Understanding the transgender community
Flag representing the transgender community. Photo courtesy of Max Schafnitz
Wake up, Chapman. The transgender community is up and active on campus.
“There are more than two genders. Sometimes I say it to people, and it just rocks their world,” said senior creative writing major Luis. “This has been happening since humankind started – sorry colonialism told you otherwise.”
The transgender community includes identities across the spectrum, not just male and female. Chapman has taken small steps, but transgender students believe that bigger efforts are necessary to welcome and understand transgender individuals.
Luis identifies as genderfluid and said that the Chapman campus is entrenched with strict Western ideas of manhood and womanhood.
Junior dance major Chris Marks is genderqueer and agrees that Chapman reflects society, and that people are blatantly unaware of what it means to be transgender.
“You can’t just look at someone and say, ‘Oh, they’re trans,’” Marks said. “You have to talk to them, get to know them and understand their identity.”
Luis said the gender-inclusive restrooms and dorms at Chapman have been appreciated, however, they barely satisfy the minimum.
Luis lived in the dorms with another genderqueer friend and two cisgender women. While having the space was nice, Luis pointed out that the university had the rooms placed in the more expensive dorms, which not every transgender student can afford.
Sophomore creative writing major, Rebecca Rost, is a cisgender woman, but strongly supports the transgender community.
“The fact that Chapman limits the number of available gender neutral dorms is ridiculous. They’re just rooms. Gender isn’t dependent on whether a building allows it or not,” Rost said.
The restrooms were introduced with a Gender-Inclusive Restroom Day to expose the transgender community to Chapman students and faculty.
Senior integrated educational studies and English major Emmett Griffith contributed to the planning for the Gender-Inclusive Restroom Day. Griffith is queer transmasculine and said that while the day was a step in the right direction, it was a temporary one-day event.
English professor Ian Barnard is gay and queer, and said the restrooms should not be the end goal.
“We don’t want tokenism to be our end goal. The end goal should be that all campus restrooms are gender-inclusive,” Barnard said.
There are four gender-inclusive restrooms on campus, and they aren’t the most accessible.
Luis said that it’s difficult to navigate a daily routine, making sure to pass by the gender-neutral restrooms.
A cross-cultural center is to be built in Argyros Forum 303, and Luis mentioned that there are no gender-neutral bathrooms in the Forum.
“You’re trying to create an inclusive space, but you’re not affirming that physically,” Luis said.
Reactions to the gender-neutral restrooms have not all been positive either.
An article about the restrooms was reposted on Facebook, and Marks had come across it. Reading the comments, Marks said he felt hurt seeing how members of Chapman commented, showing their disapproval.
Using the bathroom is a fear of Marks’ because he fears violence. Growing up, he had many traumatic experiences being bullied in the restrooms.
“I don’t associate myself with being a man or a woman. I’m just not that. I appear male (and) I use the male restroom because I’m afraid of what would happen if I did use the women’s restroom,” Marks said.
Griffith said Gender-Inclusive Restroom Day was a good educational tool, but worried that people may think restrooms were the only issues that transgender individuals faced. Though, the issues go beyond that.
Casey Haggard, who graduated from Chapman in ’77, was murdered on July 23, 2015 after being stabbed in the neck by a man in Fresno, California. Haggard was stabbed for being a transgender woman.
More transgender individuals were killed in 2015 than any other year, according to NBC News. There were at least 21 people killed, and 19 of them were women of color, according to the Human Rights Campaign.
Transgender women of color are a main target in the community, and face the most violence. In February 2016, two transgender women of color were killed just within 48 hours, according to Advocate.
This is just a small insight into the violence that so many people face, and there are still Chapman students who don’t understand how serious the issue is.
Marks said the Student Union desk had a poster on a day they were recognizing the transgender women who were murdered. On the poster a student had written, “Who cares, people die every day,” which Marks said terrified him.
Marks said that every morning, when he wakes up, he has to decide how he is going to appear and present himself.
“This is such a real fear for transgender individuals. Am I going to be murdered for being who I am?” Marks asked.
From the sidewalks around Chapman to inside the classroom, Marks has been put in uncomfortable situations regarding his identity.
While walking outside in swim shorts and a pink tank, a man yelled to Marks, “Are you actually wearing that?” Then the man continued to laugh. Marks said that he was simply wearing a shirt and shorts, but someone still made a joke about him.
Then in a human sexuality class, Marks’s professor had asked the question: “If your 7-year-old son wanted to wear a dress to school, would you let him? Raise your hand if you wouldn’t.”
Marks said that he loved wearing dresses when he was younger, however, other men in the class raised their hands, which gave Marks a lot of anxiety.
“I felt that you don’t accept me, you think what I want to do is weird, you think what I want to do is not OK,” Marks said.
Marks didn’t even feel comfortable enough to bring up his discomfort in the classroom to his professor.
Sociology professor C.K. Magliola said that the Chapman administration has been working with the diversity and inclusion initiative, and that a good first step would be making the faculty more educated and aware of the transgender community.
Magliola suggested that it could be written in the university’s policy that faculty must abide by the gender pronoun that the student has identified as.
“The faculty should model,” Magliola said. “One thing I started doing last semester is asking students their gender pronouns on the very first day. It’s one method that is used to set the tone for the rest of the semester.”
Barnard said some classes at Chapman also continue to perpetuate the distinction between “sex” and “gender,” despite the fact that this distinction has been discredited by many transgender theorists. Also, Chapman still has antiquated heterosexist and cisnormative policies in place, which assume that there are only two genders.
Griffith noticed that issues facing transgender students are often not discussed or acknowledged. The list goes on to needing LGBT-identified counselors and a trans-inclusive curriculum.
Luis said the Student Psychological Center also needs to have someone who either identifies as transgender, or is at least trained to understand the identities.
“A lot of the times we go to those services, either we’re seen as fascinating creatures to them or (the staff) doesn’t really know how to relate to us,” Luis said.
Marks said that changes could be seen within the student body, but there has to be more diversity. It’s important to care and to take the mental effort to step into someone else’s shoes and learn about what they are going through.
“Change the student body – change the people that are coming into this school,” Marks said. “The people that they are accepting into this school are people who are not aware of these issues and people who do not want to learn about these issues.”
While many students know of the transgender community’s existence, Luis said that the number of people who are actually knowledgeable about the community is small.
Rost said there is not equity or equality between transgender, gender nonconforming and cisgender individuals on campus because there is not equity or equality between them in the world at large. Chapman is a microcosm of greater society in many ways and often mirrors the problems, like transphobia, that plague the rest of the country.
“I feel like respecting my pronouns isn’t enough – respecting my existence isn’t enough,” Luis said. “Actually doing something to help me exist, that’s more necessary.”
Get to know the terms, from the Trans Student Education Resources:
Transgender/Trans: An umbrella term for people whose gender identity differs from the sex they were assigned at birth. The term transgender is not indicative of gender expression, sexual orientation, hormonal makeup, physical anatomy or how one is perceived in daily life.
Gender identity: One’s internal sense of being male, female, neither of these, both or other gender(s). Everyone has a gender identity. For transgender people, their sex assigned at birth and their gender identity are not necessarily the same.
Asexual: The lack of a sexual attraction, and one identifying with this orientation. This may be used as an umbrella term for other emotional attractions such as demisexual.
Bigender: Refers to those who identify as two genders. Can also identify as multigender (identifying as two or more genders). Do not confuse this term with Two-Spirit, which is specifically associated with Native American and First Nations cultures.
Binary: Used as an adjective to describe the genders female and male or woman and man.
Genderqueer: An identity commonly used by people who do not identify or express their gender within the gender binary. Those who identify as genderqueer may identify as neither male nor female, may see themselves as outside of or in between the binary gender boxes or may simply feel restricted by gender labels. Many genderqueer people are cisgender and identify with it as an aesthetic. Not everyone who identifies as genderqueer identifies as trans.
Cis(gender): Adjective that means “identifies as their sex assigned at birth” derived from the Latin word meaning “on the same side.” A cisgender or cis person is not transgender. “Cisgender” does not indicate biology, gender expression or sexuality/sexual orientation. In discussions regarding trans issues, one would differentiate between women who are trans and women who aren’t by saying trans women and cis women.
Trans woman and trans man: Trans woman generally describes someone assigned male at birth who identifies as a woman. This individual may or may not actively identify as trans. The same concept applies to trans men. Often it is good just to use woman or man. Sometimes trans women identify as male-to-female and sometimes trans men identify as female-to-male.