Mount Holyoke Lyon's Pride News

An off-Broadway play about Mary Woolley and Jeannette Marks

Fri, 03 Mar 2017 22:18:09 GMT

Bull in a China Shop, running until March 26, 2017. Lincoln Center, Claire Tow Theater, W 65th St, Upper West Side, NYC. 212-239-6200. Running time 1 hour 25 minutes. Website: lct3.org

Review: https://www.nytimes.com/2017/03/02/theater/review-bull-in-a-china-shop-finds-a-revolution-in-one-woman.html

Barbara Price's Remarkable Life and Work

Mon, 11 Jul 2016 17:12:57 GMT

Barbara "Boo" Price '66 continues to contribute immeasurably to the LGBT community around the world. The San Francisco Bay Times recently listed a few of her many achievements in this article: http://sfbaytimes.com/barbara-prices-remarkable-life-and-work/

Mount Holyoke College Queer Alum Conference: Projected Schedule

Wed, 24 Feb 2016 04:01:34 GMT

Mount Holyoke College Queer Alum Conference: Projected Schedule

9:00am-9:30am	Bagel Brunch/Check-In/Map Making Project	Willits Hallowell Center
9:30am-10am	Opening Remarks from Dean Hall	Willits Hallowell Center
10am-10:45am	International Alum Panel	Willits Hallowell Center
11am-12:30pm	Trans Panel	Willits Hallowell Center
12:30pm-1:30pm	Lunch and Networking	Willits Hallowell Center
1:15pm-2:30pm	Interfaith Session	Eliot House
1:30pm-2:30pm	Multi-generational Zine Making: Persistence and Resistance History	MHC Archives Reading Room
2:45pm-4pm	40th Anniversary Information Session - Queer MHC History Panel	Dwight 101
4pm-5:15pm	Post College Plans/ Queer Families	Dwight 101
5:30pm-6:15pm	Taboo Talk: Classism and the Queer Uniform	Blanchard 227
5:45pm-7:15pm	Art Gallery Reception/Concert/Dinner	Drawing Studio and Blanchard Gallery
7:30-8:30pm	Tea	Drawing Studio
8-11pm	Movie Screening	Drawing Studio

Mount Holyoke College Queer Alum Conference, March 26, 2016

Wed, 24 Feb 2016 03:43:32 GMT

You are invited to the Queer Alum Conference!

The Queer Alum Conference is being held to celebrate the 40th anniversary of LGBTQ+ organizations at Mount Holyoke College. The conference will take place on Saturday, March 26, 2016.

Through a variety of panel discussion on a range of topics such as the history of queer activism and the experiences of trans individuals on campus, an art and photography exhibit and silent auction, zine workshops, networking, and more, we hope to promote intergenerational dialogue between past and current students about queer identities and activism on campus.

Sponsored by Lyon's Pride and OUTreach (the umbrella queer organization on campus), we also hope to help forge connections between LGBTQ+ alums and current Mount Holyoke students. You can register for the conference using this link. Registration for the conference is free.

Op/Ed: Changing a Law is Only the First Step

Sat, 11 Jul 2015 18:14:08 GMT

Lyon's Pride member Bessy Reyna '70 was invited to speak at Hartford's Gay Pride Rally this year. This is a transcript of the talk she presented at the rally on June 26 at the Old State House.

http://ctlatinonews.com/2015/07/06/op-ed-changing-a-law-is-only-the-first-step/

Transcribe the Woolley/Marks letters for the Mount Holyoke Archives!

Sun, 17 May 2015 15:31:53 GMT

The Mount Holyoke Archives has set up a crowd-sourced transcription project, and the documents they selected were the passionate letters between Mary Woolley and her partner Jeannette Marks. If you'd like to volunteer to be a transcriber for the project, email transcribe-g@mtholyoke.edu to request an account. The project website is here: https://transcribe.mtholyoke.edu/

transcribe-g@mtholyoke.edu to request an account. The project is here:

Persistence and Existence: LGBTQ History at Mount Holyoke College

Thu, 14 May 2015 15:04:18 GMT

Lyon's Pride member Jennie Ochterski '15 curated a beautiful online exhibit of materials in the Mount Holyoke Archives that help document LGBTQ events and milestones in Mount Holyoke's history. Take a few moments to enjoy it: https://ascdc.mtholyoke.edu/exhibits/show/persistenceandexistence

Call for Submissions to a lesbian historical romance anthology by two Lyon's Pride members

Mon, 22 Dec 2014 20:35:38 GMT

Through the Hourglass: Lesbian Historical Romance (working title)

Publisher: The Liz McMullen Show Publications

Editors: Sacchi Green and Patty G. Henderson

Deadline: May 31, 2015

Publication: Fall of 2015

Preferred Length: 3000-5000 words

Payment: $30 plus two paperback copies

Rights: The Liz McMullen Show Publications requires the right to publish the original story in the above-mentioned anthology, in print, digital and audible forms, exclusively for one year after publication (exceptions made for "year's best" anthologies) and non-exclusively thereafter. The author retains copyright.

We have always been here, in every era and every area of society, even though we’ve been all but invisible in recorded history. Now is your chance to use your imagination, research a period of history that intrigues you, and tell us fictional stories about the lesbian women who came before us. From the 1500s to the mid-1900s, from the late Renaissance and Elizabethan times to World Wars I and II, give us characters true to their times, and true to themselves, not modern people inserted into the past. Draw us into a time and place, its customs, inhibitions, aspirations, and patterns of thought and speech, and into the lives of fully developed, complex characters.

Show us intense relationships and emotional bonds. Some degree of erotic tension is acceptable, but this is not a place for outright erotica. Happy endings are welcome if they seem plausible, and so are heart-rending encounters fated to live on only in memory. Diversity of culture will be appreciated. We want variety in scenarios and time periods, so feel free to contact us to see whether we seem to be getting too much from any era or setting, or with any other queries.

Original, unpublished stories only. Multiple submissions are okay, but no simultaneous submissions.

In keeping with our theme of lesbians throughout history, a portion of the proceeds will be donated to a charity that assists senior lesbians. The chosen charities are: SAGE (Services & Advocacy for GLBT Elders) and GLARP (http://gaylesbianretiring.org/site/).

Submit your stories in .doc or .docx here: historical.anthology@gmail.com

Simmons College formalizes its undergraduate admission policy for transgender applicants

Wed, 05 Nov 2014 19:51:22 GMT

Simmons College, comprised of an undergraduate women's college and several graduate schools, sent out a notice to its alums today with this link that formalizes its admissions policy for transgender applicants to its undergraduate program. In a tweet to me earlier today, they said that it was a policy that has already been in place for some time, but that they wanted to put it in writing now.

All applicants to the undergraduate program who were assigned female at birth and/or applicants who self-identify as women are eligible to apply for admission. Simmons does not require government issued documentation for purposes of identifying an applicant's gender identity. Once enrolled, any student who completes the College's baccalaureate requirements will be awarded a Simmons degree regardless of gender identity or expression.

Read their FAQs about their admission policy here: http://simmons.edu/undergraduate/admission/apply/transgender-policy-faq.php

Wonder Woman created by polyamorous household including Mount Holyoke alum!

Fri, 24 Oct 2014 18:13:37 GMT

This book review of Jill Lepore's "The Secret History of Wonder Woman" taught me something I did not know. I knew that William Marston and his wife Elizabeth Holloway Marston (Mount Holyoke 1915) were the co-creators. But this book reveals that there was actually a third woman involved, their partner Olive Byrne. (A fourth woman, Marjorie Wilkes Huntley, was also involved, though not always living with them as Olive did.)

How about that ... a queer poly parentage to Wonder Woman! This book looks fascinating.

Read the review here: http://www.bostonglobe.com/arts/books/2014/10/23/review-the-secret-history-wonder-woman-jill-lepore/jWtbEDhggQBSmjarakuhlJ/story.html

Judy Tan '03 Builds Mobile Healthcare App with Support from Lyon's Pride Fellowship

Thu, 16 Oct 2014 15:57:07 GMT

With support from our Lyon's Pride Fellowship, Judy Tan '03 is making it easier for HIV-positive people to track their health care needs.

Read all about it here: http://alumnae.mtholyoke.edu/blog/judy-tan-03-improves-care-among-hiv-positive-people/

Call for submissions: 2nd annual MHC Gender and Sexuality Zine

Wed, 15 Oct 2014 14:45:32 GMT

MHC student Melina Baron-Deutsch is putting together a collaborative zine about identity in relation to gender and sexuality at MHC and would really appreciate your input.

What's a zine? "Zines are cheaply made printed forms of expression on any subject. They are like mini-magazines or home-made comic books about favorite bands, funny stories, sub-cultures, personal collections, comix anthologies, diary entries, pathetic report cards, chain restaurants, and anything else."

- from Whatcha Mean, What’s a Zine? by Mark Todd and Ether Pearl Watson

What to submit:
Any Mount Holyoke student, past or present, is welcomed to submit to this zine about campus identities related to gender and sexuality. Your submission may include a mini-essay, a comic, a piece of art, a collage, a doodle,poetry, random written thoughts or any other visual form of self-expression in relation to gender and sexuality.

Submissions would ideally be a half-size of a normal sheet of print paper--please use pen so it's dark enough to print and keep in mind that about a centimeter of the margins may be cut off due to printing.

Some possible prompts include: Is there anything inherently "feminist" about attending a women's college? How do the intersections of your race and/or class effect your gender and/or sexuality? Do you practice consent? Why or why not? How? Do you think "queer privilege" exists on our campus? Does your performance of gender and sexuality ever conflict with how you identify? How does identity (in)visibility on campus manifest in your perspective? Do gender roles fit into your dating life? If so, how? How do you relate to your gender, sexuality, race, class and/or ability at Mount Holyoke compared to at home? What would your ideal porn be like? How does class effect queerness?

How to submit:
Send your submissions to zineclubmhc@gmail.com
for questions/concerns/comments, please contact Melina at baron24m@mtholyoke.edu
**Please indicate whether or not you would like to have your name included next to your submission**
***SUBMIT BY OCTOBER 30th***
This will be organized, assembled, and distributed before Thanksgiving break!

True Colors becomes OUTreach

Tue, 07 Oct 2014 16:08:54 GMT

The Mount Holyoke student organization called True Colors has been disbanded and reformed as OUTreach, a name that better fits their values and direction, and their intention to reach out to the campus community and beyond:

OUTreach is a student-run organization that strives to offer a safe, inclusive, and supportive space for students who identify as sexual and/or gender minorities and allies. OUTreach coordinates and collaborates with other LGBTQ-identified organizations at Mount Holyoke, within the five college consortium, and within the greater community to organize various social events as well as activist projects.

A letter went out to the True Colors mailing list in September, stating in part: "We want to help create and foster a safe and inclusive queer community on campus that cultivates healthy relationships amongst one another. We are committing ourselves to value and respect the diversity within our community, including diversity of race, class, gender, sexuality, ability, faith, and so on. We pledge to cultivate a space in which all members are equally respected, valued, and protected."

New student organization: Open Gates

Thu, 02 Oct 2014 16:14:23 GMT

Open Gates' mission is to advocate for the full inclusion of trans women on the Mount Holyoke College campus and beyond. With the recent admission policy changes, Open Gates is working to educate and create space for constructive dialogue regarding trans identities, especially the violent exclusion so many trans women and non binary transfeminine people face in spaces like MHC. Open Gates was established in the spring of 2014 and they are active and visible on campus and in the media.

Email address: opengatesmhc@gmail.com
Website: http://opengatesmhc.tumblr.com/

Portrait in Strength: Bessy Reyna '70

Wed, 21 May 2014 18:55:49 GMT

Born in Cuba, Bessy Reyna ’72 MA, ’82 JD immigrated with her family to Panama before the revolution. Curious and intellectual, she rebelled against the traditional roles expected of women in Latin American society.

Today, Reyna is an award-winning, bilingual poet; an activist and opinion columnist who writes on issues of gender, ethnicity, and equality; and a sought-after lecturer and guest artist. She is the author of two bilingual books of poetry: The Battlefield of Your Body (Hill-Stead Museum, 2005) and Memoirs of the Unfaithful Lover/ Memorias de la amante infiel (tunAstral, A.C., 2010, Toluca Mexico). In 2010, she was one of 10 women honored by the Connecticut Women’s Hall of Fame.

Read full article here: http://today.uconn.edu/blog/2014/05/portraits-of-strength-bessy-reyna-72-ma-82-jd/

Gay Games in Ohio

Fri, 25 Apr 2014 22:36:59 GMT

Are you planning on attending the Gay Games in Ohio this year? Gay Games 9 has set up a discount code for use by LGBT alumni associations. It's: GGIVY. It will give $30 off the general registration and is good through 5/31/14.

Cornell University's LGBT alum network (CUGALA) is exploring the possibility of organizing an intercollegiate alumni/ae event during Gay Games 9 for alums from schools participating in Ivy Plus/Seven Sisters network, and will keep us up to date on the plans. Al Cowger is a Cornell alum in Cleveland, Ohio (the site of this year's games) and general counsel to the Gay Games, so he has arranged the discount code for LGBT alumni/ae to register. If you live in the Cleveland area and would be interested in helping out, contact CUGALA president Emanuel Tsourounis, et29@cornell.edu.

Justin Tanis '87 profiled on Religious Archives Network website

Mon, 10 Feb 2014 06:17:11 GMT

Learn more about an interesting Mount Holyoke alum, Justin Tanis '87:

http://www.lgbtran.org/Profile.aspx?ID=360

Marcus Waterbury '87 in the news

Mon, 10 Feb 2014 06:12:04 GMT

OutFront Minnesota profiled Marcus Waterbury on their website. He mentions he is a Mount Holyoke alum in the profile. Here's the link: http://www.outfront.org/news/spotlight/marcuswaterbury

Job opening at Cornell: Assoc Dean of Students for the LGBT Resource Center

Mon, 10 Feb 2014 06:03:34 GMT

Cornell University's GALA (LGBT alum assoc) is helping to publicize a job opening at Cornell for the director position at their LGBT Resource Center. The link for the position description is here:

https://cornellu.taleo.net/careersection/10164/jobdetail.ftl?lang=en&job=22733

The previous director, Matt Carcella, has transitioned to a new role as director of diversity alumni programs at Cornell, and the Cornell alum who emailed us about this job opportunity says "Matt did an incredible job redefining the LGBT RC at Cornell, and we need to find a very talented candidate to continue his effort and formalize the institution- and coalition-building efforts he began."

LGBT History Month profile: Photographer, documentarian Joan Biren [Mount Holyoke class of 1966]

Sat, 12 Oct 2013 19:39:21 GMT

"My thing was to take pictures to make visible what was invisible."

Joan Biren is an internationally recognized photographer and filmmaker who chronicles gay life. Her photographs are on display in the Library of Congress.

Full article: http://www.lgbtqnation.com/2013/10/lgbt-history-month-profile-photographer-documentarian-joan-biren/

New LGBT Post-Doctoral Fellowship in LGBT Studies at Princeton University

Sat, 07 Sep 2013 15:37:40 GMT

The search for the next candidate for the Fund for Reunion Fellowship in LGBT studies has begun! This 3 year post-doctoral fellowship is paid for by FFR/Princeton BTGALA and administered by the Society of Fellows in the Council for the Humanities. Find out more at http://www.princeton.edu/sf/fellowships/

Lyon's Pride member Jeanne Brossart '57 passes away

Tue, 13 Aug 2013 16:33:24 GMT

Jeanne Brossart, 78, passed away peacefully at home on June 30, 2013. She was a pioneer at working for non-discrimination of gays and lesbians in the public health nursing field. She entertained us for several years in our newsletter with reports from a trip across the United States in an RV. I will miss her adventurous spirit in our community.

Read the obituary here: http://kicliter.tributes.com/our_obituaries/Jeanne-L-Brossart--96041889

Lyon's Pride member wins workplace discrimination case

Sun, 04 Aug 2013 16:32:18 GMT

Pam Voekel '85 writes: "Attorney Teresa Renaker (MHC '86) is back in the national news this week, this time for striking a blow for transgender equality in the workplace. She also recently won a major case that will change pension law for same-sex couples for the better. Go Res!"

On July 8, 2013, the Complaint Adjudication Office of the Department of Justice (DOJ) found that the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms, and Explosives (ATF) discriminated against firm client Mia Macy on the basis of her transgender status in its decision not to hire her as a Ballistics Forensic Technician at its Forensic Science Laboratory in Walnut Creek, California. Ms. Macy is now eligible for back pay, back benefits, and attorney’s fees, among other remedies, and the ATF must take steps to prevent future discrimination. For more information, see the final decision here.

Washington Blade article about the decision: http://www.washingtonblade.com/2013/07/15/trans-victims-for-workplace-bias-find-relief-in-historic-decisions/

Carla Tomaso's "Frozen" Tackles Mommy Issues, Reincarnation, and Multigenerational Lesbians

Fri, 03 May 2013 02:09:39 GMT

Carla Tomaso '72 and Mary Hayden '70 have been together since they were students at Mount Holyoke. Carla talks about her new book, her life with Mary, and her experience as a third-generation lesbian in this wonderful interview in the Advocate.

Read the full interview: http://www.advocate.com/arts-entertainment/books/2013/01/18/carla-tomasos-frozen-tackles-mommy-issues-reincarnation-and

Lyon's Pride member dealing with bone cancer

Wed, 24 Apr 2013 14:40:23 GMT

Sandy Clockedile '88 and Marie Bacchiocchi '88 are dealing with a serious bone cancer diagnosis for Sandy. You'll have to create an account with Caring Bridge, or log on via Facebook, to read her story and her journal.

Link: http://www.caringbridge.org/visit/sandraclockedile

Two notable lesbian alums in Mount Holyoke's 175th anniversary gallery

Wed, 24 Apr 2013 13:54:29 GMT

The 175th anniversary website was updated in April to include more remarkable alums, and two of the added people were out lesbian alums.

Ginny Berson '67: https://www.mtholyoke.edu/175/gallery/ginny-berson

Joan E. Biren '66: https://www.mtholyoke.edu/175/gallery/joan-e-biren

We are happy and proud to see them listed there! Congratulations, Joan and Ginny!

Greater PDX (Portland Oregon) GLBT Ivies/Seven Sisters/Friends meetup group

Sun, 21 Apr 2013 15:56:43 GMT

The purpose of our group is to welcome LGBT alumni, faculty, and students 21 and over who harken from the Ivy League schools, Seven Sisters schools, Little Ivies, Public Ivies, MIT, and Stanford as well as their partners and friends, for social, educational, and professional networking. Also welcome are those with outstanding personal abilities, intellect, specialized training or experience, or other distinctive attributes. The fundamental rule for the group is personal integrity and mutual respect so that we learn, grow, and, most importantly, have fun. We will start with small impromptu events for now. You are also welcome to organize other meetup opportunities through the group.

Join here: http://www.meetup.com/Greater-PDX-GLBT-Ivies-Seven-Sisters-Friends/

Local newspaper article gives window in Mount Holyoke's trans applicant policy

Sat, 06 Apr 2013 04:16:11 GMT

Mount Holyoke College, a private women’s college in South Hadley, only admits students who are legally women, according to Lynn Pasquerella, president of the college. She said that the college relies on applicants to tell the school their gender.

Pasquerella said that while Mount Holyoke seeks to be as inclusive as possible, the college believes that if they admitted transwomen, they would run afoul of Title IX, which prohibits sex discrimination but has an exception for single-sex colleges.

“We’re constrained by the law,” Pasquerella said. “If someone is not legally female, we can’t admit them and keep our federal funding.”

Pasquerella said that Mount Holyoke is discussing the implications of transgender students with other women’s colleges.

“We are first and foremost committed to being a women’s college,” she said.

The admissions policy at Mount Holyoke has not been challenged by any applicants, Pasquerella said.

Read the whole article here: http://www.gazettenet.com/home/5274688-95/smith-college-students-transgender

Read rebuttal to Title IX argument here: http://title-ix.blogspot.com/2013/03/title-ix-is-no-excuse-to-reject.html

Vassar alum Anne MacKay passes away

Fri, 05 Apr 2013 14:56:14 GMT

Anne MacKay, passed away on April 26, 2012 at the age of 84. In 1970 she sent a letter to her college's alumnae magazine about being gay at Vassar, but the editors rejected it. That inspired her to continue documenting the experiences of lesbians at Vassar, and in 1993 her first book, Wolf Girls at Vassar: Lesbian and Gay Experiences 1930-1990, was published. Anne helped found the Lesbian and Gay Alumnae of Vassar College. When asked what advice she would like to pass on, she said, "What I know is that I think the most important word is 'let's.' Let's do it. Let's try. Let's go. And things don't happen because people don't imagine them. And if you can imagine something, you can get everybody to help you do it."

A Vassar alum wrote in her obituary in Lesbian Connection: "Fare thee well, Anne, I love you. As one of the many Vassar Wolfgirls whom you inspired and encouraged to come forth and create a vital lesbian and gay community at Vassar, I miss your gentle, warm and deeply intelligent guidance."

Read another obituary about her life here: http://suffolktimes.timesreview.com/2012/05/31849/orients-anne-mackay-was-a-force-of-nature/

Smith College Returns Transgender Woman's Admissions Application

Fri, 29 Mar 2013 03:50:23 GMT

Calliope Wong, a high school senior from Connecticut, has twice sent an application to the prestigious all-female Smith College, but her papers have been returned without even an official admissions review.

It's not her grades or SAT scores, but her self-identity as a transgender female.

Wong, 17, was born male, which her family indicated on her federal application for financial aid in order to coincide with her Social Security number. But her admission materials describe her as female.

Smith has told her it cannot process her admission application as a female because the gender markers on her forms conflict.

Read the full story here: http://abcnews.go.com/Health/female-smith-college-returns-transgender-womans-admissions-application/story?id=18805681#.UVGfIRj9qKw

Facebook page here: https://www.facebook.com/pages/Smith-QA/580489428637114

Lyon's Pride member featured in NY Times

Thu, 28 Feb 2013 22:05:19 GMT

Tamar Westphal '12 [Lyon's Pride member] is recognized for her senior performance project in an Education Life section of the New York Times that features outstanding student projects.

Click to see: http://www.nytimes.com/slideshow/2013/02/03/education/edlife/20130203PHOTOBOOTH-17.html

Lyon's Pride member has novel published

Mon, 25 Feb 2013 22:58:15 GMT

Kim Shaw '88 has written a new novel that sounds like lots of fun. "Who wouldn’t want to go to a 300-year-old school of magic, wave a wand, and learn to fly? But this girl falls off her broom, gets her spells wrong, and isn’t sure her cat really is a familiar. All because her ears don’t work as well as everyone else’s. But once Caitlin Leo finds her real community, everything changes."

Buy it from the Harvard Book Store here: http://www.harvard.com/book/a_handful_of_spells/

New scholarship possibility: Speak Out Against Prejudice

Mon, 18 Feb 2013 18:34:05 GMT

Education Aid, Inc. has announced the recipient of the first Gay Dating Sites.net - Speak out against Prejudice Scholarship Program. The recipient, Qesar Veliu, is a law student at Quinnipiac University. Qesar, like many members of the GLBT community, has both witnessed and been a victim of bullying and prejudice. The Scholarship Program was created by Education Aid, Inc. and funded by Gay Dating Sites.net. Its purpose is to support a student pursuing a career that will make a difference in the fight against bullying, prejudice, and the negative stereotypes that are often associated with the GLBT community. Veliu will have $5,000 contributed toward his rent, textbooks, and school supplies for the 2012-2013 academic school year.

Read more about the program here: http://www.gaydatingsites.net/scholarship/

Sundance Channel Greenlights “T,” New Series About Transgender Man

Mon, 12 Nov 2012 15:21:38 GMT

Sundance Channel has unveiled its slate of original scripted series for 2013-14, including a new show about a transgender man dealing with his new life, and his past as a lesbian activist.

A press notice describes the series, which doesn’t have a launch date yet:

A deeply personal look at Terrence, a transgender male who has recently undergone gender reassignment surgery and is beginning to live life as a man. Series cuts between Terrence’s emotional struggle in the present and his past as Thora – a lesbian, student activist at Mt. Holyoke College circa 2005 struggling to find her true self.

Read full article here: http://www.queerty.com/sundance-channel-greenlights-t-new-series-about-transgender-man-20121107/

Bessy Reyna Honored by CT Women's Hall of Fame

Tue, 23 Oct 2012 17:03:41 GMT

CTLatinoNews.com columnist Bessy Reyna [Mount Holyoke '70 and Lyon's Pride member] has been designated a 2012 “Voices and Vision” honoree by the Connecticut Women’s Hall of Fame. Reyna, a recipient of the Library of Congress’s Connecticut Lifetime Achievement Award for Service to the Literary Community, is an award-winning bilingual poet, opinion columnist and activist. She was one of 12 “Voices and Vision” honorees.

Read the full story here: http://ctlatinonews.com/blog/2012/10/22/bessy-reyna-honored-by-ct-womens-hall-of-fame/

Mount Holyoke alums campaigning in Maine need volunteers

Mon, 22 Oct 2012 17:51:19 GMT

Annie Arbuthnot '12 currently lives in Northampton but has spent this past week in Portland, ME, volunteering with Mainers United for Marriage, the "Yes on 1" campaign to win marriage for same-sex couples in Maine. Already here working on the campaign are other alumnae--Amelia Nugent '11, Amy Gaidis '10, Nicole Gaidis '11, as well as many other volunteers with connections to Mount Holyoke.

With only two weeks left until Election Day, polls show that voting on this issue could really go either way, and Mainers United is in desperate need of volunteers.

Annie suggests it would be really great if MHC alumnae could come up here to Portland for the next couple of weekends before November 6th to volunteer. Maine came so close to allowing same-sex marriage in 2009. This issue affects so many of us connected to Mount Holyoke, not to mention the thousands of gay and lesbian families across Maine. We have friends and family in Maine who will be directly affected by the outcome of this election, but this is more than just a personal issue. Maine has the opportunity to set an example for the whole country, and extending marriage rights to same-sex couples is the right thing to do.

Any groups or individuals who are interested in coming up to Portland, please contact Amelia at anugent@yeson1maine.org, or call her at (207)504-0204.

Lyon's Pride member has her photography showcased in Lesbian Connection

Mon, 22 Oct 2012 16:47:25 GMT

Congratulations to Wendy Ritch '90 for having her photography selected to grace the cover of the Nov/Dec issue of Lesbian Connection <http://www.lconline.org/>.

An opportunity to earn $50 and help a Lyon's Pride member with her research

Fri, 19 Oct 2012 14:38:21 GMT

Boston-Area Couples Needed for Paid Research Opportunity

Earn $50 for participating in a study about long-term relationships and health.

What kinds of couples do we need?

* Long-term: in a committed relationship for at least 7 years

* Between the ages of 40 and 60

* Gay, lesbian, or straight

* Married or unmarried

* With kids or childless

* Same- and mixed-race couples

Couples who participate in a confidential interview and complete a series of short questionnaires will receive two $25 gift cards ($50) as a token of our appreciation.

This project is supported by a Robert Wood Johnson Foundation Investigator Award in Health Policy Research awarded to Dr. Debra Umberson.

The Massachusetts Health and Relationships Project

617-475-0494 health@austin.utexas.edu www.MassHARP.com

Epic Gallery - 150 years of lesbians and other lady-loving ladies

Tue, 25 Sep 2012 22:15:52 GMT

A photo of Mount Holyoke students in the 1880s made this gallery, as well as numerous photos by lesbian photographer (and Lyon's Pride member) Joan E. Biren '66 (JEB). Take a look!

See the gallery here: http://www.autostraddle.com/150-years-of-lesbians-144337/

Romantic letter written by Emily Dickinson to another woman in 1852

Fri, 14 Sep 2012 01:55:36 GMT

Was Emily Dickinson lesbian? We'll probably never know ... but we do know she was capable of feeling great love and passion for another woman. Read this letter she wrote to her sister-in-law, Susan Gilbert, in 1852:

http://santitafarella.wordpress.com/2008/07/15/emily-dickinson-lesbian-her-letter-to-susan-gilbert-in-june-of-1852-might-tell-us-less-than-you-think/

Lesbian in the City

Mon, 27 Aug 2012 17:14:00 GMT

Mount Holyoke alum Jen Gieseking, an academic feminist, examines lesbian identity in public places.

A quote from the story: "My work is inspired by a life that often blurs gender and sexuality, as well as geography and psychology. I studied geography in college, which happened to be a women's college, Mount Holyoke College. Even then I was keen on understanding how the physical and social campus sustained and produced a sense of community that so many students and alumnae extolled. In other words, how and why does space matter? How are we produced by and how do we produce space?"

Read the story on Salon: http://www.salon.com/2012/08/25/the_academic_feminist_salpar/singleton/

The Story of Connie Converse

Fri, 10 Aug 2012 03:08:12 GMT

Connie Converse x1946 was outspoken, brave and wildly independent. It surprised no one when Connie matriculated at her mother and grandmother's alma mater, Mount Holyoke. But nobody could believe it when she dropped out. She moved to Greenwich Village and poured herself into her music. She had some brief fame, including a chance to play a few tunes on Walter Cronkite's "CBS Morning Show" in 1954. But she never made it big. In the summer of 1974, just before her 50th birthday, she left some letters for her family and friends, packed up her car and drove away. It was the last time anyone in her family ever saw or heard from her. In 2010, the last surviving member of her family, her brother, spoke about her to The Awl, a New York City-based website. He never knew her to have a suitor, and he doesn't know if she was a lesbian, although it's something he's consider more and more as time has passed.

Read the full story here: http://www.theawl.com/2010/08/the-story-of-connie-converse

Naomi Goldberg honored by Windy City Times for LGBT activism

Thu, 21 Jun 2012 14:51:08 GMT

Naomi Goldberg, 29, is an LGBT movement and policy researcher for the Movement Advancement Project (MAP), a think tank that works to speed equality for LGBT people. She's also a collaborator in the longest-running longitudinal study of children raised by lesbian parents.

Naomi has co-authored reports and articles about LGBT issues such as parenting, domestic violence, community-building and progress toward LGBT equality. She volunteers with the Mount Holyoke Club of Chicago and Limmud Chicago, a Jewish learning conference. Naomi recently married her long-time girlfriend, Libby.

Did you know? Naomi has lived in eight of the 21 cities on AutoStraddle's Most Lesbionic Cities.

Read about all the people honored: http://www.windycitymediagroup.com/lgbt/Thirteenth-annual-30-Under-30-honors-LGBT-individuals-allies/38210.html

Lale Topcuoglu profiled in The Glass Hammer

Thu, 07 Jun 2012 16:48:24 GMT

Topcuoglu lives in London with her wife and three-year old son. She is a member of Mount Holyoke College’s LGBT alumnae group called Lyon’s Pride. “We have an annual fund for students whose education has been interrupted because they came out to their parents,” she said, “and now we are expanding the scope by funding a new internship vehicle for students who want to pursue an unpaid internship to give back to the LGBT community.”

Read full article here: http://www.theglasshammer.com/news/2012/06/06/voice-of-experience-lale-topcuoglu-portfolio-manager-managing-director-co-head-of-global-investment-grade-portfolio-management-goldman-sachs-asset-management/

Sexual Minorities Archives To Conduct Oral Histories

Thu, 10 May 2012 22:31:28 GMT

Stories of Transgender People and LGBT Elders Sought

Northampton, MA – The Sexual Minorities Archives, a national collection of LGBT literature, history, and art located in Northampton, Massachusetts, is launching two oral history projects this May expected to last for a period of one year.Trans Stories: Breaking the Silence will document the experiences of diverse transgender and gender non-conforming people, while LGBT Elders Speak Out will collect the life stories of lesbian, gay, bisexual, and transgender individuals ages 55 and older who live in Western Massachusetts.

“The lives of our LGBT people, our relationships and families, and our work with groups and organizations often go undocumented and unstudied,” said Bet Power, Executive Director of the Sexual Minorities Educational Foundation, Inc. and Director/Curator of the Sexual Minorities Archives (SMA). “Whether an LGBT person has been part of a major event or community organization or has stories to tell about everyday life, the mission of the SMA is to record, preserve, and make accessible the historical narratives of our lives. We can help shape a queer people’s history of information that is too often omitted from mainstream libraries and academic archives,” he said.

Hampshire College student interns Brittni Hayes and Samuel Belmonte will conduct the oral history interviews at the Sexual Minorities Archives in Northampton or in participants’ homes. Participants will receive a copy of their interview transcript and videotape, and may specify the level of privacy or accessibility they wish for their interview as it is added to the media collection at the SMA.

Everyone who is trans, gender non-conforming or LGB-identified is invited to participate. For more information about the oral history programs at the Sexual Minorities Archives, please email Brittni Hayes regarding Trans Stories: Breaking the Silence or Samuel Belmonte regarding LGBT Elders Speak Out at: sexualminorities.archives@yahoo.com or call Bet Power at (413)584-7616.

Filmmaker Sonali Gulati explores layers of identity

Sun, 29 Apr 2012 14:05:25 GMT

Credit: MARK GORMUS/TIMES-DISPATCH

"Sonali is quickly becoming a rising star in the world of independent films," said Joseph H. Seipel, dean of the VCU School of the Arts.

Filmmaker Sonali Gulati [Mount Holyoke class of 1996] can only guess at what her mother would have said about her being a lesbian and having a baby with her partner, Geeta Jhaveri.

Her mother, Sushma Gulati, died in 1997. Gulati, in her award-winning 2011 film "I Am," examines what it is like to be gay in India, where she was born, and to come out to parents in a country where until 2009 same-sex unions were a criminal offense.

As the film opens, Gulati wonders about the words she might have used to come out to her mother. Would she have said she wasn't interested in men, or would she have said, "I'm in love with a woman"?

The phrasing is important. Like the title of her film, the "I" statement implies that it is simply enough to be who one is.

Read the rest of the article from the Richmond Times-Dispatch: http://www2.timesdispatch.com/entertainment/flair/2012/apr/29/tdflair01-filmmaker-sonali-gulati-explores-layers--ar-1869237/

Senior Director of Programs and Reunion hired at the Alumnae Association

Tue, 17 Apr 2012 13:27:59 GMT

Danielle Steinmann is the Alumnae Association’s new sr. director of programs and reunion. Danielle is a Wellesley alumna who brings a wealth of experience in teaching, program development in the art and museum fields, and volunteer management - including serving as a volunteer and board member herself. She is a warm, extroverted, highly energetic and creative person who will provide a good complement to our staff. She lived in New York City for many years, and has spent much of the last decade living in the Berkshires so she has a blend of both major metropolis and small town/rural community experience. Over the years, Danielle has been involved in the development and implementation of numerous programs ranging in size from intimate to large, gala events.

Danielle started with the Alumnae Association on April 10, and will be responsible for overseeing all of the programming staff, including Maya D’Costa, Joni Haas Zubi, Alaina Donohue, Luisa Tavares, and Danielle Lund. Please do not hesitate to reach out to Danielle with questions or concerns. She can be reached at dsteinma@mtholyoke.edu or 413-538-2652.

Diane Anci named VP of Enrollment

Mon, 16 Apr 2012 20:31:29 GMT

President Lynn Pasquerella announced today that Diane Anci, the College's Dean of Admission for the past 14 years, will become Mount Holyoke's new Vice President for Enrollment.

Read full story here: http://www.mtholyoke.edu/news/channels/22/stories/5683819

Five College Certificate in Queer and Sexuality Studies

Fri, 13 Apr 2012 20:45:49 GMT

Five College Certificate in Queer and Sexuality Studies Now Available to Students at Mount Holyoke, Smith, and Hampshire Colleges

Spearheaded by the UMass Stonewall Center and Five College faculty, this new certificate enables students at Mount Holyoke, Smith, and Hampshire Colleges
who are taking courses in queer and sexuality studies to have this coursework recognized (we hope to have the certificate available to Amherst
College students beginning this summer and to UMass students in the next school year).  For requirements, go to
www.fivecolleges.edu/sites/queerstudies.  For Fall 2012 courses that will count toward the certificate, go to http://www.umass.edu/stonewall/courses. 

For more information, contact Stonewall Center Director Genny Beemyn: genny@stuaf.umass.edu

Bessy Reyna '70 on Connecticut Public TV

Fri, 06 Apr 2012 20:36:37 GMT

Bessy Reyna (class of 1970 and Lyon's Pride member) is a versatile poet born in Cuba and raised in Panama, whose deeply personal work reaches readers in both Spanish and English. Learn about her approach to the written and spoken word, and how she'd influenced the dynamic poetry scene in Connecticut.

Watch the episode here: http://www.cptv2.org/allthingsct/spotlight-arts/poet-besse-reyna

Lyon's Pride Logo Contest!

Tue, 03 Apr 2012 17:32:14 GMT

As you may recognize, this is our logo. We use it on our Lyon's Pride gear, like the chocolate mugs we send our student members in the fall, and we use it on our website and newsletters. We've had this logo for 10 years now, thanks to Leslie Lippi '91, and it's time for a change. If you have graphic design skills, we need you! Please take the time to work up a new design for us. Anyone who enters the contest will get a free year's membership in Lyon's Pride.

Submission deadline is April 30. We will have an online vote to select from all the submissions, and the winner will get a choice of swag with the logo ... a coffee mug, a shirt, or a mousepad. We'd like to use the logo for our reunion 2013 parade costume shirt, so this is a great way to get your costume for free!

Please use red, yellow, green, blue, and purple (a rainbow, perhaps?) in your logo design - we want the reunion costume to have all the colors of the four class mascots and the purple of the FPs. And please use our name, "Mount Holyoke Lyon's Pride." When you're ready to submit your design, send it to officers@mhlp.org - and thank you so much for your efforts!

Hollins ponders its own tolerance policy

Mon, 26 Mar 2012 14:51:12 GMT

Hollins University, an all-women's university in Virginia, has a transgender policy that is very different from Smith's or Mount Holyoke's (which are also referenced in the article.)

Read the full article here: http://www.roanoke.com/news/roanoke/wb/306645

Mount Holyoke gets listing in Campus Climate Index

Fri, 10 Feb 2012 04:17:00 GMT

The LGBT-Friendly Campus Climate Index is a vital tool for assisting campuses in learning ways to improve their LGBT campus life and ultimately shape the educational experience to be more inclusive, welcoming and respectful of LGBT and Ally people.

Browse the full list here: http://www.campusclimateindex.org/search/

See our listing here: http://www.campusclimateindex.org/details/premium.aspx?ID=628

Gender history detective: Smith College student tells tale of early 1900s inn

Sat, 04 Feb 2012 15:29:54 GMT

Although nearly 90 years have passed since Ye Rose Tree Inn closed its doors, aspects of its story resonate today. It offers insights into what Northampton was like at the time, and what has changed and what has not.

It involves a conflict between Smith College and a local business. At the center of that conflict stood an independent woman - some called her eccentric - who pushed the gender boundaries of her day.

Read full story here: http://www.gazettenet.com/2012/02/04/a-gender

The 21 Most Lesbianish Cities in America

Wed, 01 Feb 2012 17:59:02 GMT

Jezebel.com gathered a list of the 21 most lesbianish cities in America ... guess which one was #1?

See the whole list here: http://jezebel.com/5878916/the-21-most-lesbianish-cities-in-america/

10 Great Places to Meet Lesbians If You Have a Time Machine

Fri, 27 Jan 2012 16:25:57 GMT

Mount Holyoke is #5 on the list!

Many women who attended women's colleges in the late 1800s remained unmarried during their lifetimes - 57% of Smith's class of 1884 remained unmarried! Why? What were they doing? Read the article - it's fascinating.

See the full list here: http://www.autostraddle.com/10-great-places-to-meet-lesbians-if-you-have-a-time-machine-129252/

Malloy's nominees include lawyer in gay marriage case

Fri, 20 Jan 2012 15:30:17 GMT

Connecticut Gov. Dannel P. Malloy nominated three men and three women to the Superior Court today, including Anna M. Ficeto, the legal counsel of his Republican predecessor (and Mount Holyoke alum), and Maureen M. Murphy, a civil-rights lawyer involved in the lawsuit that gave same-sex couples the right to marry in Connecticut.

Read the full story here: http://www.ctmirror.org/story/15116/malloys-nominees-include-lawyer-involved-gay-marriage-fight

Australian blogger discusses Miss Marks and Miss Woolley for Gay News Network

Thu, 29 Dec 2011 21:36:55 GMT

Tina T. Tuff, a blogger for Australian magazine Gay News Network, wrote a column about Mary Woolley and Jeannette Marks and their years at Mount Holyoke College.

Sample quote: "Come to mention it, the way these two met was kind of sexy. It was around 1895 in an all-girls [sic] college. Hello! Mary Woolley was a 32-year-old teacher, a brilliant intellect who achieved greatness over her lifetime as an educator and feminist campaigner. Jeanette Marks was a pupil eleven years Woolley’s junior. Woolley took a ‘special interest’ in her young, clever charge, and the pair fell madly in love."

Read the full blog post here: http://gaynewsnetwork.com.au/viewpoint/viewpoint/3859-tuff-muff-mary-woolley-and-jeanette-marks.html

Sexual Minorities Archives to Present Local LGBT History Talks

Thu, 29 Dec 2011 04:23:33 GMT

First in Series Will Focus on Anna de Naucaze and Ye Rose Tree Inn

The first of three presentations will offer historical information, images and text about Anna de Naucaze, Marie Von Veltheim, and Ye Rose Tree Inn, which the couple owned and operated at 252 Bridge Street, Northampton, from 1908 to 1923. de Naucaze defied gender norms - especially for the time period - by owning a business and publishing a magazine independently of men, as well as with her masculine style of dress and likely sexual relationships with women. Ye Rose Tree Inn was a popular tearoom for a primarily female clientele including Smith College students until de Naucaze was financially devastated in 1923. The Inn’s closing was due, in large part, to being removed from the college’s list of approved eating-places by then Smith College president William Allan Neilson.

Read full story in the Rainbow Times here: http://therainbowtimesmass.com/2011/12272011/archives.html

4th anniversary of coming out

Sat, 12 Nov 2011 03:52:50 GMT

Kristi Freedman, a student member of Lyon's Pride, pointed out that it's the fourth anniversary of her coming out on the cover of the Boston Globe's magazine section.

Read the article here.

Women's University to Reconsider Hard Line on Transgender Students

Fri, 28 Oct 2011 21:15:02 GMT

Hollins University, which bills itself as Virginia's first chartered women's college, plans to re-examine a rule that allows for the expulsion of transgender students who have taken a step toward sex reassignment but have not yet completed the process.

Read rest of the article: http://chronicle.com/article/Womens-University-to/129490/

Coming out as an academic couple like - and not like - all the rest

Tue, 18 Oct 2011 13:34:49 GMT

Kris Renn, class of 1986 and Lyon's Pride member, asks: "Are we different from any other dual-career couple in academe? We both have PhDs. [I am] a tenured faculty member at Michigan State. [Melissa] directs a multi-year NSF grant for the MSU provost’s office. We feel lucky to have two good jobs in the same good place. Does it matter that we’re a same-sex couple?"

Read her thoughts on the matter: http://21stcenturyscholar.org/2011/10/12/4959/

Katherine Lee Bates, Author of "America the Beautiful"

Wed, 12 Oct 2011 15:18:33 GMT

Did you know Katherine Lee Bates, author of "America the Beautiful," is the daughter of a Mount Holyoke Female Seminary alum? KLB was a Wellesley College professor and alum in the late 1800s, and she was in a "Wellesley marriage" with another Wellesley College professor. Read more about her in this article from the South Florida Gay News.

Katherine Lee Bates: Author of 'America the Beautiful' | SouthFloridaGayNews.com

Reporter seeks gay binational couples for interview

Wed, 05 Oct 2011 21:13:52 GMT

Marianna Nash '11, Lyon's Pride member, is a report at The Midtown Gazette, a student publication at the Columbia University Graduate School of Journalism. She is working on a story about gay binational couples whose marriages are not recognized under DOMA. If any of you fit that definition, or know someone who does who would be willing to talk to her, please contact Marianna at marnash89@gmail.com. Thanks!

MTV Casting for LGBT Special featuring LGBT Youth Across the U.S.

Thu, 22 Sep 2011 15:01:12 GMT

Link to casting post on the MTV website:
http://www.mtv.com/news/articles/1670974/.jhtml

My Name is Carly Stipek and I’m the Casting associate at MTV Networks
currently working on a new special that will feature LGBT youth across
the U.S. This is a chance for LGBT youth stories to heard by a huge
audience of their peers!

*Are you an LGBT youth who feels like no one understands you?**Share
your story with MTV!*

MTV Networks is casting LGBT youth for a new special. We’re looking for
LGBT teens and young adults who appear to be 15-25 years old and live in
the USA. You should be open to sharing your stories and struggles
on-camera. If interested, please email us at LGBTspecial@gmail.com
<mailto:LGBTspecial@gmail.com>. *Please include your name, location,
phone number& photo… and tell us about yourself and your current
circumstances.* [For example, tell us your coming-out story… or why you
haven’t come out yet. Who are the main people in your life, and how do
they feel about your sexual identity? Why do you feel alone? Do you ever
feel down? What’s a typical day like for you? Is there anything that you
are afraid to do (but wish you had the guts to do) in the next three
months?] */The more information about yourself and your life that you
can tell us via email, the better we get to know you!/* Thanks for your
interest, and we look forward to hearing your story.

Carly Stipek, Casting Associate, MTV Networks

212.767.8620

Cornell’s Archives Welcome Rare Gay-Themed Photographs

Wed, 14 Sep 2011 20:51:12 GMT

Cornell’s Archives Welcome Rare Gay-Themed Photographs
Weintraub Collection Covers Civil War Era to the Present

ITHACA, N.Y. (Sept. 13, 2011) – Cornell University Library’s rich Human Sexuality Collection just got even richer, with the addition of more than 10,000 gay-themed photographs dating back to the 1860s.

The Harry H. Weintraub Collection of Gay-Related Photography and Historical Documentation includes 150 years of photographs, books, magazines, pornography, ephemera and more. The photographs range from formal 19th-century portraits to Hollywood stars’ studio portraits and from 1950s physique photos to candid snapshots.

Weintraub, a New York City labor lawyer who has been amassing the collection for three decades, visited the Library’s Division of Rare and Manuscript Collections to make the donation in early August.

“I began this collection in earnest because of the AIDS crisis,” he said. “Men were dying all around me, and their things were being thrown away because their families were embarrassed. So I was intent on trying to preserve not only their histories but that of those who came before.”

As Weintraub amassed more and more photographs, he and his collection became well known, and families would sometimes contact him to donate their gay relatives’ materials. Many of the photographs are deeply personal. He also added steadily to the collection through purchases from dealers all over the country.

“This is an amazing gift to Cornell, with a tremendous historical value, and it enhances our sexuality, visual, and photographic collections in exciting ways,” said Katherine Reagan, Ernest L. Stern curator of Rare Books and Manuscripts.

The collection even contains a few Cornell-specific items, including a 1940s photo of a young man posed in the arms of the A.D. White statue on the Arts Quad, and it will assist the teaching and research of many scholars.

“The new collection being donated by Harry Weintraub is a trove of rich and provocative images and related materials. It will provide an invaluable resource to many scholars, especially those of queer life and performance in the 20th century,” said Nicholas Salvato, assistant professor of theater, film and dance at Cornell. “I'm looking forward to bringing my students to see a number of intriguing photographs when I teach ‘Introduction to LGBT Studies’ in the spring.”

Brenda Marston, curator of Cornell’s Human Sexuality Collection, said she is “delighted to have such a big boost to the collection’s visual documentation” and looks forward to welcoming the researchers to use it. Noting the role of personal collectors in preserving our cultural heritage, she added, “Mr. Weintraub has made a significant contribution by looking high and low for pictures that show traces of gay history.”

Weintraub noted that the collection “deals with the history of a substantial U.S. population” and belongs in Cornell’s Human Sexuality Collection.

“I knew the collection would have a good home here, that it would be well taken care of,” Weintraub said. “We’re a country of diversity, and the documentary record of the different parts of that diversity deserves to be collected and understood.”

About Cornell University Library
To learn more, visit the Human Sexuality Collection’s website or the Library online at library.cornell.edu.

Women's Colleges and Ex-Women

Thu, 28 Jul 2011 13:46:00 GMT

Inside Higher Ed

Marcus Waterbury, a graduate of the women’s institution Mount Holyoke College, didn’t think it was a big deal when, 15 years after graduation, his alma mater agreed to re-issue his degree to reflect the new name he adopted after transitioning from female to male.

It’s not unheard of to re-issue a degree after an alumna becomes an alumnus – this is at least the third time Mount Holyoke alone has done it – but that’s a pretty straightforward and uncontroversial thing to do; for instance, it’s not uncommon at any given college for graduates to be granted replacement diplomas that reflect their married names.

But for Mount Holyoke, a prestigious college that prides itself on having been educating women since nearly 100 years before they were permitted to vote, the story raises an interesting question: what place do gender roles have at a decidedly feminist institution? Or at any women’s college, for that matter?

Read the rest of the story here.

I AM: Trans People Speak

Mon, 25 Jul 2011 15:17:20 GMT

I'm interning with the Massachusetts Transgender Political Coalition this summer and they have me working on a multi-media project called I AM: Trans People Speak (http://transpeoplespeak.com). I run the social media aspect of this project (twitter: http://twitter.com/#!/TransSpeak, facebook:http://www.facebook.com/transpeoplespeak, tumblr: http://transpeoplespeak.tumblr.com/)

We are now trying to turn this into a viral video submission project. What this means is that we are looking for video submissions! These videos are all about the diversity and humanity of people involved in the trans community, so we need both trans people and allies to submit videos to get their voices heard.

Directions on how to make your own video can be found here: http://transpeoplespeak.tumblr.com/HowToMakeYourOwnVideo

The guidelines for what to talk about can me found here: http://transpeoplespeak.tumblr.com/Guidelines

And you can submit your video here:
http://transpeoplespeak.tumblr.com/submit

Thank you so much,
Maddie Collins
colli24m@mtholyoke.edu

10 Groundbreaking American Women's Colleges

Wed, 13 Jul 2011 18:28:45 GMT

USA TODAY College: Posted May 10th, 2011

10 groundbreaking American women’s colleges

in conjunction with OnlineColleges.net

Mount Holyoke College library, courtesy of Mount Holyoke

As we noted earlier this year, college isn’t about the boys. The New York Times highlighted the University of North Carolina in a 2010 article, pointing out that it is one of “many large universities that at times feel eerily like women’s colleges. Women have represented about 57 percent of enrollments at American colleges since at least 2000, according to a recent report by the American Council on Education.” It’s not a trend that developed overnight, of course, so which schools blazed the trail?

Read the rest of the article here.

My Transgender Husband: A Love Story

Fri, 01 Jul 2011 15:31:48 GMT

A website by the wife of a trans Mount Holyoke alum. Enter here.

The transgender life looks like others

Fri, 01 Jul 2011 15:29:45 GMT

It sounds like a great set-up for drama: My spouse, Marcus, who used to be Margery, goes back to the college he attended as a woman, which happens to be a women's college, Mount Holyoke.

How will the alumnae respond when one of their own shows up at their 25th reunion as a man?

Read full article here.

Two Queer Somerville Playwrights Examine "The Nitty Gritty"

Thu, 23 Jun 2011 17:03:11 GMT

Playwrights Erica Berman (above) and Katie Liesener (below).

You know when two people have a good working relationship. Like in any good friendship they finish each others’ sentences; they laugh at private jokes; the chemistry is hard to miss. This is true of Somerville Playwrights Erica Berman and Katie Liesener. These two women are co-producing a play The Nitty Gritty that will showcase on June 25 at Cambridge’s YMCA Theater at 7:30PM.

I met the pair at one of my favorite Union Square hangouts Bloc 11 (The other being the Sherman Cafe), on a cool June morning. Both women agreed that for them Somerville is truly “The Paris of New England.” They are constantly inspired by our creative burg. Although they met in Brookline, MA, their shared Somerville backgrounds gave them an immediate connection.

Liesener said she hopes their play will present a different aspect of the “Queer Conversation.” Both women feel that Gay Theater is often a lot of sizzle but not enough steak. Liesener opined “It is full of glam, glitter, Gay Pride, undressing, but the everyday “Nitty Gritty” of day to day life has not been adequately addressed.” Issues of Gay community, and yes even the use of a dildo, will be part of the conversation among the different women portrayed in the play.

Katie Liesener was a journalist for a number of years, writing for The Boston Globe, and the Community Newspaper Corporation. Although she thinks journalism is very valuable training for a writer, it sort of straitjacketed her. She said: “I always had to be objective. I couldn’t tell my own story. I could not interject myself into the article.” So she gave up journalism and gained the “Freedom to talk about my own experiences for once,” she said.

Berman, a graduate of Mount Holyoke College and Emerson College, runs the Watertown Children’s Theater, where she currently directs 60 kids under the age of 13 in main stage shows. Berman said “I work six days a week. I am involved with the full artistic visionundefinedlighting, costumes, sets, etc. I love it and I love working with children.”

Liesener and Berman count as their role models the playwright Lisa Kron and the Five Lesbian Brothers. Even so, their work smacks of their own original signature.

Liesener, who teaches writing at Emmanuel College, said teaching does not detract from her own work. She reflected, “I find that when I teach I rediscover what’s important in writing. I become more aware.”

Both artists are clear that they have to hustle to keep those wolves from the door. Berman also teaches at a private school, and Liesener said she lives cheaply, but quite happily.

As I left Bloc 11 and walked by the café’s window, I noticed the playwrights still talking animatedly, creative sparks flying. I hope they turned the fire alarm off.

For more info go to http://thenittygrittyshow.com

OutHistory.org Seeks Data on 4 Stonewall Arrestees

Mon, 06 Jun 2011 16:15:24 GMT

In June 2009, on the 40th anniversary of the Stonewall Riots, OutHistory.org first published nine pages of New York City Police Department records.

These records for the first time revealed the names of four previously unknown persons arrested during the course of the rebellion, one woman and three men.

In June 2011, OutHistory is appealing for information about any of those four persons: Marilyn Fowler, Vincent DePaul, Wolfgang Podolski, and Thomas Staton.

Perhaps New York City-area phonebooks from 1969 would reveal old addresses, perhaps the Social Security Death Index would reveal information, perhaps friends of the arrestees will come forward with evidence.

If you discover any information about the four arrestees, please send that information to Jonathan Ned Katz at OutHistory.org at: outhistory@gc.cuny.edu

For the OutHistory.org entry on the Stonewall Riot Police Reports, June 28, 1969 see

http://www.outhistory.org/wiki/Stonewall_Riot_Police_Reports,_June_28,_1969

Thanks,

Jonathan Ned Katz

Founder, Co-Director, OutHistory.org

http://www.outhistory.org/wiki/Main_Page

LGBTQ History by the LGBTQ Community: Fight Against Forgetting!

Alumnae Quarterly seeks alums doing HIV/AIDS work

Fri, 20 May 2011 19:13:54 GMT

Do you know an alum who has made a difference in the global fight against the AIDS epidemic? Have you or another MHC alum you know worked in international or domestic medical, advocacy, or research fields of HIV/AIDS in the past 30 years?

The Alumnae Quarterly wants to hear about it! Send an email to Hannah Clay Wareham '09 at hclaywareham@gmail.com, and you could be part of a future Q story.

http://www.facebook.com/photo.php?fbid=10150187641782266&set=a.158341022265.115600.8238767265&type=1&theater

Berger-Marks announces new $10,000 Edna Award

Tue, 03 May 2011 15:38:35 GMT

For a young woman leader in the social justice movement

Apply by July 15!

The Edna Award will honor a young woman leader in the social justice movement who has made an extraordinary contribution early in her career, and whose achievements indicate that her work will continue to significantly improve the lives of working women and men.

The $10,000 award is named after Edna Berger, the foundation’s namesake and an early organizer at The Newspaper Guild-CWA. Women can apply for the award themselves or be nominated by others.

To spotlight the contributions of young women leaders

"With the Edna Award, the Berger-Marks Foundation is expanding its commitment to young women," says Linda Foley, President of the Foundation. "We want to spotlight their important contributions to social justice. Women are organizing unions; women are leading campaigns for universal health care; and women are demonstrating to young people what social justice means."

"The Berger-Marks Foundation and the Edna Award honor the vision of a social justice movement where all workers have an opportunity to lead," noted AFL-CIO Secretary Treasurer Liz Shuler, who encouraged "all young women to apply for this award and become involved in shaping a just future."

The Edna Award follows up on the findings of the "Stepping Up, Stepping Back: Women Activists ‘Talk Union’ Across Generations" report the Foundation published last summer. It "demonstrates the Berger-Marks Foundation’s commitment to further engaging the next generation of social justice women leaders by creating a special honor just for them," explained Louise D. Walsh, Chairperson of the Foundation.

How to apply

The application calls for a short essay, resumé and two letters of recommendation. Nominees must be 35 years or younger on 12/31/2011. Applications will be accepted through July 15, and the award will be presented in the fall. Young women from labor unions, women’s groups, workers’ rights groups and other areas of social justice are encouraged to apply.

http://www.bergermarks.org/news/2011/index2.php?art=205#205

JEB donates to Smithsonian

Sat, 30 Apr 2011 15:49:04 GMT

Joan E Biren '66, an internationally recognized photographer and documentary artist, assembled a collection of ephemera and materials related to queer films, both foreign and domestic. She donated her collection, dubbed the Queer Film Museum, to the Smithsonian, and the finding aid for the collection is now available.

http://americanhistory.si.edu/archives/d-4.htm

Good is Good: Are Women’s Colleges Outdated?

Thu, 31 Mar 2011 13:38:12 GMT

I’ve always been skeptical about women’s colleges.

I grew up in Amherst within a few miles of Smith and Mount Holyoke where, I admit, I tried to sneak into parties as a high school student. Beyond serving a destination for horny young men, the colleges always gave me the creeps, perhaps because I was explicitly excluded from the community or because of some juvenile fantasy that the schools harbored a lesbian cult. Still, the women who went there, it seemed to me, were living in some bygone gender-segregated era where such a place had a purpose. I assumed they went to women’s colleges largely because they couldn’t get into the numerous elite coed schools.

Why go to Smith if you could go to Amherst?

Read the rest of the article here.

$3,000 Traub-Dicker Rainbow Scholarship for lesbian identified students

Tue, 29 Mar 2011 13:47:04 GMT

Stonewall Community Foundation is currently accepting applications for its Traub-Dicker Rainbow Scholarship for lesbian identified students. They will award three $3,000 scholarships. Applicant must demonstrate their motivation to making a difference and have a history of academic excellence and community service.

Applications are due on April 15, 2011.

Established by Peggy Traub and Phyllis Dicker, this scholarship encourages and supports LGBT students in their quest for higher education. The TDRS grants scholarships to lesbian-identified students in two categories: 1) Graduating high school seniors who plan on attending a recognized college or university; and, 2) Already matriculated college students in any year of study, including graduate school.

If you have any questions, or want an application, please contact:

Thai Pham | Deputy Director
Stonewall Community Foundation
119 West 24th Street, New York, NY 10011
Tel 212-367-1265 | Fax 212-367-1157
thai.pham@stonewallfoundation.org
stonewallfoundation.org

Baseball Hall of Fame this weekend honors St. Paul 'tomboy' Toni Stone

Mon, 21 Mar 2011 21:42:18 GMT

Martha Ackmann, who discussed her biography of pro female baseball player Toni Stone at the Hall of Fame this past weekend, talked to MinnPost.com about the pioneering Minnesota native.

National Baseball Hall of FameToni Stone

Read the whole article

Put "It Gets Better" book in a high school library near you!

Tue, 08 Mar 2011 23:28:25 GMT

The It Gets Better Project has changed many people's lives. LGBT youth are beginning to feel the change and acceptance. They are beginning to believe that it does get better. Over 10,000 videos have been submitted to raise awareness about teenage bullying and ways to help. The next goal is to get the It Gets Better book into every school library across the country so that every bullied child has access to resources and can know that it does get better.

Click here to donate a book to a high school library for $25.

MHC's Ackmann to Give Hall of Fame Keynote

Tue, 08 Mar 2011 22:40:25 GMT

Martha Ackmann, Mount Holyoke lecturer in gender studies and author of Curveball: The Remarkable Story of Toni Stone, will give the keynote address when the National Baseball Hall of Fame in Cooperstown, New York, celebrates Women's History Month on Saturday, March 19.

To read more, and to see a video, go to this link: http://www.mtholyoke.edu/news/channels/22/stories/5682739

ONE Archives seeking LGBT short films for film fest

Thu, 10 Feb 2011 21:36:15 GMT

ONE Archives is accepting submissions for the 2nd Annual ONE Queer
Film Fest. The event will combine several historic and contemporary
films that capture the culture and spirit of queer people. ONE
encourages queer filmmakers and filmmakers who produce LGBT content to
submit their short films (roughly 3 - 12 minutes in length) for
consideration in the film fest. The event will take place this spring.
Submissions will be accepted through Friday, March 11. If you are
interested, please contact Tom De Simone at tjdesimone@gmail.com, with
a description of your film and a link to the film if it is available
on the web.

Please feel free to share / post this call for submissions

Michael C. Oliveira, MLIS
Project Archivist
mikeo@onearchives.org

one National Gay & Lesbian Archives
909 West Adams Boulevard
Los Angeles, California 90007-2406
www.onearchives.org

t 213-741-0094
f 213-741-0220

Is Being Lesbian a Hazard to Your Health?

Wed, 02 Feb 2011 17:23:45 GMT

Is being lesbian a health hazard? Pioneering physician Patricia A. Robertson ’72 delivers surprising news about how lesbians’ health often differs from other women’s health.

Read now

Community Project: It Gets Better video

Mon, 24 Jan 2011 21:23:50 GMT

Mount Holyoke Lyon's Pride is assembling video footage toward a submission to Dan Savage's "It Gets Better" video project. An excerpt from the It Gets Better Project website: "Many LGBT youth can't picture what their lives might be like as openly gay adults. They can't imagine a future for themselves. So let's show them what our lives are like, let's show them what the future may hold in store for them." Click the link in the previous sentence to view videos other people have made for the project.

We would like for you to get out your camera and tape yourself for a minute or two, saying what you'd like young queer people to hear about what it's really like after high school. Give your best advice, your best insights, your heartfelt thoughts. Then take that video and email it to our Lyon's Pride vice-president, Shannon Weber at shannon_weber@umail.ucsb.edu who will then compile it with other submissions to make a YouTube video that will be submitted to It Gets Better. If you have any technical questions about making a video, please contact Shannon about it.

Deadline for the project is March 15. Feel free to collaborate with other Lyon's Pride members to make a video if you'd like! We can't wait to see what you all create!

Paid LGBT Internships for Undergraduates and Post-Graduates

Sun, 16 Jan 2011 01:48:14 GMT

The R. Scott Hitt Foundation announces the 2011 R. Scott Hitt Foundation Grants for Internships

Paid LGBT Internships for Undergraduates and Post-Graduates

The R. Scott Hitt Foundation Internships for 2011

The R. Scott Hitt Foundation is offering funding for qualified candidates with
the vision to be future leaders in the lesbian, gay, bisexual and transgender
(LGBT) movement. Applicants do not need to identify as LGBT in order to apply.

The pro-LGBT sponsoring organization that you choose to apply with will receive funding
to compensate your internship position while you strengthen your resume and gain
valuable skills towards becoming a leader of the future.

The POST-GRADUATE Internship:

THE SCOTT HITT INTERNSHIP IN LEADERSHIP DEVELOPMENT
APPLICATION DEADLINE: MAY 13, 2011

• Post graduate students with strong academic record
• Duration: 7-9 months, 40 hour week - $20,000 Grant
• Location: An established 501(c)3 nonprofit with a commitment to the
advancement of LGBT equality
• Applicant contacts host organization which they want to work with and
co-develops a successful curriculum encompassing these key elements:
communications, fundraising, board development and grassroots policy
• R. Scott Hitt was the former Chair of President Clinton's HIV/AIDS Advisory
Council and the founder of numerous activist and community organizations.
He was a passionate advocate for civil rights and equality in all communities.
• 2-4 recipients per year

The UNDERGRADUATE Internship:

THE A.N.G.L.E. SOUTHERN CALIFORNIA INTERNSHIP

APPLICATION DEADLINE: APRIL 15, 2011

• Current undergraduate students with strong academic record
• Duration: 8 weeks, 40 hour week - $5000 Grant to sponsoring 501(c)3
• Location: An established 501(c)3 nonprofit in Southern California with a
commitment to the advancement of LGBT equality
• Applicant contacts host organization which they want to work with and co-develops a
successful curriculum encompassing key elements of non-profit operations and program development
• Named for the nonprofit ANGLE (Access Now for Gay & Lesbian Equality) which inspired and provided
the funding for these internships
• 3-5 recipients per year

TO APPLY:
1. Visit www.scotthittfoundation.org for details.
2. Choose a pro-LGBT 501(C)3 non-profit organization to sponsor your internship.
3. Agree to the terms of your internship and scope of work with your sponsoring organization. Construct sponsor
agreement in cooperation with your chosen 501(c)3.
4. Submit your cover letter, personal essay, résumé and sponsor agreement by the above deadline to scotthittfoundation.org.
5. Check www.scotthittfoundation.org for grant award dates.

For additional inquiries, please write us scotthittfoundation@gmail.com

James Vellequette
Managing Director
The R. Scott Hitt Foundation
www.scotthittfoundation.org
323-573-3005 (Eastern Time Zone)

The R. Scott Hitt Foundation
3699 Wilshire Blvd
Suite 1290
Los Angeles, CA
90010

LGBTQ Presidents in Higher Education

Wed, 05 Jan 2011 14:22:59 GMT

Includes the president of Hampshire College! Thanks to Linley Beckner for the link via Twitter.

LUGs, BUGs and Chuck Palahniuk: An exploration of identity

Thu, 09 Dec 2010 21:29:45 GMT

Posted: Thursday, October 28th, 2010

By Zuha Shaikh '13
Contributing Writer, The Mount Holyoke News

As the debate between social constructionist and queer history theories continues, the Mount Holyoke community stands aloof from the mess created by homophobic prejudices. With open arms, the college welcomes an assortment of women from around the globe. This diversity has fostered an acceptance of difference. In the absence of prejudice, students are free to explore different possibilities of what they can be. While people do experiment, they do so for different reasons.

I set myself to the task of understanding the role freedom plays in defining one’s sexuality. When I came to this country from Pakistan, I could not have imagined sexuality as fluid. Since then, I have met people who identify themselves at various points on the Kinsey scale, from point zero, “pure heterosexual,” to point six, “pure homosexual.”

As the French philosopher Michel Foucault once said, “Freedom of conscience entails more dangers than authority and despotism.” This spirit for exploration is what liberal arts colleges, more than any other university setting, seek to encourage. At places like Mount Holyoke, where learning is a product of one’s experiences, working through trial and error becomes a must.

In the words of Albert Camus, another French philosopher, “You cannot acquire experience by making experiments. You cannot create experience. You must undergo it.” However, when it comes to carrying out tests upon one’s sexuality, this is not always the case.

To identify yourself with one sexual orientationundefinedor none at allundefinedis not like choosing a topping for your waffle. The pick is not always divided along distinct lines of taste, but is often a temporary or a permanent result of a mix of luck and opportunity.

After interviewing (in person and via e-mail) students who classify themselves as straight, lesbian and bisexual, I have established that this yearning to probe one’s sexual identity is driven by many factors. The societies that conform to more heteronormative ideals often discourage non-heterosexuals from expressing themselves. This pushes people with homonormative tendencies to either ignore their attraction towards the same sex or come to understand it, but not express it.

Some students who leave college for less accepting environments have to present themselves as straight once they are outside of Mount Holyoke. “It’s extremely sad when a woman cannot tell her parents that she is in love with a woman,” one student relates in an e-mail. “Trust me I know from my own life experiences as of this day.”

When such students walk into Mount Holyoke, the warm welcome opens avenues for new expressions and realizations of their own inclinations. Some recognize these before they come to college, while othersundefinedtriggered by various factorsundefinedrealize it here. Some find it through experimentation, and others through pure luck.

One student said she only realized she was bisexual after she came to Mount Holyokeundefinedbut she was clear to point out that she was “NOT a BUG,” or “Bisexual Until Graduation,” a slang word used to describe students who return to heterosexuality after college.

“I have always ignored my attraction to women because of personal reasons and experiences with both gay men and lesbians,” she explained. “Those experiences made me homophobic. I had issues with gays and lesbians as a whole because of a few bad seeds. But when I got to MHC I found the most beautiful woman on this campus and I fell in love with her. I haven’t been in any other relationships like this and it’s real. I couldn’t ignore the feelings and thoughts any longer so I asked her to be my girlfriend and we’ve been together for a year. So I’ve always had the attraction to women and men.”

As these same sex relationships develop, it becomes more convenient for the general student population to experiment. By and large, the choice previously considered taboo is now looked upon positively. This lures people who have always questioned their sexuality to further explore their identity.

Meng Yan

Some straight-identified students might hook up with members of their own sex for any number of reasons. Some, such as the student above, fall in love. Others who may be drunk, bored, depressed or just simply curious, may like the idea of joining what appears to be the greater concentration of the community. When asked whether they had personally known someone who had experimented with her sexuality at Mount Holyoke, the majority of students answered in the affirmative. Thus, while the Mount Holyoke community does not encourage sexual experimentation as a “fad” per se, it certainly makes the approach to embrace change easier and less taboo.

That said, there are still questions that remain unanswered. How many of us change our sexual behavior just until graduation? The terms BUG and LUG are subject to controversy. The idea of “Until Graduation” underscores the lack of commitment to an identity or identity group. This makes sexual experimentation itself taboo.

“Majority of them will not ever date another woman again in their life,” a student who chose to remain anonymous commented. “Some will even tell you that they know they are getting married to a man.” However, while the concept of BUGs or LUGs definitely exists, there is no single BUG or LUG identity.

After talking to students on this subject, I have come to the conclusion that some students who are labeled this way, do not feel free to express themselves outside of Mount Holyoke. They might come from families hostile to the idea of homosexuality. Others might fall under Dr. Sari Locker’s definition of “Bi-Curious”undefineda “one” on the Kinsey scaleundefinedor “Dance Floor Lesbian”undefineda woman who only sometimes hooks up with other women, usually in public.

These initially “Until Graduation” experiments don’t always end upon graduation. As Chuck Palahniuk wrote in Fight Club, “If you wake up at a different time, in a different place, could you wake up as a different person?” There are students who say that they have rarely met people who, after experimenting and ending up in a serious same-sex relationship, leave that identity behind completely after graduation.
Although experimentation exists in some form or another at most colleges in the United States, a valid question is, “If you know your sexual orientation, what is the point of such experimentation with sexuality?” This cogitation makes non-heterosexuals and heterosexuals, mostly look down upon such terms. For some non-heterosexuals, it might be that someone who is not seriously committed to their identity is not “gay enough” to be an insider. For the general public, sexual experimentation might seem like a waste of time, especially when other issues demand attentionundefinedand especially when the individual claims to know they are straight or gay.

While this argument seems perfectly logical, there still lingers the reality that even some people who claim to be strictly heterosexual, do end up in same-sex relationships temporarily. As Emily Borden ‘11 says, “It’s not necessarily experimentation ‘for fun’ here, but it’s a much more relaxed environment in relation to gender expression and same-sex relations. Sexuality, in my honest opinion, is something fluid that cannot really be defined by a label, but rather that everyone is attracted to whom they are attracted for some reason or another, which makes experimenting with sexuality for fun just another dimension of attraction.”

Together, all these factors make Mount Holyoke a great attraction for more LGBT (Lesbian, Gay, Bi, Transgender) applicants. As Borden says, “We’re not any gayer than other people, we just happen to have a large concentration here.” Many who walk in as heterosexuals, despite all the freedom, strictly choose to remain that way. In a women’s college, they find dating prospects off-campus. No strict judgment can be passed on either how many students exactly become bi or lesbian-identified because of Mount Holyoke, or how many choose to remain that way only until graduation.

Dianne Laguerta ’13, who works in the Admissions office says, “While it seems that there is a large number of LGBT students here just because the environment is so accepting we won’t know for sure because we don’t know how many report it accurately before coming to college.”

What I could effortlessly establish is that conducting these “tests” is prevalent in the MHC community. Most individuals in the Mount Holyoke community tend to oscillate between being 100 percent straight and 100 percent lesbian. The self-identified “pure heterosexuals” I interviewed for this article said that lesbianism and bisexuality at Mount Holyoke is mostly “a fad.” The queer-identified students told me they were mainly annoyed with their “temporary” counterparts.

At a women’s college, one can move across the Kinsey’s scale as one wills. “Mount Holyoke is Utopia,” as one junior said. “Of course such experimentation exists!”

Breaking the barriers: F to M transgender athletes in college and high school

Thu, 09 Dec 2010 21:20:30 GMT

Posted Thursday, December 9, 2010

By Clara Lefton '12
Sports Editor, The Mount Holyoke News

When Kye Allums became the first transgender man to play women’s NCAA Division I basketball this November, the selection spotlighted the controversy surrounding transgender athletes. George Washington University’s official statement about Kye led to multiple news stories and raised questions about existing policies for transgender student-athletes. Currently, most high school and collegiate athletic programs are unprepared regarding appropriate pronouns, locker room etiquette and hormone treatments; the Transgender Law and Policy Institute found that only approximately 300 of 4,000 universities include gender status in their anti-bullying rules. Although NCAA policies prohibit keeping statistics about the amount of transgender student-athletes, the issue is not uncommon.

“[This] is not a new issue, but it’s an issue that’s becoming more and more comfortable to bring up. Even just coming out as trans is easier than it was 10 years ago,” says Merric, who began her career at Smith College as a woman but after coming out as a man spring semester of freshmen year, changed his name from Meredith.

Current NCAA rules allow athletes to compete based off their sex as stated by their state issued identification, yet each state has different regulations regarding how to legally change ones gender. Some require body augmentation through surgery and/or variations in estrogen and testosterone levels based on the individual’s preferred sex or gender; this is regardless of that testosterone is listed as banned NCAA substance.

“My license says female, so I have to play on a female team and my estrogen levels and my testosterone levels have to be within the ranges for normal or acceptable for a female bodied person,” Merric says.

Aside from the NCAA, in 2004 the International Olympic Committee (IOC) produced the other most well documented policy regarding transgender athletes. Many high schools and colleges looking for answers have used the Olympic rules, even though most school’s athletes are not professionals. The Olympic documentation is a criterion that determines the eligibility of transgender athletes. The two most debated regulations of the policy are: 1) that genital reconstruction gives a competitive advantage, and 2) that after beginning estrogen therapy a transgendered woman has to wait two years for her testosterone levels to decrease, eliminating any advantage when playing among biologically female-bodied women.

“It would be helpful [to have federal rules] because it would give people guidelines and rules of this is how to do things,” says Merric. “But it’s a more complicated issue because what is out there right now is the Olympic [Policy].”

The most recent argument was presented in On The Team, a press release published October 4, 2010 in conjunction with the Women’s Sports Foundation and the National Center for Lesbian Rights. In the report medical experts found flaws in the IOC policy: genital reconstructive surgery does not influence athlete’s abilities and that any advantage a transgender girl might have from testosterone will disappear about a year of taking estrogen regularly.

“We talked about what’s fair- we were really concerned about what’s fair for the transgender athlete and what’s fair for the other student athletes and the competitive equity, that was a big consideration,” says Mount Holyoke College’s Athletic Director Laurie Priest, who helped write On The Team. “We’ve had Division III athletes who are transgender but were low key, our sports programs aren’t that big, so it’s not such a big deal.”

“I do understand the issues that the [IOC] aims toward, not necessarily making it more comfortable, but just also the use of juicing or making [competition] fair with testosterone levels,” Merric explains. “[Lacrosse is] as much a part of me and who I am, as my gender identity is. When I’m in the crease, the circle around the goal, it’s the one place I don’t feel uncomfortable; it’s the one place I feel like I fit.”

Merric began playing lacrosse goalkeeper seven years ago as a way to overcome his depression and low self esteem, but after coming out as a transgender man lacrosse has become a source of stress. In order to obey NCAA regulations that will keep both him and his team eligible for championship competition, Merric has compromised his identity: refusing to legally change his gender and take testosterone until after completing his senior season of lacrosse.

“There were times, a lot [the] beginning of this summer, when I was struggling with it…Do I really want to wait?” says Merric. “This crazy urge just came over me to quit lacrosse and start taking T[estosterone],” he wrote in his blog this past July.

Steve, a student-athlete at Mount Holyoke, will begin taking testosterone treatment this Janary. As a club sport-only athlete, NCAA regulations do not apply to him. Therefore the Mount Holyoke’s Ice Hockey team will allow him to continue playing, especially since they are not participating in a league.

Rugby is on the other hand a different story for Steve. “Because I’m choosing to transition now, and take testosterone, rugby is such a physical sport that it would be an unsafe thing to have me on the field,” Steve explains. “It would be having someone with muscular structure of a male tackling people that don’t have that same structure, and it wouldn’t be fair to other people.”

Despite conclusions about the competitive concerns of transgender athletes, the NCAA and IOC policies have not changed.

Note: Some names have been changed or withheld to protect identities.

David Abbott speaks at Mount Holyoke College

Thu, 09 Dec 2010 13:13:17 GMT

December 2, 2010
By: Clara Lefton/TRT Guest Reporter, The Rainbow Times

South Hadley--David Abbott, former member of ACT-UP and present director of the Rhode Island AIDS Project, gave a speech at Mount Holyoke College entitled “The Importance of Activism in the LGBTQ Movement” on November 17^th at 7 p.m. From protesting the Supreme Court to shutting down the New York Stock Exchange, Abbott shared what he has learned over the years.

“I didn’t bring a bomb-building kit and I don’t build bombs but I can tell you how to start a really nasty little riot or I can tell you how to write press releases or I can tell you how to meet the President and have an argument with him. None of that really matters. Those are my stories,” said Abbott at the opening of his lecture. The event, organized by Mount Holyoke’s chapter of Equality Across America, detailed the 56-year-old man’s motivation to standup for what he believed in and his wish to inspire others.

The Rochester, NY native’s activism began after a 1984 visit to Massachusetts General Hospital. His boyfriend of the time, Jerry, had been in the hospital for what would turn out to be a case of encephalitis. Abbott arrived to find Jerry alone on his bed; the former college linebacker was only 80lbs. After a brief rekindling of love and emotion, a nearby nurse quickly noticed the commotion, but Abbott refused to leave.

“He was a twig and-boy the memories don’t go away,” said Abbott, his eyes beginning to tear up in front of his audience. “That’s a visit to the hospital during AIDS. I went in there to see my friend who was dying and I got left on the front curb having been cuffed.”

Scarred from his encounter, Abbott became determined to create change and joined Rhode Island’s chapter of ACT-UP shortly after.

“I came because I so appreciate what Act Up contributed to social justice movements,” explained Maxwell Ciardullo, a University of Massachusetts at Amherst graduate student.

Abbott encouraged the audience to get off their computers and participate in any cause one feels passionate about. “What really works is the soles of your feet and your presence as a human being on the street around the problem. It doesn’t go away because you typed something, that’s just nonsense.”

“It was brilliant. I had come hoping to get good ideas about activism and how to organize. I’m interested especially in his agenda…and he had some really fun and creative ways of telling them,” said local South Hadley, MA resident Sarah Olmstead who attended the lecture.

His chilling and exemplary tales of riots, protests and demonstrations went on for over an hour.

“What really matters is what I feel about it. What you feel about about it. What you feel right inside your heart because all issues aren’t important,” said Abbott.

In the world of women’s colleges: Professor travels around globe to explore role of female-only institutions

Wed, 01 Dec 2010 13:40:49 GMT

November 1, 2010 | By Nicole Geary

Step inside Kristen Renn’s office and it’s hard to miss the affinity for her undergraduate alma mater.

There are posters and pendants from Mount Holyoke College on the wall and a calendar of campus photos near her desk.

It’s been 25 years since Renn, an associate professor in the College of Education and nationally known scholar of student affairs, graduated from the world’s oldest women-only institution in Western Massachusetts.

But Mount Holyoke is where she first felt the empowering potential of academia.

“I would not be here if not for Mount Holyoke,” she says. “It’s the reason I went into higher education.”

And now, during a career spent studying issues of college student identity and student affairs administration, women’s colleges and universities have become the focus of an exciting worldwide research journey for Renn.

Although the number of female-only institutions in the United States continues to shrink, women’s colleges and universities are thriving in places such as Africa, Asia and the Middle East. Renn has explored 15 campuses on five continents so far on a mission to determine the current status – and value – of women’s colleges in a global context.

With little known about the topic beyond U.S. borders, she will be the first to piece together a trans-national picture showing how contemporary women’s colleges fit within societies and systems of postsecondary education.

“Single-sex institutions provide a window into the status of women in education overall,” said Renn, who spends four to five days interacting with students and faculty at each site, from a rural outpost of 60 pupils in Kenya to a 20,000-student campus in South Korea.

“The situation of women in higher education is really country- and region-specific.”

‘The world needs to know’

Not surprisingly, Mount Holyoke was instrumental as Renn’s ambitious research plan unfolded.

She first began interviewing leaders from international women’s institutions during a 2008 conference of Women’s Education Worldwide (WEW), an association of approximately 50 women’s colleges and universities around the world that was co-founded by former Mount Holyoke President Joanne Creighton and Smith College President Carol Christ.

According to Renn, Women’s Education Worldwide has provided an unprecedented opportunity to study women’s higher education from a comparative perspective. She established contacts that facilitated her case studies in the United Arab Emirates, China, Kenya, Australia, Korea and Japan, as well as forthcoming trips this spring to Bangladesh and India.

Renn also conducted an exploratory study in 2008 while attending a leadership conference at Mount Holyoke, sponsored by WEW, for students from women’s colleges around the world.

Individuals often question why women’s colleges are still needed (and financially viable) in North America and Europe, where women account for the majority of postsecondary students and may attend all but a few remaining all-male institutions.

However, complex issues of culture and access – to safe places to learn, affordable tuition, specific curricula or leadership opportunities, for example – support the existence (and new development) of female-only schools in many other parts of the globe. WEW represents all sizes and types.

“People may think of women’s institutions as a dying breed, whereas actually there are some wonderful stories about the creation of institutions in places that are quite inhospitable in general to women’s education,” said Creighton, who serves as WEW project director and is now on sabbatical from Mount Holyoke. “Even though we are long-standing institutions, we have a lot to learn from these emerging institutions.”

Renn, as Creighton says, is one of the lone “ground-breakers” answering the critical need for international, comparative research in the area. Her research has been funded by the MSU College of Education and the Spencer Foundation.

“I think Mount Holyoke and all of the other institutions will be exceedingly interested in her findings,” Creighton said. “The world needs to know what’s happening in women’s education.”

Tension and bigger questions

Driven, she says, but not clouded, by her own life-changing experience in a women’s college, Renn has devoted one semester on sabbatical, as well as summer and spring breaks to hop on airplanes and see what role women’s institutions are really serving.

In Japan, for example, she learned the small number of women’s institutions that have persisted give young women unparalleled access to female professors as role models, particularly in high-tech fields.

In Dubai, women have no coeducational universities to choose from, unless their families can afford a private option. And, in other places, where coed is the predominant model, women’s institutions often provide the only program in a particular area of study, or at least a more welcoming environment to study in a traditionally male-dominated field.

Creating “access” to higher education, at least in the legal or historical sense, no longer seems to be the main impetus for female-only institutions, Renn said. Today the argument for their existence is based more on addressing a mix of economic and cultural factors, depending on where you look.

Perhaps the one common thread is symbolism, she said.

“There is a tension that is sometimes spoken and sometimes unspoken between traditional gender roles and this vision for what women could be,” Renn said.

“There are legitimate questions about why we still have women’s colleges in the U.S… But, in other countries, the question is why do we send women to college at all? The answers to both of those questions raise other questions for us about equality in society.”

‘The whole community benefits’

Jillian Kinzie, who serves as associate director of the Center for Postsecondary Research at Indiana University-Bloomington, said Renn’s round-the-world project comes at a time when researchers and university leaders in the U.S. are becoming increasingly interested in the status of postsecondary education from global perspectives.

More importantly, learning about international women’s colleges will help shape our understanding about the role of special-mission institutions in the U.S., including Historical Black Colleges and Universities, military academies and religious colleges.

“I think it’s important to maintain and not try to homogenize institutions for all students,” said Kinzie, lead author of a well-known 2007 study that showed students at women’s colleges benefit from greater access to leadership opportunities and more meaningful interactions with faculty when compared with peers attending coed institutions.

“They are valuable forms of undergraduate education and what Dr. Renn is doing is really important to empowering women worldwide.”

Kinzie said she would have attended a women’s college – which do tend to be elite, private and expensive in the U.S. – if she would have known more about them.

Renn, who for 29 years has had to defend going to a women’s college, is hoping her project will at least provide guidance and some shared understanding for the administrators of women’s institutions as they face current and expected challenges.

She will wrap up travel and data analysis by summer 2011. She plans to publish additional journal articles and a book that will summarize and document her journey.

She knows how her personal and professional aspirations were shaped by attending a women’s college, where she was “taken seriously intellectually, as a leader.”

And now Renn has seen firsthand – perhaps more clearly than any other scholar of higher education – how women’s institutions are striving to educate, elevate and protect women within unique contexts from nearly every corner of the globe.

“I would like to come up with something useful for the leaders as they continue to make the case for the enduring value of their institutions, whether their case is about access or student leadership or faculty development,” she said. “There is evidence that when women are better educated, the whole community benefits.”

Profile of a Mount Holyoke student, from OutAndEqual.org's Communities in Common

Tue, 30 Nov 2010 14:55:15 GMT

Genesis | November 19, 2010

Genesis is an Astronomy student at Mount Holyoke College who is currently working with NASA. On Transgender Day of Remembrance, Genesis reflects upon
discrimination in the workplace and his ongoing struggle to receive appropriate identity documents.

I recall receiving my school ID card during orientation at Mount Holyoke College and considering how the image would not match my appearance after beginning hormone treatment. Over time, I had to renew my picture and a male presentation was a source of suspicion to anyone who knew that Mount Holyoke College was an all-women’s institution. Upon graduation I sought to prevent a similar problem with my state ID.

That summer I lived in Maine and was searching for a job. After being stopped repeatedly in airports because my ID stated the “wrong” gender marker (I did not look female any longer) I realized that I would need a new ID in order to gain employment. I researched the DMV gender marker laws and found that, as is common with many states, I needed a doctor's letter confirming that I was transgender in addition to proof of gender reassignment surgery (GRS). As a 19 year old transman, I had no plans to go through GRS. But, without identification it was almost impossible to find employment.

I eventually found a job with a supervisor that didn't seem to notice the gender marker mismatch. I breathed a sigh of relief, but I was wrong. For a grueling two months I was treated unfairly, spoken about inappropriately, and harassed based upon my gender identity. I never knew if I was treated this way because my supervisor disclosed my private information or because I didn't completely pass as male. Unfortunately, there were no state laws protecting gay, lesbian, bisexual, transgender, or queer individuals in the workplace at that time. Only recently did Maine pass anti-discrimination laws for LGBTQ individuals. I quit and found a new work place.

I used an incorrectly marked state ID for years until Massachusetts changed its gender marker laws last fall. I immediately acquired state residency and a Massachusetts state ID with a gender marking of “M”. For the first time, my gender identity was correctly reflected on a legal document. It felt like coming out all over again and a huge burden had been lifted off my shoulders. With a correctly marked ID, going through airports or making purchases with a credit card suddenly became so much easier. The stress of disclosing my transgender status, the fear of being denied service, and the possibility of being subjected to further security screenings disappeared. Next, however, I needed to acquire a United States passport.

At the time, American citizens were required to not only provide a doctor’s note and proof GRS but citizens were also required to legally change their name to a “clearly gendered name” in order to receive a proper gender marker on a passport. My legally given nameundefinedGenesisundefineddid not fit the criteria. I was mortified as traveling outside of the United States with an improperly marked passport could be dangerous in many places.

Fortunately, this past June the US Department of State announced that GRS was not a prerequisite for passport gender marker changes. I'm currently in the process of acquiring mypassport and will have two correct and valid forms of ID that are so often required for various official documents, applications, and traveling.

I'm currently taking a gap year working as an intern at NASA Ames in the Bay Area while still being active from a distance with the Coalition for Gender Awareness, Mount Holyoke's gender student organization. Next year I'm returning to finish off my senior year and graduate with a BA in Astronomy and a minor in Theatre Arts.

My experience has taught me the importance of LGBTQ activism at all levels. High School outreach clubs, University organizations, and community LGBTQ centers contribute to making change. Thousands of individuals must contribute their hard work to make LGBTQ rights a reality. Everything from public policy advocacy to increasing visibility and awareness makes a huge difference. On this Transgender Day or Remembrance, remember to stay strong and give a moment to remember those whose sacrifices have brought us to where we are today.

Why I now support transgender students at women’s colleges...and how my mind changed

Wed, 24 Nov 2010 16:44:39 GMT

by Jordan Namerow
contributing writer, Bay Windows
Thursday Nov 18, 2010

On Nov. 17, the Senate of Wellesley College -- one of the few remaining women’s colleges in the country -- publicly announced that it had changed its constitution. It replaced every female pronoun with gender-neutral language.

Some believe this change undermines Wellesley’s single-sex heritage and violates its institutional identity. But it is a necessary step to accommodate the diversity of Wellesley’s student body today.

When I enrolled at Wellesley College in the fall of 2001, it never crossed my mind that gender-neutral anything would be up for debate.

But one month into my freshman year at a late-night meeting in the dorm living room, a classmate proposed the following: replace the bathroom’s faceless lady in a dress with a poly-gendered or gender-neutral figure.

"Why all the fuss over an innocuous, universally recognized symbol?" I wondered. Because, as I soon learned, not every student at Wellesley identifies as a woman. Some Wellesley students are transgender. Others eschew gendered pronouns altogether.

Over the past decade, American universities have witnessed a growing and more visible population of transgender students -- most notably, students who identify as transmen (a term embraced by people assigned a female identity at birth but who choose to live in the world as men). Just two weeks ago, the nation learned that George Washington University women’s basketball player, Kye Allums, had come out as a transman. Allums is believed to be the first Division I college basketball player to compete as a transgender person. His announcement -- which garnered national attention in a New York Times article and on popular blogs -- came appropriately at the start of November, "Transgender Awareness Month."

Though precise figures are difficult to determine, The National Center for Transgender Equality estimates that about three million Americans are transgender. Brett-Genny Janiczek Beemyn, the Director of the Stonewall Center at the University of Massachusetts-Amherst who has studied transgender college students cites that, historically, adults who wished to transition did so in middle age. But today, a larger percentage of transitions occur in adolescence or young adulthood.

Wellesley, along with other women’s colleges, is wrestling with an unprecedented dilemma: how to accommodate transgender students in a communal context created by and for women.

This dilemma has prompted administrators and students to ask tough questions: Why would a woman who identifies as a man want to attend a women’s college in the first place? Do transgender students threaten the mission of women’s colleges, or do they advance it? And, most importantly, is it possible for a women’s college to support transgender students without abandoning its heritage or violating its integrity?

For me, the answer is yes. Women’s colleges can -- and should -- support transgender students.

But I didn’t always feel this way.

Nine years ago, at a weekly meeting for Wellesley’s Sexual Health Educators (the SHEs) I was sitting across from a burly, male-identified student with tattooed arms and a short buzz cut -- the first openly transgender person I had ever met. He was dressed in men’s clothing and had tightly bound his breasts with an ace-bandage.

"I want to organize a workshop about masculine sexuality," he explained. "A program by and for trans students."

I caught myself cringing with judgment. "This is a women’s college," I thought to my conventionally gendered, Jewish lesbian feminist self. "We’re an organization called the SHEs, and you don’t even identify as a she. What makes you think you belong here?"

The other SHEs and I squirmed in discomfort, our eyes shifting nervously to the bowl of Cheez-Its in the center of the table. We didn’t know what to say or do. We just hoped the proposed masculine sexuality workshop -- and transgender issues in general -- would quietly disappear.

But the workshop happened, and the issues didn’t go away.

Some months after that meeting, I asked a different transgender student -- someone I met through Wellesley’s LGBTQ student organization -- why he chose to come to Wellesley:

"I thought women would be more open to my gender identity struggles than men," he said. "I was concerned about being harassed at co-ed universities for not being a ’real’ man or a ’real’ woman. Besides, I identify as a feminist and the empowering campus culture of Wellesley really resonated for me."

His response filled me with empathy and surprise. It spoke to the invisible truths of transgender people that I had not fully considered: a desire for basic human dignity, social safety, and a body in which to feel at home. It stripped away the layers of gender theory and made transgender identity not about "a complicated issue" but about people yearning to belong.

Who among us doesn’t want to be fully seen, fully heard, and fully supported in the world?

The Women’s College Coalition, an association representing women’s colleges in the United States and Canada, identifies three core values that animate women’s institutions: social justice, equality, and human dignity. I have come to believe that affirming the diversity of gender experience is an expression of these values that we must embrace. Although sexual orientation has been added to the protected categories in women’s colleges’ anti-discrimination policies, gender identity has not yet made the list.

Over five years have passed since I graduated from Wellesley; nearly ten since my introduction to the concept of gender-neutral bathrooms -- a concept that no longer seems foreign to me, even for women’s colleges.

But not long ago, I found myself at a "New Years Redux" party where I reconnected with a bunch of Wellesley graduates, many of whom I hadn’t seen for several years. There were others who I was meeting -- or re-meeting -- for the very first time: Whitney had become Will. Emily was now Elliot. They had new bodies, new genders, new names.

I’d be lying if I didn’t admit to feeling a bit of loss and sadness, quickly followed by a ping of guilt.

Yet the faces of my friends, both familiar and unfamiliar, were full of light. They exuded a sense of rightness with who they are and with their place in the world; the kind of rightness that comes only after years of struggle.

When I think of transgender students at Wellesley today, I am glad that this women’s college is on its way to becoming a home for them, too.

Jordan Namerow is the Senior Communications Associate of American Jewish World Service and a graduate student of Strategic Communications at Columbia University. She graduated from Wellesley College in 2005.

Male, female or neither? Gender identity debated at same-sex colleges

Mon, 08 Nov 2010 15:14:26 GMT

By Stephanie Chen, CNN

November 8, 2010 9:03 a.m. EST

Students at Morehouse College, an all-male school, show the fashion spectrum of what it means to be a Morehouse man.

STORY HIGHLIGHTS

Same-sex colleges face students who are nongender-conforming or transgender
Many same sex-schools have no policies for students outside traditional male-female roles
Study: Nongender-conforming and transgender students experience more harassment
Morehouse College has banned women's dresses, pumps and purses on men

RELATED TOPICS

Atlanta, Georgia (CNN) -- When Kevin Murphy entered as a freshman at Mount Holyoke, a Massachusetts women's college, in 2003, he was female. By the time he received his diploma, he was male.

Phillip Hudson, who attended Morehouse, an all-male historically black college in Georgia, calls himself androgynous, meaning he doesn't identify with masculine or feminine identity norms.

The two men represent a debate that is brewing at some of the nation's same-sex colleges. For these colleges, which have historically defied boundaries and challenged the status quo, a new test of tolerance has surfaced: How are they handling gender identity?

Defining gender on same-sex campuses has become murky as some students say they fall outside the conventional male-female gender binary. More schools are encountering complicated cases where not all students at men's colleges identify as male and not all students at women's colleges identify as female.

The diversity of gender expression comes in many forms, from individuals who consider themselves androgynous or nongender-conforming to students who are transgender or in the process of changing their sex. Transgender people are often defined as those who do not identify with the gender they were at birth.

At Smith College, a women's institution in Massachusetts, the junior class president is Roth, who recently transitioned from female to male. Roth asked to be identified only by his first name.

At Morehouse College, the issue of cross-dressing students emerged on campus last year. A handful of the male students wore women's clothing, purses and high heels.

"You don't have to conform to one idea on what it means to be a masculine male in order to be successful, and the same way with women," said Shane Windmeyer, director of Campus Pride, a resource network dedicated to gay, lesbian, bisexual and transgender college students.

At the center of the controversy is whether men's and women's colleges should allow transgender or nongender-conforming students to stay on campus when the purpose of same-sex schools is to cater to a single gender. Same-sex schools continue to admit only a single sex, but once the student is enrolled, the rules are less clear.

Most schools don't have specific policies to address nongender-conforming or transgender students, said Genny Beemyn, who has studied transgender issues on campus and is on the board of the Transgender Law and Policy Institute, a nonprofit organization dedicated to transgender people. Only a little more than 300 out of 4,000 colleges have added gender status to their nondiscrimination protection clauses.

You don't have to conform to one idea on what it means to be a masculine male in order to be successful, and the same way with women.
--Shane Windmeyer, director of Campus Pride

"Colleges don't think they have a need to do it, and in my opinion, that's a wrong mindset," Beemyn said. "It's reactionary, and it's waiting until you have a crisis before you do anything."

In 2003, a student-led initiative at Smith College replaced gender-specific language in the student government constitution such as "she" and "her" with more neutral terms. Other students have advocated for gender inclusiveness through the National Student Genderblind Campaign, a grassroots network that promotes gender-neutral policies.

Patricia VandenBerg, communications director at Mount Holyoke College, said the school does not have a specific policy to address transgender students or nongender-conforming students -- the only hard rule is that Mount Holyoke can admit only women.

"We admit women," VandenBerg said. "We graduate students. They develop as they develop."

On Morehouse's quaint campus, signs banning women's clothing are visible inside buildings. The rules have been strictly enforced, students say.

Last year, administrators implemented a dress code that no longer allowed women's apparel, including dresses, tops, purses and pumps. The administration declined to comment on the dress code, and the rules still stand, said Elise Durham, media relations manager at Morehouse.

Read about Morehouse's clothing ban passed last year

Kevin Webb, a Morehouse senior and president of the gay student group Safe Space, said parts of the dress code contradict the school's historic tradition of acceptance. He said the school should embrace a wide spectrum of male students, instead of imposing a narrow definition of masculinity.

"We are all humans, students," he said. "We should be able to experience things, including cross-dressing. If we take those moments away, we have failed them during the four years. We haven't allowed them to grow."

Identifying with a different gender can be challenging on college campuses, according to The 2010 "State of Higher Education for LGBT People" report by Campus Pride. The survey examined responses from more than 5,000 students, faculty members and administrators at colleges and universities across the U.S. and found that respondents who identified as transmasculine, transfeminine and nongender-conforming experienced higher rates of harassment.

Nearly 40 percent of transfeminine and transmasculine respondents experienced harassment on campus, the study showed. About 31 percent of nongender-conforming students experienced harassment.

In comparison, the study found that about 20 percent of men and women experienced harassment.

Phillip Hudson, 21, who identifies as androgynous, was a student at Morehouse studying communications last year when the women's clothing ban took place. Towering at more than 6-foot-4, he liked wearing makeup and lip gloss. He often sported his Marc Jacobs tote bag and Ugg boots on campus.

His fashion choices and sexuality sometimes brought harassment and ridicule on campus, he said.

"I do understand it's an all-male school," said Hudson, who transferred to a college in Florida this year. "If you want to have a uniform for us to wear, that's fine, but don't pass policies that are specifically targeting a few people."

Kevin Murphy, now 25, who entered Mount Holyoke as a woman and graduated as a man, said the school was safe and supportive. However, there were many times when he still felt left out.

"I often felt very lonely and lost a lot of people I cared about," he wrote in an e-mail.

Cade, a 19-year-old student from California at Mount Holyoke studying computer science, identifies herself as gender queer and is transitioning to become a male. Cade is planning on taking hormones this year.

"It's a very small percentage of the population that has that reaction," said Cade, who declined to give a last name for privacy reasons. "A lot times, it's, 'This is a women's space. Why are you here?' "

A lot times, it's, 'This is a women's space. Why are you here?'
--Cade, a transgender student at Mount Holyoke College

While little has been studied about nongender-conforming students on same-sex campuses, some academics are beginning to examine the issue. The topic also became a part of a Sundance documentary show called "TransGeneration" in 2005.

Colleges may view allowing the opposite gender -- or what is perceived to be the opposite gender -- to remain on campus to be damaging to the school's reputation, explains Susan Marine, assistant dean of student life at Harvard College in Massachusetts, who wrote a dissertation on women's colleges and transgender students.

After interviewing more than 30 administrators at women's colleges, Marine said there are concerns that alumni will react negatively to the idea of allowing cross-dressing or nongender-conforming students on campus. As a result, they could refuse to donate money to the school.

"The colleges are in a very unique position," she said. "How do they preserve their identity when student identities are being called into question?"

Some students say their same-sex colleges are welcoming when it comes to changing genders.

At Smith College, Roth, 20, said he was admitted to the school as a woman. He says he grew up in a conservative Asian-American household and was surprised to encounter a "whatever floats your boat mentality" from fellow Smith classmates.

During the second semester of his freshman year in 2009, he started taking hormones. He underwent top surgery last summer, a process that included the removal of his breasts.

"It [Smith] definitely helped me transition faster," said Roth, who, even as a man, was elected junior class president last year.

Transgender Internship Information

Thu, 04 Nov 2010 21:49:32 GMT

Here's the website: http://www.transbodies.com/ContactUs.html

Description follows:

Join Us!

TRANS BODIES, TRANS SELVES CALL FOR INTERNS

Trans Bodies, Trans Selves is looking for interns for the positions listed below. The deadline for submission of applications is December 1, 2010.

Internships begin December 15, 2010. Their end date depends on the particular position. The survey and chapter interns will likely complete their work by the end of the Spring. The website and publicity interns will continue on through the book’s publication, tentatively next Fall.

Undergraduate and graduate students are encouraged to apply. The book’s editors are willing to work with your school to obtain credit for your internship. Unfortunately we do not have funds at this time to provide payment to interns. All interns will be recognized by name in the final book.

TO APPLY:

Please submit the following to laura at transbodies.com by December 1, 2010:

-A cover letter describing your interest in interning for Trans Bodies, Trans Selves. Why are you interested in the particular position? What skills do you have that make you an ideal candidate? Include your email address and phone number in the letter.

- A resume/cv that highlights work you have done that will help you in the position.

AVAILABLE POSITIONS:

Website Intern

Until now, Trans Bodies’ website has been handled by the book’s editor, Laura Erickson-Schroth, who knows nothing about websites except how to click a mouse and insert text/pictures. YOU can save this project’s website from itself. (If applying for this position, please include examples of your work in your application).

Publicity Interns

The Trans Bodies project is growing out of its britches, and expanding to facebook, twitter and to conferences near you. Be a part of this project by connecting people with Trans Bodies through social media and events.

Survey Interns

We are seeking interns to assist with our surveys for gender-variant people, current/former partners of gender-variant people, and parents of gender-variant children. We will be using quotes from the surveys for the book, and due to the extremely large number of responses, we need to thematically code the surveys. Interns will be supervised by a PhD candidate, and given a brief introduction to the organization and analysis of qualitative surveys. They will have the opportunity to learn about a wide range of individual perspectives as they work with the data. Applicants should be motivated, thoughtful, interested in the experiences of trans-persons and their families, and sensitive to handling confidential information.

Chapter Intern: Transgender Representation in the Media

Authors Jamison Green and Dallas Denny are looking for an intern to help them with research for their chapter, which will cover transgender representation in popular media, including television, movies, magazines and newspapers.

Chapter Intern: Gender Around the World

Authors Jamie Roberts and Anneliese Singh are recruiting an intern for their chapter, which explores the gender roles and transgender movements around the world.

SUBMIT A SHORT PIECE TO TRANS BODIES, TRANS SELVES

Submission Details

Submissions for consideration of your opinion piece, topic introduction or testimonial should include the following:
1) An original opinion piece/topic introduction on a topic you feel should be addressed in one of the book's chapters (up to 800 words - click on "About the Book" to learn more about the chapter structure)
OR
An original testimonial about some aspect of your life as a transgender or gender-variant person (up to 800 words)
2) Your name, age, and location, along with a one-paragraph biography
3) A picture of you that can be placed next to your short piece in the book

Please direct all submissions to: laura at transbodies.com. (The @ symbol has been removed in order to avoid spam through this website. Please replace it when sending in your submission.)

Brittany Finder '12 Participates in Spirit Day

Wed, 03 Nov 2010 01:17:50 GMT

November 2, 2010

This article originally appeared in the October 26 edition of the Daily Hampshire Gazette.

A day when the color purple shows threads of solidarity against homophobia
By BRITTANY FINDER

SOUTH HADLEY -- On Oct. 20, I participated in Spirit Day. I joined hundreds of thousands of young people across the United States who wore purple in remembrance of the six youths who committed suicide after they were bullied or harassed because they were gay or were thought to be gay.

The suicides of LGBTQ youth covered by the media in recent weeks and months have sparked an important dialogue among Americans about the dangers of bullying and harassment.

As the Spirit Day Facebook page states: “This event is not a seminar nor is it a rally. There is NO meeting place. All you have to do is wear purple.”

According to the Gay & Lesbian Alliance Against Defamation (GLAAD) website, “purple symbolizes ‘spirit’ on the rainbow flag, a symbol for LGBT [lesbian, gay, bisexual and transgender] Pride that was created by Gilbert Baker in 1978.

The goal of Spirit Day is to show LGBT youth who are victims of anti-LGBT bullying and harassment that there is a vast community of people who support them.”

I wore purple on Spirit Day as part of the movement to show LGBTQ youth that millions of Americans accept and value them regardless of their sexual orientation or gender identity.

Anti-LGBTQ bullying and harassment is not a new phenomenon in our society.
According to Ashleigh Eubanks, a member of the Beyond Tolerance Project at Mount Holyoke College, “These [suicides] are not anomalies or isolated incidents . . . LGBTQ youth have been committing suicide for years now. They have the highest suicide rate among teenagers.”

While many people have been quick to blame information and communication technologies, including social networking sites such as Facebook and MySpace, for their role in creating new forums for bullying and harassment, “the [real] problem is with our society. We should take a look at the way we address or don’t address these issues.

This is all of our responsibility, as a whole,” says Eubanks. “These suicides are reflecting our [society’s] values and beliefs.”

As Eubanks implies, there are systems at work that permit and perpetuate deliberate, repeated, and hostile behavior intended to harm others.

We need to come together as a society, like we did on Spirit Day, to dismantle values and beliefs that endorse behaviors, like bullying and harassment, that disrespect others. The Aspire Project is working towards this goal.

Moreover, we need to show our youth, from all walks of life, that their differences are not just tolerated by society, but that they are accepted and valued, and that they are loved.

Brittany Finder is a student at Mount Holyoke College and Aspire Project contributor.

Center offers women's studies scholars 'a room of one's own'

Fri, 22 Oct 2010 15:29:19 GMT

Emma Ramsay, The Smith College Sophian

Issue date: 10/21/10 Section: Features

The Pioneer Valley has long been considered a locus for women's activism and scholarship. At present, 350 faculty in women's and gender studies reside in the area, constituting what is widely believed to be one of the largest concentrations of academics in the world.

Elizabeth Lehman, the assistant director of the Five College Women's Studies Research Center, explained that it was not until the early 1990s that faculty addressed the need for a collective venue.

"They recognized there needed to be a focal point for research on women and gender in the [Pioneer Valley]," she said.

FCWSRC has played host to over 300 scholars from nearly every state and 44 countries since it opened its doors in 1991. Around this time, the very concept of "women's studies" was still a relatively novel one.

"[The Center] named at a moment when women's studies was new," said current faculty director Laura Lovett. She said that the "informal network of programs" among each of the colleges was finally legitimized, gaining solid footing as a formal department, though she qualified, "It's still a term that's very much under discussion."

The FCWSRC offers its research associates and visiting scholars an impressive list of amenities, including a private office - or a "room of one's own," as Lehman put it - faculty-level library and archive access at each of the academic institutions in the area and formal affiliation with the Five Colleges.

While the only criteria for admittance into the program is any sort of women's or gender studies research, the application process is extremely competitive. Lehman noted that there are always more applicants than there are spaces, a trend unlikely to change given the center's growing prestige. Research associates' terms are limited to an academic year, and they cannot apply for a second once their term is up.

Facilities are situated in two stately Victorian houses on the Mount Holyoke College campus, where, in exchange for the services provided by the center, research associates give free public lectures explaining their work. Topics this semester run the gamut from "queer women's migration" to "historical materialism."

Aside from providing the necessary resources, the FCWSRC offers opportunities to delve into subjects they would not have time for otherwise given their hectic schedules. "[My work concerns] how writing and reading cookbooks offered women a way to participate in the construction of national and regional cultures," said Megan Elias of Queensborough Community College.

"I have also for a long time been interested in the gendered division of culture and society, which has never seemed to make sense to me," she explained. "It has always seemed like a ridiculous waste of resources."

When asked what she will miss the most when her time at the FCWSRC comes to end, Elias named the "feeling that all my time here is mine, not parceled out among different responsibilities - it has been a vacation from real life."

Elias emphasized the strong sense of community the FCWSRC fosters among its research associates. Fellow associate Karin Ekstram, a doctorate student from the University of Gothenburg studying gender and cultural changes in contemporary urban Spain, agreed.

"The leadership of the center [does] a great job at providing formalized opportunities for exchange...but also encouraging and helping [set up] writing groups and the like," Ekstram said in an e-mail.

The FCWSRC prides itself on expanding its global outreach, pooling an increasingly multicultural and multigenerational group each year. Some research associates come from institutions where women's and gender studies are firmly entrenched while others are anomalies among their colleagues at home. Regardless, research associates and faculty alike find the FCWSRC to be an empowering and intellectually stimulating work environment.

"Already, after five weeks, I am more confident in myself and my research," Ekstram said.

In an era when people still question the legitimacy of women and gender studies, Lehman suggested that the FCWSRC reaffirms that the fields are still relevant.

Tyler Clementi: It’s not bullying, it’s bigotry.

Wed, 13 Oct 2010 02:31:36 GMT

Posted: Thursday, October 7th, 2010 | Mount Holyoke News, themhnews.org

By MEAGHAN COLLINS '13
Staff Writer

This week, one of my closest friends from home, who attends a large, prestigious university, informed me that his mother begged and pleaded with him to remove his “interest” in men on Facebook after hearing the news of Tyler Clementi’s suicide. She did this not because she is ashamed of his sexual orientation, but because she is afraid for his life. This is the unfortunate truth. Many gay, lesbian, bisexual and transgendered individuals live in fear and shame because society still treats them as second-class citizens, deprived of basic human rights. How can we ask today’s youth not to bully individuals over their sexual orientation while simultaneously passing laws that strengthen bigotry against the LGBT community? This is the underlying issue surrounding the death of Tyler Clementi, the Rutgers University freshman who jumped to his death last month after discovering that his roommate secretly webcast footage of him having sex with another man. His tragic and horrifying death has struck a chord with the public, leaving people at a loss for answers.

Since the discovery of the footage, there has been wide coverage of the story in the news and media, and I admit that I became slightly enraged with the reporting. For example, news anchor Diane Sawyer began ABC’s news segment on Clementi’s suicide by attacking the “callousness” of kids today and the “destructive behavior” of cyber-bullying through Facebook and Twitter. I anxiously waited for the segment to discuss the underlying issue: why Clementi felt so much shame, and why his roommate felt he could breach Tyler’s privacy and openly mock and exploit him— but nothing was reported. We need to understand that this is more than cyber-harassment. This kind of bullying stems from homophobic bigotry manifested throughout mainstream society. First, where is the mainstream media—CNN, NBC and ABC (I won’t even bother to ask where FOX is) in unveiling the epidemic of suicides among gay adolescents? These news sources publicize the referendum results, the congressional decisions and the court verdicts that repeatedly reject equal rights for LGBT Americans. According to a 2007 Massachusetts youth risk survey, gay adolescents are four times more likely to commit suicide than straight adolescents. Where is CNN, ABC, and CBS when it comes to reporting about these victims?

Within the past couple of years, our generation has witnessed human rights withheld, even taken away—such as Proposition 8 in California which repealed the right of same-sex couples to marry. However, California isn’t the only state that voted against equal rights for the LGBT community. States all across the country have held referendums where the majority of the public voted against permitting gay and lesbian couples their equal right to marry, sadly including my own “blue” state of New Jersey. Despite compelling arguments, it didn’t make a difference. The majority of the public and state lawmakers voted for the LGBT community to be recognized as second-class citizens under the law. Governor Chris Christie recently stated in the aftermath of Tyler Clementi’s suicide, “As the father of a 17-year-old…I can’t imagine what those parents are feeling today, I can’t” This is the same governor whose political platform openly opposes legalizing gay marriage in New Jersey. This is not to say that Governor Christie does not empathize with the Clementi family, but having a political agenda against civil rights for LGBT Americans only furthers this bigotry and hate throughout New Jersey. I ask you, what message does this send to the LGBT youth of this country if they are not granted equal rights from their government?

The movement against LGBT rights’ expands even beyond the state level. Recently, Congress turned down the opportunity to finally repeal the Don’t Ask Don’t Tell Act originally created in the 1993. DADT literally restricts United States gay and lesbian soldiers from disclosing their sexual orientation. Meanwhile, these are the same soldiers that go wherever they are needed. For a country that denies them their basic human rights to be who they are and to love whoever they choose without fear of endangerment. This law declares that it is illegal to serve as a soldier in the U.S. Armed Forces if one is openly gay.

One cannot do any more damage to a human being than take away their basic human rights. Think about the loss of Tyler Clementi and the thousands of other lives caught in this cyclical torture of homophobic bullying. Bigotry is costing lives.

Resources such as The Trevor Project and Matthew’s Place are incredible tools for suicide prevention, and I urge everyone to make suicide prevention a top priority in the aftermath of this tragedy. However, the homophobic bullying and harassment will continue until laws and society’s treatment of the LGBT community change. Our generation needs to take a stand and fight for equal and just laws. This is our time to rid the shame and rid the fear. We cannot stand idly by any longer.

Campus Pride brings LGBT-friendly College Fairs to Charlotte , Portland , New York , Boston and Los Angeles starting October 2

Sat, 02 Oct 2010 13:00:07 GMT

Friday, October 1, 2010

By Staff Report

List continues to grow with over 50 colleges “coming out” to recruit hundreds of LGBT and ally prospective college students at fairs across the country

( Charlotte , N.C. ) – According to Campus Pride officials, “The time is now for colleges to come out of the closet.” Over fifty colleges from across the United States have pre-registered to attend one or more of the LGBT-friendly college fairs and to recruit hundreds of prospective lesbian, gay, bisexual, transgender (LGBT) and straight ally youth starting this October.

Campus Pride, a national non-profit working to create safer, more LGBT-inclusive colleges and build future LGBT and ally leaders, will kick off its first 2010-11 LGBT-friendly College Fair in Charlotte, N.C., on Oct. 2, Noon -3:30 p.m., at The NC Music Factory. The event, held in collaboration with the annual Pride Charlotte festival, Time Out Youth and the Lesbian & Gay Community Center of Charlotte , marks the first time the College Fair program has visited the Southeastern U.S. and the first time it will be held in conjunction with a Pride festival.

The second college fair will be held in Portland , Ore. , on Oct. 16, 1 p.m.-4:30 p.m. at the Q Center of Portland, 4115 N. Mississippi Ave. , Portland , OR , 97217 . The event, held in collaboration with the Q Center of Portland, marks the first time the College Fair program has visited Oregon and the Pacific Northwest .

Other cities on the tour include New York (Nov. 5), Boston (Nov. 6) and Los Angeles (April 9). More details on each event, which are free to current or prospective students and families, can be found online at www.campusclimateindex.org/events.

“Our LGBT-Friendly College Fair program presents unique opportunities for both prospective college students and those universities who seek to build more diverse, inclusive student bodies,” said Shane Windmeyer, executive director of Campus Pride. “Prospective students want to attend campuses that are a welcoming and safe place to learn, live and grow. These fairs across the country present an opportunity for campuses to ‘come out’ as LGBT-friendly — often for the first time.”

Last year, Campus Pride made a commitment to grow attendance at the Fair by partnering strategically with local LGBT and ally youth organizations as well as hosting in more progressive metropolitan “queer meccas” of LGBT activism – New York , Los Angles and Boston .

Windmeyer especially encourages colleges and universities in the Southeast and Pacific Northwest to take advantage of the opportunities presented to them in the Fair, and said: “The colleges participating in the national fair program send a clear message: ‘Gay students are welcome, even celebrated on this campus.’”

Over fifty colleges and universities have already committed to attending at least one of the Fairs, including: American Academy of Dramatic Arts, Appalachian State University, Bennington College, Binghamton University, Brandeis University, Bridgewater State University, Bucknell University, Carleton College, Charlotte School of Law, Clark University, Columbia College Chicago, Columbia University in the City of New York, Davidson College, Drexel University, Elon University, Emory University, EqualApp,Eugene Lang College, Everest College and Institute, Grand Valley State University, Guilford College, Ithaca College, Indian University-Purdue University Indianapolis, Marlboro College, Marymount Manhattan College, Michigan State University, Mount Holyoke College, North Carolina State University, Oregon State University, Penn State University, Point Foundation, Portland Community College, Richmond, the American International University in London, Southern Oregon University, SUNY Potsdam, Syracuse University, The Sage Colleges, Trinity College, Tufts University, UNC Charlotte, Union College, University of Maine, University of Oregon, University of Southern Maine, University of Vermont, University of Maine Farmington, Vanderbilt University, Vassar College, Warren Wilson College, Washington and Lee University, Washington State University, Washington State University Vancouver, Western Washington University – Fairhaven College and Whitman College.

Free and open to the public, the Campus Pride’s LGBT-Friendly College Fairs allow any student and their family the opportunity to interact with colleges and universities that value LGBT and ally people. Registration for schools is $195 to $250 per fair for each institution and is open to any college or university across the United States . Each fair will also feature expert advice about LGBT-friendly colleges, scholarship resources and even effective tips for campus visits.

To learn more about Campus Pride programs and services, please visit www.CampusPride.org or email info@campuspride.org.

President christens boat, rows with crew team on river

Mon, 20 Sep 2010 16:11:32 GMT

By Candy Gonzalez '14
Sports Editor

Candy Gonzalez

Elizabeth Bernal ‘11, Emily Carol ‘11, Cleo Schneider ‘11, Director of Athletics Laurie Priest, Robin Kranzler ‘11, Lynn Pasquerella, Sarah Patches ‘11, Executive Assistant to the President Irasema Perrault and Sarah Baughman ‘11 row the Lynn Pasquerella on the Connecticut River on Sunday morning.

Friends, family, alumnae and students gathered at the Mount Holyoke Community Boathouse on Sunday morning to see the president of the College christen and then row a new boat.

President Lynn Pasquerella and Head Crew Coach Jeanne Friedman poured river water and champagne over the new boat to christen it, as part of a team tradition that originated in the 90’s. Then Pasquerella, six varsity rowers, an alumna and Director of Athletics Laurie Priest rowed the Lynn Pasquerella out onto the Connecticut River.

Boats can cost anywhere from thirty to thirty-four thousand dollars. In the crew team’s case, most of these funds come from donations from alumnae, parents and friends, according to Friedman.

Rowing boats come in different shapes designed to meet the needs of the rowers. The new boat’s flat-bottomed frame provides optimal stability so that the boat is less likely to tip in the water. Experienced rowers opt for narrower boats which are more difficult to balance on the water but are faster. The Lynn Pasquerella ’80, with its wider frame, best suits novice rowers who are just learning how to distribute their weight on a boat.

Friedman felt that the stable, reliable structure of the boat mirrors Pasquerella’s leadership style. Pasquerella’s first year of presidency coincides with the new boat’s first year on the water. Hence, the decision was made by the Board of Directors of the Friends of Rowing to name the boat after Pasquerella.

“As Lynn is getting her feet wet in her novice year, we thought it appropriate to name our novice boat ‘Lynn,’” Friedman said.

Pasquerella, who received a letter announcing the boat’s name a month ago, said she was moved to tears at the news.

“It means a lot to have something that supports student athletics bear my name,” Pasquerella said.

When asked whether she would consider rowing her boat in the future, Pasquerella responded: “I would love to; [rowing] is certainly therapeutic.”

Contacting My Sperm Donor – I Am A Kid who is All Right!

Mon, 23 Aug 2010 12:34:06 GMT

Source: LezGetReal.com

By -Emily McGranachan; (Posted as Guest of Melanie Nathan)- August 22, 2010 -

The media is buzzing about the new film “The Kids Are All Right”, which premiered earlier this month. Its release was exciting for me because for the first time I saw characters who closely reflected my family’s makeup, though the rest of the story, not really. I too have two mothers and a sperm donor who I contacted when I turned eighteen. The outcome was different and far less drama surrounded my family when I was finally able to contact and meet my donor, though there were still plenty of surreal moments. The reaction to the film has been extremely varied, from people thrilled to see representation of a lesbian-headed household, to those who see the events depicted in the film as reinforcement of the notion that children need to know and live with their biological mother and father.

Growing up in Massachusetts through the marriage equality debate in 2004 and all subsequent movements, I have long been combating false beliefs that LGBTQ people should not get married or raise children. I have lesbian mothers and I have a sperm donor. This in no way has made me less of a person, daughter, woman, or friend. To me, what makes a good parent is dedication to raising and loving a child. The number, gender, or sexuality of the parents does not determine the ability to help a child grow into a compassionate and kind person. To tell the truth, I feel lucky to have grown up with the knowledge that my mother put a great deal of time, money, and thought into having me. I have never doubted that I am loved because I know how much my mother wanted to have a child and did everything she could to have me.

While I understand that some people believe that the married, heterosexual, biological family is the only valid familial model, I refuse to let this stereotype go unchallenged. I have two mothers, only one of whom is biological, and no father. Rather than somehow leaving a negative affect, my family has helped me become a more open, loving, passionate, and socially aware individual. Growing up I was surrounded by many wonderful adult role models, some of whom were male. Of course I thought about my sperm donor, who he was, why he donated, what it would be like to meet him. The reason for me was never about searching for a parent I had lost or a piece of me that was missing, it was about meeting and thanking the person who enabled Cathy and Nancy, my mothers, to become parents.

I had never met another person with a lesbian, gay, bisexual, transgender or even queer parent until I was thirteen. That summer my family went to Provincetown, Massachusetts for Family Week where I participated in workshops provided by COLAGE. COLAGE is the only national youth-driven network of children, youth, and adults with LGBTQ parents. I would not be writing this if I had never come to know COLAGE and the others with LGBTQ parents I met through COLAGE. That summer I found my center and my political voice. Through the years COLAGE has helped me become a better advocate for myself and my family. This summer I am an intern at COLAGE and I am assisting in the distribution of the Donor Insemination (DI) Guide. The DI Guide is part testimonials and part advice focusing on the questions and concerns of donor-conceived children and their families. I have been able to watch the DI Guide go from an idea to a tool for families.

It has been almost three years since I began the process of contacting my sperm donor. Four months after I turned eighteen I had the name and address of my donor and within the year I learned I had two half-sisters who shared the same donor. I think the most incredible part of meeting my donor and half-siblings was putting an end to the mystery. After years of playing around with different scenarios in my head, or coming up with the reasons that Harvey Fierstein was my donor, I lost mystique but gained very real new friends and family. Now family gatherings include my two sisters, two of their siblings, our collective six lesbian mothers, and our donor and his wife. Certainly we are still getting to know each other, but there is an undeniably authentic connection between all of us.

Along with identical chins, my half-sisters and I have followed very similar paths. One sister, who is four months older than me, was a sophomore at Smith College as I began my first year at Mount Holyoke College. The schools are both women’s liberal arts colleges and twenty minutes apart. Together we met our other donor sister in March 2009. It turned out that this new sister is from a town ten minutes from my own, that we have mutual acquaintances, and I had heard about her a year before I met her. At a drama festival at her high school I met a guy who had taken the girl in town with lesbian mothers to her senior prom the previous year. In my favorite “small world” story, my sister and I took the same guy to our senior proms. I do not look like anyone in my family, but I do look a lot like her. The photos, both of us wearing blue dresses, are just incredible. Thankfully, we did not both date “our” prom date.

Meeting my donor and my new extended family did not alter my relationship with my parents. They were completely supportive of my desire to contact my donor and they were with me when I met him. I did not begin this adventure to seek a father and, though my donor is a wonderful person and a part of my life now, he is not my father. I have two parents and that is enough for me, but I am thrilled to have him as part of my growing family. For some people, family is a rigid concept. For me, family is not limited by genetics or living in the same home. My family is filled with moms, grandparents, half-siblings, friends, cousins, and a sperm donor. It may seem unfamiliar to some, but this is my family and together we are more than all right.

-Emily McGranachan

Emily McGranachan ’12 – Love Makes a Family

Hometown: Georgetown, Massachusetts

Emily McGranachan found her voice at the age of 13 while attending the COLAGE (Children of Lesbians and Gays Everywhere) Family Week in Provincetown, Massachusetts. Its “life-changing lessons” gave her “a sense of empowerment.”

As a resident of Massachusetts, McGranachan often heard people debate what rights her family should have. Now a guest speaker with the Freedom to Marry Tour, she has shared her story and “introduced people to a child of a same-sex household” on several radio stations nationwide.

McGranachan has also worked to encourage tolerance and activism on a local level, serving as president of her high school Civil Rights Team and as a volunteer at a family homeless shelter through Horizons for Homeless Children. “These children inspire me,” she said. “In return I do my best to teach them kindness and compassion by being a positive role model.”

COLAGE is an organization, created in 1989 by the children of severallesbians and gay men who felt a need for support. Though its membership is not necessarily LGBT-identified, COLAGE’s focus on the issues of LGBT parents’ families makes it a de facto part of the LGBT community. There are 52 COLAGE chapters in the United States of America, 2 chapters in Canada, and oneEuropean chapter. COLAGE is run and operated by children (of all ages) who have a lesbian, gay, bisexualand/or transgender (LGBT) parent or parents. Older Colagers mentor younger members. They prepare them for any challenges that a child may have, having same sex parents. Members are open with each other and any topic can and is discussed. COLAGE teams each summer with Family Pride and holds its annual Family Week in Provincetown on Cape Cod. There, hundreds of gay families come to enjoy the summer and the kids attend COLAGE meetings and workshops.
COLAGE is based out of San Francisco, California and has small number of paid staff. Its executive director is Beth Teper who has a lesbian mom and today is an advocate for children who have same sex parents.

Massachusetts Princeton Review Rankings

Wed, 04 Aug 2010 12:58:36 GMT

Best Athletic Services
No. 20, Boston University

Best Campus Food
No. 14, Franklin W. Olin College of Engineering

Best Career Services
No. 1, Northeastern University
No. 6, Bentley University
No. 13, Smith College
No. 19, Stonehill College
No. 20, Worcester Polytechnic Institute

Best Classroom Experience
No. 1, Mount Holyoke College
No. 5, Franklin W. Olin College of Engineering
No. 6, Wellesley College
No. 7, Williams College

Best College Library
No. 1, Harvard College
No. 14, Bentley University

Best College Newspaper
No. 7, Harvard College

Best College Radio Station
No. 3, Emerson College

Best College Theater
No. 2, Emerson College
No. 20, Bard College at Simon's Rock

Best Quality of Life
No. 7, Franklin W. Olin College of Engineering
No. 9, Smith College

Birkenstock-Wearing, Tree-Hugging, Clove-Smoking Vegetarians (Highly liberal, drug-using, LGTB-accepting; low levels of religion and student government participation)
No. 2, Hampshire College
No. 9, Bard College at Simon's Rock
No. 11, Emerson College

Class Discussions Encouraged
No. 2, Hampshire College
No. 7, Bard College at Simon's Rock

College Town Not So Great
No. 5, Wheaton College
No. 18, College of the Holy Cross
No. 20, Clark University

Dodgeball Targets (Greek system and sports are unpopular)
No. 4, Hampshire College
No. 10, Bard College at Simon's Rock
No. 11, Emerson College

Dorms Like Palaces
No. 2, Smith College
No. 4, Franklin W. Olin College of Engineering
No. 18, Bentley University
No. 20, Harvard College

Easiest Campus to Get Around
No. 7, Franklin W. Olin College of Engineering

Election? What Election? (Least politically active)
No. 4, Stonehill College
No. 9, Worcester Polytechnic Institute

Everyone Plays Intramural Sports
No. 9, Stonehill College

Financial Aid Not So Great
No. 11, Emerson College
No. 19, Babson College

Got Milk? (Beer is not widely used)
No. 15, Wellesley College

Great College Towns
No. 8, Emerson College
No. 13, Northeastern University
No. 17, Boston University

Great Financial Aid
No. 1, Franklin W. Olin College of Engineering
No. 4, Harvard College
No. 18, Williams College

Happiest Students
No. 3, Tufts University
No. 4, Franklin W. Olin College of Engineering

Intercollegiate Sports Unpopular or Nonexistent
No. 10, Hampshire College
No. 12, Franklin W. Olin College of Engineering
No. 18, Bard College at Simon's Rock

Least Accessible Professors
No. 12, University of Massachusetts-Amherst

Least Beautiful Campus
No. 7, Massachusetts Institute of Technology

Least Religious Students
No. 7, Bard College at Simon's Rock
No. 9, Emerson College
No. 10, Hampshire College

LGBT-Friendly
No. 1, Emerson College
No. 4, Franklin W. Olin College of Engineering
No. 6, Bard College at Simon's Rock
No. 7, Wellesley College
No. 14, Hampshire College
No. 16, Mount Holyoke College
No. 19, Smith College

LGBT-Unfriendly
No. 10, Boston College

Little Race/Class Interaction
No. 9, Boston College
No. 18, College of the Holy Cross

Long Lines and Red Tape (Administration overly bureaucratic)
No. 9, Hampshire College

Lots of Race/Class Interaction
No. 3, Franklin W. Olin College of Engineering

Most Accessible Professors
No. 5, Williams College
No. 10, Stonehill College
No. 13, Wellesley College

Most Beautiful Campus
No. 5, College of the Holy Cross
No. 7, Mount Holyoke College
No. 11, Wellesley College

Most Liberal Students
No. 1, Hampshire College
No. 15, Mount Holyoke College
No. 16, Emerson College
No. 19, Clark University

Most Politically Active Students
No. 3, Mount Holyoke College
No. 7, Bard College at Simon's Rock
No. 11, Harvard College
No. 12, Hampshire College
No. 16, Smith College

Most Popular Study Abroad Program
No. 3, Tufts University
No. 13, Stonehill College

Most Religious Students
No. 18, Brandeis University

Nobody Plays Intramural Sports
No. 3, Emerson College
No. 12, Hampshire College
No. 13, Bard College at Simon's Rock

Professors Get High Marks
No. 2, Wellesley College
No. 6, Franklin W. Olin College of Engineering

Reefer Madness (Marijuana widely used)
No. 8, Hampshire College
No. 20, Emerson College

Scotch and Soda, Hold the Scotch (Hard liquor is not widely used)
No. 15, Wellesley College
No. 18, Simmons College

School Runs Like Butter
No. 9, Mount Holyoke College
No. 10, Amherst College

Stone-Cold Sober Schools
No. 12, Wellesley College
No. 18, Mount Holyoke College
No. 19, Franklin W. Olin College of Engineering

Students Pack the Stadiums
No. 10, Boston College

Students Study the Most
No. 1, Massachusetts Institute of Technology
No. 5, Franklin W. Olin College of Engineering
No. 11, College of the Holy Cross
No. 14, Williams College
No. 15, Mount Holyoke College
No. 16, Harvard College

Town-Gown Relations are Great
No. 3, Franklin W. Olin College of Engineering
No. 10, Stonehill College

Town-Gown Relations are Strained
No. 9, College of the Holy Cross

Gay pride: For the 29th time, gay rights march hits Northampton streets Saturday

Thu, 29 Apr 2010 11:31:25 GMT

By KRISTIN PALPINI
Staff Writer
Daily Hampshire Gazette, Tuesday, April 27, 2010
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GAZETTE FILE PHOTO
Mount Holyoke students walks with the western Massachusetts chapter of COLAGE, a national organization of children, youth and adults with one or more LGBTQ parents at the pride march last year.
NORTHAMPTON - The role of the annual gay pride parade in Northampton has changed over the years, becoming as much a celebration as it is a political action.
This year's event - the 29th Northampton march and rally - set for Saturday, boasts 60 contingents featuring dogs, bands and ponies, as well as a synchronized routine with shopping carts. The march steps off at noon from Lampron Park, heading downtown, turning down Crafts Avenue at City Hall to end in the parking lot behind Thornes Marketplace for a rally featuring music, speakers, and dancing.
About 10,000 people annually attend the parade and related events, organizers said.
Revived this year is an event Friday night leading into Saturday's pride festivities, a "Dyke March" beginning with a rally at 6 p.m. at the Unitarian Society of Northampton and Florence at 221 Main St., and then proceeding to "The Dyke Dance: For Dykes and the People that Love Them" at Union Station from 7:30 p.m. to midnight. Performers will include musicians June Millington, Jesse Molina and The Ellingtones.
"I think the role of the parade in Massachusetts has changed," said Bear White, director of Noho Pride, the organization behind the march this year.
"The parade has turned into more of a parade than a march here because we are so lucky, we are able to be more of who we are in the Valley," White said.
But behind the balloons, posters, and floats there is still political motivation for the demonstration, said White.
"We do continue to fight for our rights, for the rights of the LGBT community," White said. "Acceptance is very high here, but I can't say it's 100 percent."
Although there have been some recent victories for gay rights, including a federal mandate to extend visitation and medical decision-making rights to same-sex couples and the legalization of same-sex marriage in five states including Massachusetts, Iowa and Vermont, inequality for gay people persists.
Not all states allow gay and lesbian couples to adopt children, for example, and the federal government does not prohibit discrimination based on sexual orientation in employment, according to the Human Rights Campaign, an LGBTQ (lesbian, gay, bisexual ,transgender, and queer) rights organization.
The first gay pride parades were held in 1970 to commemorate the Stonewall Riot in New York City, which went on to spark the gay rights movement. Pride parades are now held annually in many major metropolitan centers.
Northampton's parade, however, is likely the only one that will feature shopping cart choreography.
About a dozen members of the River Valley Market, a 2-year-old North King Street food co-op, have been practicing their shopping cart handling skills in the store's parking lot every Saturday morning since March. Their synchronized moves will fit with marching band tunes, said Rochelle Prunty, the market's general manager.
"Do you know what a precision drill team concept is?" Prunty asked when queried about what exactly shopping cart choreography is. "Think of that, but not professionally and with shopping carts."
Prunty said River Valley Market members decided to dress up their carts and join the parade because of their commitment to diversity in food as well as the community.
"It's a major community event and we're a community organization," Prunty said. "It seemed like the right thing to be a part of. We're definitely committed to diversity at all levels."
In addition to the parade, events celebrating gay pride Saturday include a drag performance by Georgia Star Michaels as well as musical appearances by Kristen Gass, LezleeAnne, Kelly King, Jason Antone and Stewart Lewis. A spoken word performance by Ayisha Knight-Shaw, who is deaf, is scheduled for 3:55 p.m. and the evening will be capped with a dance and "Queerioke" contest. The day's emcees are Latin Heat, Lorelei Erisis and Tammy Two-Tone. Speakers will include Tinker Donnelly, who will give a spiritual address on the "rights" spring, and Northampton Mayor Clare Higgins.
Later that night Noho Pride is partnering with the Iron Horse Music Hall for Pride After Dark, a concert with Melissa Ferrick.
"This has gotten pretty big," said White. "I encourage everyone to come and be a part of it."
For more information or to volunteer in the parade visit www.nohopride.org.
"Dyke March"
It's been a while since Northampton has had a Dyke March, said event organizer Suzanne Seymour, executive director of the LGBT Coalition of Western Massachusetts, a nonprofit based in Northampton. The city hasn't hosted such a march since the early 1990s, she said.
Dyke Marches are typically held on the eve of gay pride parades in major metropolitan areas, she noted. Cities including Boston, San Francisco and New York City have marches planned this year for June.
The marches are intended to promote lesbian issues, said Seymour, and celebrate the accomplishments of lesbians past and present. The Dyke March and the Noho Pride Parade are separate events organized by separate organizations.
Seymour said a major theme of the march is to "take back the word." Dyke is a derogatory term for a lesbian, but Seymour said the word is also used comfortably in the gay community.
"We need to recognize that words have power to hurt or to heal us and for many years the word dyke has been used as a way to injure the spirit and it is time to reclaim the name," she said.
"Some people may not want to be called a dyke," said Seymour, "but I think it's important to start the dialogue on this."
Seymour said marches have been controversial in the past, not just for their name, but for who is allowed to march. The marches typically limit participants to gay women, with supporters cheering from the sidewalks. The Northampton march, however, welcomes anyone who identifies as a dyke to march. This includes transsexual men and women, Seymour said.
Seymour said she anticipates about 500 people will attend Friday night's march.
"People see gay rights as normal, at least in the Happy Valley they do, but it's still something people struggle with all over the country and within our own state," Seymour said. "We feel the need to educate people about the struggle that has come before us."
For more information about the march visit www.lgbtcoalitionwma.org.

'Lesbian Health 101' seeks to open doors, minds

Tue, 23 Mar 2010 14:35:02 GMT

Source: SF Gate, 03/23/10

February 14, 2010|By Erin Allday, Chronicle Staff Writer

When Dr. Patricia Robertson held the first lesbian health clinic at San Francisco General Hospital in 1978, she decided to cover the "family planning" signs in the lobby - she didn't want to deter patients who thought gynecologists were only for dispensing birth control and helping women get pregnant.

Health resources have improved for lesbians in the three decades since. But noticeable gaps in health care remain. Lesbians are more likely than straight women to suffer depression and drug and alcohol abuse. They may be less likely to get regular health screenings like pap smears and breast exams.

With those disparities in mind, Robertson and Suzanne Dibble, a registered nurse with the Institute for Health and Aging in the UCSF School of Nursing, have put together the first textbook on lesbian health care. "Lesbian Health 101" was released this month.

"We wanted to put together evidence-based research that would support clinical guidelines, so when we talk about why lesbians are different from heterosexual women we can back that up," said Robertson, who is a professor in the UCSF department of obstetrics, gynecology and reproductive sciences. "Doctors are going to be able to legitimize their advice after they read this book."

Chapters in the nearly 600-page book focus on a wide variety of health issues, from heart disease and breast cancer to partner violence and how to decide which woman in a relationship should get pregnant.

Some sections focus on the risk factors that affect lesbians more than straight women - higher smoking rates, for example, or what effect not having children might have on breast cancer risks - while others address how doctors can best meet the particular needs of lesbian patients.

Many of the health issues that affect lesbians can be tied to stress related to their sexual orientation, Dibble said. Discrimination, the stress of coming out to family and friends, or feeling ostracized and alone can all lead to health problems.

"People sometimes think that the only difference between lesbians and straight women is how we have sex. But the difference is more in our families, our friends, and the stigma associated with being a lesbian that affects health," Dibble said. "If you could get rid of the stigma I don't think you'd need the book."

Much of writing by lesbians

The textbook is written in medical language and designed for doctors, nurses and other health care providers, although Robertson and Dibble say they're encouraging lesbians to use it as a resource for understanding their own health issues. Most of the chapters were written by health care providers who are also lesbian.

Much of the book centers around how health care providers can make their practices more sensitive and responsive to lesbian patient needs. For example, the first chapter discusses the various reasons why lesbians may put off doctor visits - everything from fearing discrimination to simply believing they don't need to see a gynecologist as often as straight women.

"If you go into an ob-gyn office and you are inundated with baby pictures, how do you feel if you're a lesbian with no kids?" Dibble said. "We want health care providers to signal that it's a good thing for lesbians to come in - that it's fine, that it's A-OK. You want things in your office that are culturally appropriate, even if it's just a sign that we don't discriminate."

Doctors also need to be prepared to offer health resources specific to lesbian needs, Dibble said. That might mean tracking down support groups with a lesbian focus for depression or substance abuse, or identifying a local women's shelter for lesbians who have been the victim of domestic violence.

Vital reference for doctors

Dr. Erica Breneman, an obstetrician-gynecologist with Kaiser Permanente in Oakland, said she's pleased to see such a textbook available to doctors now, even if it's troubling that the book is even necessary.

"In a perfect world, we wouldn't need this," Breneman said. "A woman who happens to be gay shouldn't need much that's terribly different than a woman who is straight. But the reality is, because of the particular demographics of lesbian women, they do have other health issues."

Student opinion ranges widely on new cultural house hours

Thu, 04 Mar 2010 14:37:48 GMT

Source: Mount Holyoke News, 03/04/10

Beginning last semester, Mount Holyoke's cultural houses, formerly open only between the hours of seven and 11 p.m, became available to all students at any hour of the day through One-Card access. The change, proposed by Coordinator of Multicultural Affairs Tanya Williams, was intended to create not only less of a time constraint on the use of the cultural houses, but also to expose the larger Mount Holyoke student body to the cultural life on campus.

Mount Holyoke has five cultural houses: the ACE House, or Asian Center for Empowerment, the Betty Shabazz House, a cultural space for students of African descent, the Eliana Ortega Cultural Center, cultural space for the Latina community, the Jeannette Marks House for the lesbian, bisexual and transgendered community, as well as the Zowie Banteah Cultural Center to serve the needs of the Native American community. Previously, if a student wanted to access one of these cultural houses, they would need to come between the hours of 7 and 11 p.m. to be let in by a house sitter.

"I just felt odd about that time constraint, and the cultural houses sitting there for most of the time collecting dust unnerved me. There are no longer house sitters but instead we now have cultural house programming teams. There is a program coordinator as well as two program assistants for each house. Their job is to produce programming within the house such as movie nights, cooking and more educational things open to all of campus. They also have the responsibility of coordinating Cultural Heritage Month," said Williams.

While this change has created an opportunity for all Mount Holyoke students to be further educated on the vibrant cultural life on campus, the cultural houses were originally created to be a safe space for underrepresented groups, and some fear this will jeopardize the well-being of those students.

"It's going to be harder for certain people who use the cultural houses to feel like they have a safe place on campus. The cultural houses were created to provide a safe place for students who may find it hard to be in a place like Mount Holyoke where the dominant culture is imposed. By opening them up to everyone it may make some students feel uncomfortable,” said Maria Diaz '10.

Williams remains optimistic about the transition but also made clear that this is a pilot and will only continue as long as the cultural houses remain to function as they were originally intended.

"It's a change I am excited about but I have my reservations. The houses were created for some comfort to exist. With this change the houses have not been taken away, but there is a concern people will not treat the houses with respect. We haven’t seen anything like this yet, but we have to educate the whole campus how to treat them with respect," said Williams.

Many students who have never been inside any of the cultural houses are thrilled with the change and foresee an ultimately positive outcome.

"I do agree that it could make members of the cultural groups feel uncomfortable, but it will also help everyone learn more about those cultures. I think it will be beneficial to all Mount Holyoke students," said Melissa Roark '12.

Annie Arbuthnot '12 agreed, "I think cultural houses are meant to be used, and I think the more people that will be using them with the extended hours is better."

Though Williams said that not everyone has been in agreement with her on this decision, it is important to her that Mount Holyoke as a community learn why these houses exist and agree on how to treat them.

"Until Mount Holyoke as a larger community really feels completely safe the houses can be tricky because I don't want to take safe space away from students. But in the past the houses were not used to their fullest," said Williams. "It is a risk I'm willing to take."

Williams also noted that cultural houses on many other college campuses such as Swarthmore College typically have a full staff affiliated with each house as well as programming and a library. "We have a building but I'm trying to develop a staff made up of work-study positions for each house."

"Mount Holyoke is not perfect. My job wouldn’t exist if it was. We're not there yet but this is one of the things we're working toward. You can create the Mount Holyoke you dream of."

Emily Dickinson's desire explored in U.S. novel

Thu, 25 Feb 2010 14:38:25 GMT

Source: Reuters, 02/25/10

(2010-02-24)

(REUTERS) -

By Christine Kearney

NEW YORK (Reuters) - The voice of Emily Dickinson has been reimagined in a new novel exploring the lustful thoughts of one of America's greatest poets, who still stirs debate more than 120 years after her death.

"The Secret Life of Emily Dickinson" hit U.S. bookstores this week and offers a new take on the life of the 19th century poet beginning with her real-life stay at Mount Holyoke female seminary in her hometown Amherst, Massachusetts.

Neither completely fiction nor biography, it is written in the first person with the male author assuming Dickinson's voice. It follows two recent biographies but is the first novel to present Dickinson in the first person.

Other recent books re-imagining dead writers have reinterpreted and sexualized such authors as Emily Bronte and Jane Austen.

"She is very much in the current psyche," the book's author, Jerome Charyn, said in an interview this week. "We have come to discover how modern she is and suddenly in the 21st century she seems to us as if she were alive right now."

From the novel's outset the author turns to the much-debated secret love life of the independent-minded poet, who was interpreted in 1970s literary criticism as someone who rebelled in her writing against notions of 19th century femininity which confined women to households and marriage.

While bringing in several real life characters such her sister-in-law and her father, the author debunks notions Dickinson was a lesbian or sexually frustrated. Instead the book has her fantasizing over several fictional men, including a blond handyman called Tom.

"My own feeling as a 21st century reader is that she was not gay, she was not a lesbian," said Charyn. "It is very evident in her letters."

Reviews say the novel explores new dimensions of Dickinson, but that it was hard to assume her voice.

The novel follows two recent biographies including "Lives Like Loaded Guns: Emily Dickinson and her Family's Feuds" by Lyndall Gordon and Brenda Wineapple's "White Heat."

In 2008, author Joyce Carol Oates released "Wild Nights!" -- a title borrowed from Dickinson's poem of longing -- that imagined the last documented days of Dickinson and four other writers including Edgar Allan Poe, Mark Twain, Henry James and Ernest Hemingway.

(Editing by Mark Egan and Cynthia Osterman)