Quote:
Originally Posted by UGAalum94
Of course I know that I'm swerving, but you've always been good to me when I asked sincere questions in the past:
Don't you think that the national identities (I mean something like "images," but more substantial and true of the ideals of the groups) of the individual NPHC groups would, in almost all cases, keep a transgendered person from fully identifying with a group for his or her birth gender? (I apologize for not being sure of the term. I mean first biological gender, before any transitioning.)
For example, I have a hard time thinking that someone who felt biologically a man would be interested in joining a women's group in 99% of the cases. I know we've got the case in the news recently, but I think it's pretty exceptional.
And in an unrelated question, what percentage of NPHC members do you think would consider a transgendered person worthy of membership? (I'll go ahead and say that I think the vast majority of NPC members and IFC members would be uncomfortable with a transgendered member, although not a vast majority of NPC/IFC GreekChat users willing to speak up in a thread about the issue will feel this way.)
I don't think that these members find the transgendered less than human or anything super horrible, but because my perception from the outside is that a member might take seriously the idea of being an Alpha Phi Alpha man or a Delta Sigma Theta woman so that someone with any gender related issue might, in their minds, fail to live up to the ideals of the group based on that complication alone. It may be an elite thing as much as a gender thing.
ETA: I see that the conversation has kind of passed me by while I was composing. People expressed what I was thinking while I was trying to figure out how to say it.
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I once wrote a paper that connected Yoruba deities to something I called the "archetypical" NPHC member, which was defined as something in between a stereotype and an ideal. So I'll just use that term for now.
I think that some NPHC archetypes are probably more entrenched than others. Yes, I do believe there is an archetype for each NPHC org, but I think for some people, the values themselves possibly transcend the gender identity. Possibly. Depends on the person.
I am not transgendered. I can only go by the spectrum of transgender people who I do know and work with. I think it's entirely possible that someone could be fighting their gender identity hard enough where they'd pursue an org of their birth/biological gender in their late teens and early twenties. I liken it to gay men who get married to a woman not fully grasping their sexual identity before they commit to marriage.
The case in the news.... well, let me just say she doesn't even look like a boy to me, so I could understand the chapter's reluctance to accept that s/he was more than just a masculine Lesbian. What I don't understand is this particular person's insistence on being a "man" but pledging a sorority with "Finer Womanhood" as a guiding principle -- especially when there are not one, but two coed service-based GLOs on that campus. But that's for another thread.
Over the past few years, I've been more exposed to the T in LGBT, and I can say without hesitation that if a female-to-male transgender aspirant excelled in all other qualifications, I would vote favorably upon him, regardless of prior sorority affiliation. The likelihood of them actually being in a sorority previously would probably be slim. Do I think my fraternity at large shares my beliefs? No. But I do believe there are a few chapters of every organization who would do the same.