations. But there do exist women with 3 X chromosomes. As they are asymptomatic, many will not realize it, and they live normal lives as "real" women. Similarly, people with Down's Syndrome have missing chromosomes. Does that mean that they are not "real" humans and should be aborted?

3) Forgetting all of the biological talk about what constitutes a "real" woman, I would like to point out that the 7 Sisters women's colleges (Bryn Mawr, Mount Holyoke, Wellesley, Barnard, etc.) all accept transgender women (or anyone who identifies as a woman for that matter). If these "women-only" colleges can accept trans women, why not sororities? Having already been initiated, I see nothing in our ritual that demands a new member possess female sex organs or be born a female.

4) For whatever it's worth, I do actually know someone who is a trans woman who pledged (and was initiated into) a sorority. I do believe that she's told a few of her sisters (her school is more on the liberal side), but I do hope that nationals won't strip her of her membership, especially considering that she's already been initiated and gone through the rituals.

Again, just my two (four) cents.

The EXACT SECOND that they sign up for recruitment!

Well, that's a terribly analogy because SEX is biologically determined; GENDER is a social construct.

But setting that aside, if some dude tells me that he's a lizard, then he's a lizard. IDGAF.

Right. What's it to me? No one is making me live as a lizard. You do you, lizard man!

This is a good point, too: no one is making the chapters offer bids to these girls if they choose not to. I would hope that being trans would not be the reason for not offering membership, but like with the PNM I told the story about above part of private membership selection practices is that chapters don't have to give reasons for not inviting a PNM back to their parties.

Unless this policy was adopted at Tufts or another school that requires that all PNMs be given a bid to a chapter as long as they meet basic membership requirements (are there even other schools that do this?), chapters still retain some measure of autonomy.

You're the one who brought up genetics, so her question seems fair (to me, anyway). I'm not sure I understand why you're being a smart-aleck about it.

I thought a few of the Seven Sisters schools had accepted men for a while now.

Where does it end? There's a woman in Denmark (I think that's where) who identifies as a cat. She hisses at dogs, etc.

Let the cats decide if they want her in their club?

Chromosomes clearly do not determine sex. They are part of the equation, but so many things can happen downstream to change whether any individual will be male or female. People who think XX and XY is all that matters to solve this issue clearly don't understand the vast array of disorders that occur in the human race. My husband trained at a ambiguous genitalia clinic at Hopkins. He had no idea what he was getting into when he started fellowship. It's an interesting topic. Did you know there is a family that has had multiple girls born to them that develop male sex characteristics only at puberty? These children were raised as girls until one day they turned into boys. Everyone is happy in this family because being male is preferred in their culture.

My point is, it is a form of hubris to suggest that you know what determines a male or female and that "nature" or "God" doesn't make mistakes, as there are plenty of examples in the medical knowledge base proving that concept wrong. Just because we don't know right now why transgender people feel they are the opposite sex doesn't mean there isn't a concrete reason or that we won't know the why in a few years. Medical science is changing so rapidly, especially with the ability to cheaply assess a patient's DNA to establish what genes are seen in people of any subgroup.

This is not consistent with what we were told back when Title IX passed. We were told that we were granted an exemption and could remain single gender organizations as long as we, in no way, allowed the other gender to join. At that time, all of the fraternities with little sisters groups ended the practice of little sisters groups and we were told we could not participate in big brother/big sister kinds of relationships with fraternities because it would jeopardize our ability to remain a single gender organization.

For Title IX purposes for sports and things, what criteria do they use to define it? Gender or sex?


Most are still women's schools- Barnard, Wellesley, Smith, Bryn Mawr and Mount Holyoke.
Vassar went co-ed and Radcliffe merged into Harvard.

There are additional articles about it, but the DOE's Office of Civil Rights has interpreted Title IX to protect transgender students from discrimination based on the gender through which they live their daily lives.

And for what it's worth, you could always remain single-gender. The letters I quoted above pretty much said Title IX does not force any organization to change its policies. It's not the organizations which have the exemptions, it's the schools which are allowed to exempt social orgs.

Interesting article

http://csulauniversitytimes.com/5702...reek-sorority/

I wonder if she shits in a litter box and then buries it with her bare hands? ;)

here ya go! :D :D
http://www.cosmopolitan.co.uk/entert...in-human-body/

I think it's good to have these conversations before you need to make or interpret a policy last minute when "OMG, a transgender student just registered for recruitment. What do we do now?!" and the person goes through recruitment as "THAT girl." Have discussions while you have time, and before one person is the obvious reason why.

Here's the thing: I believe when GLOs with white clauses eventually removed them, there were some chapters who had been taking people of color long before that and did so because they liked the person - they didn't give a crap what the policy said. This is kind of like that. I'm betting there have been transgender students in many of our orgs for a while now, regardless of what is "allowed. "

I hope they tell their national orgs. at some point and help to affect change. Seeing that it worked out just fine is a good way to shut down a lot of resistance, IMO.