I probably should not be writing this blog post. Actually, I should be banned from contributing to this blog altogether. It’s obvious that I lack any qualifications to ponder diversity. I’m a White male. I should do what all White males should do—shut up about issues that affect anyone unlike me and go back to the golf course.
That is, if I were a student at Massachusetts’ Wellesley College, which, of course, I wouldn’t be because the school admits women only. Sort of.
Timothy Boatwright is one of those women. Born a female, Boatwright classified himself as such on his application to the college. Like many trans students, he chose a women’s school because he perceived it to be safer than other alternatives. Plus, Boatwright told The New York Times, “it seemed awkward to write an application essay for a women’s college on why you were not a woman.”
(You really ought to read the Times piece. It does a terrific job of examining the role of trans individuals at a women’s college, citing that biological women identifying as men have an easier time getting into women’s schools than the their opposite counterparts. Go figure.)
Once Boatwright started school, he presented himself as a “masculine-of-center genderqueer” called “Timothy.” He also requested that others refer to him using male pronouns.
Wellesley being Wellesley, no one at the liberal campus had any problems with Boatwright’s identity. In fact, he’s hardly the only trans student at the school. But that all changed when Boatwright announced his intention to run for the student-government cabinet’s multicultural affairs coordinator, whose job is to promote campus diversity.
No way, said some students, who were apparently so frightened that Boatwright would usher in a dark age of patriarchy that when the other three candidates (all women of color) dropped out, they launched a Facebook campaign goading students not to vote at all.
“I thought he’d do a perfectly fine job, but it just felt inappropriate to have a White man there,” said the student founder of the “Campaign to Abstain.” The student added: “Having men in elected leadership positions undermines the idea of this being a place where women are the leaders.”
This makes me so angry. The diversity field is a sea of Black women, with a few White men and men of color bobbing about. If anything, the profession needs more people who aren’t Black or women or Black women. Putting aside some of the controversial question of why Black women dominate the field—are they drawn to it or pigeonholed in it?—we should embrace any minority within the diversity discipline, including White trans men, who are eager to promote it.
Actually, we should embrace anyone—period—who wants to work in this often thankless field. Applying gender, race, sexual orientation, sexual identity, religion, or any similar criteria to a diversity job is totally antithetical to every basic premise of diversity and inclusion.
Frankly, I’m not sure that women’s (or Black) colleges should exist in the first place, but that’s another story. I am sure, however, that every student within any college should have equal rights. That includes running for an office on campus. How ironic that some students at a college with a legacy of calling for gender equality would seek to deny it.
