Gender Ideology's Influence in Women's Colleges: "We Should be Asking People, Why are Feminists Your Enemy?"
This guest article was written by Virginia, a WoLF member and volunteer. Virginia is a student at an institution that claims to be a women’s college. However, her institution allows males who “identify as women” to enroll.
Introduction
By 2015, most colleges for women had adjusted their admissions policies to work within the framework of “gender identity.” “Self-identification of gender” replaced verification of sex by birth certificate, and almost every formerly women’s college released a different policy in regards to which “gender identities” they would admit. Institutions which remained single-sex for marginally longer were met with picketing and protests that, ironically enough, were mostly led by women. However, the changes in admission policies are just one way that these institutions are being affected by gender identity ideology.
As an attendee of an elite institution that claims to be a women’s college, I was startled by what appears to be an obsession with “gender identity” and an abandonment of feminism permeating the culture and curriculum. Perhaps this is precisely because it is a women’s space, and gender activists push for the de-sexing of such environments to make them more inclusive of men. In addition to championing the erosion of our spaces, gender ideology targets women by encouraging them to perceive themselves through a patriarchal lens - for example, gender ideology suggests that if women do not like dressing femininely, then they are less of a woman. Hence, most women at the college who exhibit any signs of gender nonconformity quickly change their pronouns and consider medically “transitioning.”
Another significant part of gender ideology entails crusading against an imagined enemy force of Trans Exclusionary Radical Feminists. Within communities affected by this ideology, which includes most environments with left-leaning women, the imagined enemy creates strife, as women fear expressing wrongthink in regards to feminism. For this article, I spoke with five of my gender critical female peers about the state of feminism at our college. Most of these women preferred to remain anonymous due to concerns about cancel culture. In light of this, most of their names have been changed.
What do you think about the feminist conciousness here?
Andria: “The student body generally does not have an understanding or enthusiasm for feminism. On top of that, ‘queer’ or gender identity activists purposefully misuse the term. They even have catchprases like ‘if your feminism doesn’t include transwomen it isn’t feminism’.”
Tiffany: “The women diminish their oppression as females and barely consider themselves as members of a marginalized group. They’ve fully convinced one another that all of our choices as females are made in a vacuum, and all have Instagram pages dedicated to perfectly posed, perfectly edited sexualized images of themselves. They’re always so done up, especially recently— wearing lashes and acrylic nails to class wasn’t a thing I saw four years ago when I was a new student. ”
Jenny: “Most people do care about trans rights more than women’s rights. They forget that in the outside world it’s rough to be a woman. But I think some of the people who aren’t online as much understand feminist things a bit more.”
Anne: “Most if not all women here are interested in feminism. The sentiment is there but the critical thinking is not.”
Do you think “gender identity” affects female solidarity?
Tiffany: “This school has been an exclusively female space for over 150 years. Only now is the student body demanding that doors be opened to males in the name of inclusivity. Since being “cis” is now the most oppressive and privileged way to exist, single-sex environments are seen as obsolete and prejudicial relics from our “transphobic” past. The majority of the women here identify either with or as their oppressor. If I identified as a man I would have had a much easier time there. Trans-identified students are immune to a lot of criticism and have a higher social status. It’s more socially acceptable to hate your body than it is to be perceived as a woman who’s ugly or doesn’t care about her appearance”
Michelle: “Yes, most women who identify as nonbinary or trans really believe they have more in common with men than with other females. The students are incredibly male supremacist and refuse to believe that biological sex affects women’s lives.”
Jenny: “I think the ideology leads women to turn on their friends in favor of hypothetical trans people they’ve never met, facing hypothetical oppression they’ve never seen in real life”
Anne: “It creates a divide between women. I’ve seen girls who were very classic butch lesbians transition, which just makes me sad. In what universe is going by they/them pronouns more revolutionary than being a proud butch lesbian?”
Do you think internalized misogyny is related to the preoccupation with “gender identity”?
Tiffany: “Yes, women and girls keep a lot of pain and suffering to ourselves instead of communicating with each other. I think many trans-identified women don't realize that a lot of us feel uncomfortable about femininity, even the women who look more conventionally feminine. Plus, it does nothing but reaffirm harmful and sexist stereotypes to believe that certain females are “less” women than others because of their interests or personalities.
Michelle: “The gender identity movement capitalizes on female socialization. Women are already familiar with the idea of not being allowed to make anyone uncomfortable for any reason. Additionally, as a female, you really have to identify with the garb associated with your sex role in order to even believe that transwomen are women. These days girls are getting surgeries, contouring, wearing wigs, and generally relating to the same caricature of femininity that trans women identify with. When they see a male person doing the same thing, it makes sense to them.”
Jenny: “Before, if you didn’t like wearing skirts, you’d just think you didn’t like skirts. Now girls think ‘I don’t like wearing skirts so I must not be a woman.’ A lot of people do have gender dysphoria, and that is really sad, but a lot of the ‘queer’ people are just girls who don’t like dressing like a bimbo, shaving their legs, or wearing makeup.”
Anne: “I think they care a lot about appearances, and what’s trendy right now is a very androgynous style. The style goes hand in hand with they/them pronouns, because they think the way you present is your gender, and the pronouns must match. It’s so sexist.”
Do you think the introduction of men changed anything about the school?
Tiffany: “Every mixed sex space has a gender hierarchy, and women can no longer truly be themselves. By the time I graduated, a significant number of males had been admitted. The school is a shell of what it once was.”
Jenny: “I haven’t encountered that many men myself but what I have seen is other students pushing for more ‘amabs’ to be admitted, and I don’t agree with that. I’ve also heard a lot of women saying they lied on their application. They check the box that says ‘i am a woman’ when they’re trans, and then get here and expect to be treated differently than other women.''
Anne: “Men are a small minority right now but individuals can affect the culture of a house or friend group. I was so uncomfortable at convocation when the man in my house came downstairs in tiny little underwear with a boner. It felt violating, I didn’t want to see that. Half the ones I know are fine, but the other half present themselves like exaggerated caricatures of slutty women, and really unkempt and off. When men are wearing fishnets and tiny skirts every single day you know it’s for sexual reasons. A lot of them call themselves dykes or lesbians too, like - you’re a man! They seem really entitled.”
Do you think students are open minded about discussing gender critical ideas?
Michelle: “Young women are under so much self-surveillance that you can’t even have a conversation with them. They get scared, stressed, and become visibly tense. Generally people either avoid the topic or start repeating ‘transwomen are women’, ‘sex work is work,’ all these thought-terminating cliches. I think they find the ideas scary because they’ve been made to believe that only really fucked up people question gender identity, and they’re scared of being convinced.”
Jenny: “After a bit of explaining, people often agree with me about things like how growing up ‘amab' and ‘afab’ are different experiences, but I never say things bluntly. You can get removed from leadership positions, I could get isolated from my classmates, or lose my friends”
Anne: “No. They are absolutely not open minded about it. A lot of people are scared of being ostracized so they avoid the topic like I do, or they’re very reactive and quick to jump on anything ‘bad’, and that makes others feel like they have to do the same. It just doesn't promote learning, acceptance, or new ideas.”
How would you compare the level of hostility towards radical feminists here to other environments you’ve been in such as previous schools or work places?
Andria: “I think it’s really heightened here and there's an assumption that everybody must think the same way. There's a real crucifixion of people who don’t agree that I haven’t seen anywhere else. I think this is because women are both the foot soldiers and victims of the gender identity movement; there is a concerted attack on women’s spaces. The students at women’s colleges are exactly the demographic that must be willing to accept the intrusion of men in order for the movement to be effective”
Jenny: “Where I grew up was the same - ‘fuck terfs’ and all that. The issue is the hive mind on the internet, which reaches a lot of places. There’s a real boogeyman of evil terfs killing trans people”
Anne: “This is by far the most left leaning environment I’ve been in and therefore the most hostile towards radfems.”
How would you describe the commonly held ideas about ‘TERFs’ at the school?
Tiffany: “Women have internalized these male ideas of what it means to be a “cool girl”. Now with smartphones, the male gaze is in their pocket at all times. What’s ‘in’ is competing to be the sexiest object, being outstandingly accepting of males and their ideas, and being accessible to as many men as possible. They see people with any sort of issue with that as puritans or extremists.”
Michelle: “They think we make people unsafe, that we’re cruel and being exclusionary. There’s so much propaganda on the internet, but specifically these women were persuaded by an emotional argument about transwomen being the most oppressed group in society. As a result, women now think they have to bow down to them to prove they’re the good kind of ‘cis’ woman.’”
Anne: “They think TERFs are as bad as actual Nazis, and this is me as a Jew saying that. I think the way the students react to gender critical feminists is the same way they reacted when Neo-nazis came onto campus to protest the Nancy Pelosi event. They think we’re actively going out to harm trans people and we’re evil.”
What’s it like being gender critical here?
Andria: “Obviously hard, obviously there’s a hostile climate. It’s a profoundly isolating experience. I’ve said gender critical things in classes and the first response is always panic, from the students and professors. The professors try to contain or shut down the conversation. People tell you you’re wrong without actually addressing your points. They react to anything that goes against their orthodoxy like it’s wrong, but there’s no discussion of why.”
Tiffany: “Doors are basically slammed in your face during conversation all the time. You can say things as PC as possible, and still get called a hateful TERF. It’s impossible to explain certain things because so much of our language has been taken away and made to mean something else. Also, you’re not even allowed to ask questions— I was told at my first-year orientation that even if I didn’t understand other people’s pronouns, I shouldn’t question them.”
Anne: “It’s a shitty feeling knowing that if my friends knew about my politics they would turn on me in a second. The people here are generally academically smart but there’s no critical thinking at all. There’s a slight awareness of feminism, so people are almost there, but not quite.”
Those who have been public about their feminist views- was there any backlash? Did it affect your social life?
Andria: “The first time I was truly attacked was online, on the college’s confessional site, Facebook, and Instagram. People were reacting to things I had said in class. Many of the messages were vitriolic- ‘you’re a bitch, cunt, et cetera’. Months after the initial incident people were still posting about it. A lot of girls are scared to say anything in real life but seem to think they are in some sort of online militia. There’s a sense of duty to root out the evil TERFs, and we should be asking people - why are feminists your enemy?
Michelle: Clearly there’s a concerted effort to make it affect our social lives, you and I both experienced that. It’s a group hostility and a learned hostility that comes from an ideology which teaches we are the enemies. But it made me some friends too, and that should be the goal - to forge new connections through this consciousness.”
Tiffany: “The girl Michelle and I had talked to told everyone we were ‘unsafe’, and the next time we tried to sit with our friend group at the dining hall they said ‘you can’t sit with us’. Neither of us heard from any of those friends again. So it affected my social life negatively at first, but then in a really good way once I found other radical women.”
Anne: “I’m pretty careful about what I say. I want to be out and proud, but cancel culture is real. But still the first friend I made here doesn’t talk to me anymore because she found out I’m a radfem. And when I engaged in a discussion on the confessional about the gender inclusive admittance policy, I was trying really hard to be polite, but people still took everything I said in bad faith. They just wanted to argue.”
Political Tension and Fear on Campus
Overall, there is a shocking amount of political tension within the student body. The subject of fear came up very repeatedly; the women I interviewed expressed how students experience fear of feminist ideas, of expressing their political views, and of the allegedly sinister “TERFs.” The topic of gender is charged with emotion to an unusually high degree, which makes it incredibly challenging to talk about. This emotionally-driven environment creates a divide between “liberal” and “radical” feminists, and this divide is perpetuated even more because of the way that women have been socialized to compete with each other instead of support each other.
A lot of the hostility on campus toward gender critical feminists seems to be propelled by sensationalist propaganda from the internet. Many have observed that those who spend more time online are more likely to be invested in gender ideology and respond in extreme ways to those who do not follow it. The internet-born myth that there is a group of feminist women out to harm “gender non-conforming people” is so over the top that it is hard to believe how widely the idea has been embraced by college educated women. Regardless of the fictional nature of these ideas, the frenzy to find and condemn so-called “TERFs” has created a very real threat of ostracization, which promotes self-censorship and forces many women to choose between feminism and their reputations.
This spectre of “evil” feminists causes a great deal of infighting and mistrust between women when we need to be uniting to fight for our rights. Additionally, the escalating trend of females trying to identify out of womanhood seems to show a pattern of attempts by women to cope with patriarchy on an individual basis because they lack a feminist outlet. Instead of trying to change how society perceives women, they try to individually be perceived as more like men. This paradox of many women “not feeling like women'' appears significantly magnified in my school’s student body, but it is also a nationwide trend.
More communication about the female experience, including things like feeling uncomfortable with the expectations society puts on women, seems to be the clearest solution. The more we communicate with each other, the more we find commonality and become aware of the context surrounding our experiences; this awareness promotes class consciousness. Building female solidarity should be our first priority right now. Regardless of identification or political alignment, women have more in common than we think, and the more we realize our commonalities, the stronger our fight for liberation will become.
