Sex Change and Membership

[UGAalum94]

Originally Posted by Kevin

Truth be told, the way membership selection generally works does not lend itself to disclosure of reasons. Such things are never discussed outside of that room and the ballots are secret.

At any rate, even assuming that you could prove the discrimination occurred, it still might be legal since gender is one of the central aspects of men's and women's fraternities. Transgendered individuals may not meet that organization's requirements along those lines and therefore, the discrimination would be permissible.

The legislative intent is not to force college fraternities and sororities to allow members they don't want. The legislative intent is generally more along the lines of public services and accommodations, workforce issues, etc. At any rate, you never even get to that question because the person suing to get initiated has a burden of proof which would be impossible to prove. How does one prove the results of an unrecorded secret ballot and the reasons behind any one of the ballots cast against association (any of which would have sufficed to exclude that person)?

Impossible. Such a law would be completely unenforceable in the context of our organizations.

Transgendered folks can start their own organizations or they can join Southron's.

Well, I'm pretty sure they can't join Southron's, but once members, they might not be expelled I believe was his point. To tell you the truth, I'm not sure his possible interpretation is that different that the average person's. I don't know that we accept the idea that post-op transsexuals are simply the new assigned gender. And I don't know if that's what the non-discrimination clauses demand.

Within the context of our organizations, I agree that issues of gender are always going to be strange because we can legally discriminate in a way that other institutions can't since we're by definition single sex.

[Southron]

Originally Posted by AlphaGamUGAAlum

Well, I'm pretty sure they can't join Southron's, but once members, they might not be expelled I believe was his point. To tell you the truth, I'm not sure his possible interpretation is that different that the average person's. I don't know that we accept the idea that post-op transsexuals are simply the new assigned gender. And I don't know if that's what the non-discrimination clauses demand.

Within the context of our organizations, I agree that issues of gender are always going to be strange because we can legally discriminate in a way that other institutions can't since we're by definition single sex.

I was away from the conversation, so thank you, AlphaGamUGAAlum. Yes, I appreciate your sincere interpretation even though the preceding commentator could not or would not get my meaning.

Modern science and traditional society both recognise sexual identity is usually established at birth (the exception of deformities notwithstanding.) Only the advent of revisionist ideologies and technical capabilities has allowed the "appearance" of surgical sex change to be achieved.

If a fraternity wishes to believe a man can make himself into a woman, then it can act accordingly. If on the other hand, the fraternity believes that a man cannot make himself into a woman, then they can only establish that "action" would follow if self-mutilation were to occur.

(BTW, throughout the 19th century the Freemasons would not initiate maimed or deformed individuals lacking arms or legs. Those requirements were only for initiation and later disfigurements did not eject the man from the fraternity. This is not exactly related to our discussion but it is well to note that some type of precedent exists in the fraternal community.)

As noted in the discussion, a distinction in our society seems increasingly lost among even college-educated communities - that distinction between what is legally established and that which is morally/ethically true. Most fraternities are established to bond their members according to shared values. When the state challenges those values, the fraternity can either resist the challenge openly or conform to the new regime. If a fraternity must obey laws whose morality it opposes, a free society will not challenge that fraternity's rejection of the principle asserted by an unjust or immoral law. Thus I could envision a fraternity being forced to accept laws as good citizens while teaching the immorality of the law to its members.

I do not believe my fraternity would knowingly initiate a woman - especially as one of our core value is the elevation and respect for the feminine. (Unlike other fraternities that have allowed co-ed membership in certain chapters, my order would lose its ethos if brothers were to treat "sisters" without deference and the other chivalric values. We could not possibly treat each other without distinctions because we hold the difference between the sexes as real. This is simply the philosophy we choose to champion. We do not assume all fraternities must order themselves with such a focus. However, that is a defining quality of our identity - a "landmark" if you will...)

Were an active or alumnus to undergo surgery to change sexual identity, I would hope the chapter or national organization would not participate in the charade unless compelled by law.

My thoughts clarified anyway... I hope...

[33girl]

Originally Posted by Southron

Unlike other fraternities that have allowed co-ed membership in certain chapters

Other than Alpha Delta Phi (which, to be technical, is an all male fraternity and a co-ed society - 2 different entities), examples please? (Chapters that leave the national fraternity and become local fraternities, like some of the groups at Dartmouth, don't count.)

[dukemama]

Originally Posted by 33girl

examples please?

Psi Upsilon has several coed chapters (the one at Duke was all-male while I was there, but went coed a few years ago). Other than that, though, I don't know of any others besides APO -- and that's considered a service fraternity rather than a social GLO.

[MysticCat]

Originally Posted by 33girl

Other than Alpha Delta Phi (which, to be technical, is an all male fraternity and a co-ed society - 2 different entities), examples please?

Originally Posted by dukemama

Psi Upsilon has several coed chapters (the one at Duke was all-male while I was there, but went coed a few years ago).

Delta Psi, aka St. Anthony Hall, which went co-ed in the 1960s. Also, as dukemama says, some chapters of Psi U are co-ed.

And although were are not an NIC fraternity, for a short time between the mid-70s and 1985, some women -- 236, to be exact -- were initiated into Phi Mu Alpha due to some uncertainties about the application of Title IX to the Fraternity. The practice was again prohibited across the board in 1985. Most chapters, however, were never able to initiate women. Before it could initiate any women, a chapter had to receive approval from our nationals. Approval was only given if the chapter was in real danger from the host institution as a result of only initiating men. Only 22 chapters were ever given permission to initiate women, and I don't think that all 22 of them actually did initiate women. A few of those 22 chapters wanted to continue as co-ed chapters after 1985 and withdrew (or, in one case, was expelled) from the Fraternity after the initiation of women was again prohibited.

[naraht]

Originally Posted by dukemama

Psi Upsilon has several coed chapters (the one at Duke was all-male while I was there, but went coed a few years ago). Other than that, though, I don't know of any others besides APO -- and that's considered a service fraternity rather than a social GLO.

Yup. and for the Alpha Phi Omega chapters in the USA, most of this discussion is of academic interest. I don't know of any APO (USA) brothers who have had a sex change operation. Only way that might be of interest is as a footnote, if a brother who joined back in the 1960s later went through a sex change operation and became (after the operation) the first brother to (later) be a woman.

As for Alpha Phi Omega in the Philippines, that National Organization runs more like Alpha Nu Omega in the USA does now, separate fraternity and sorority chapters at a school, but joined at the National Level. But the social pressures against sexual reassignment are *considerably* higher in the Philippines, so I wouldn't expect this to have happened.

Randy