Transgender Erasure at Harvard

Of the over 14,000 words in this year’s readings for Community Conversations, not one was the word “transgender.”

The gay rights movement’s obsessive focus on marriage equality has produced extraordinary progress on that front, but not enough has changed in the experiences of transgender and gender-nonconforming people, said Henri C. Garrison-Desany ’16, Harvard College Queer Advisory Council chair, in an interview.

“I think a lot of trans people are on guard when it comes to disclosing trans status. People just don’t feel comfortable because the world isn’t comfortable with them,” said Garrison-Desany.

Trans teen Leelah Alcorn’s recent suicide is painful evidence of this truth.

Garrison-Desany estimates that transgender and gender-nonconforming students represent two to five percent of the student body, and Alcorn was one of approximately 700,000 trans people in the U.S. at large. Yet, analyzing this year’s Community Conversations readings, one might assume they do not exist at Harvard: the packet made only an oblique, one-sentence reference to gender diversity (a “surgeon could have been a woman first, and then a gay man, or vice-versa”).

The failure of such a platform to offer even cursory coverage of this issue is symptomatic of systematic and institutionalized trans exclusion at Harvard. Last year’s successful gender-neutral housing campaign won mixed-gender blocking groups for sophomores, juniors, and seniors in the House system, but not for first-years. Harvard has an appalling paucity of gender-neutral restrooms. Very few faculty members and TFs ask for students’ preferred gender pronouns. And few students, Garrison-Desany said, are comfortable being out. Sexual assault workshops do not integrate the experiences of trans and gender-nonconforming students.

This exclusion is devastating.

Alcorn’s suicide is one of many: In a survey, 41 percent of transgender respondents said they had attempted suicide. The likelihood that transgender persons will do so increases if they are harassed or bullied in school, if they lose a job because of transphobia, and if they are physically or sexually assaulted.

Education on gender identity reduces stigma and harassment, but Harvard students are not getting this education. Indeed, the Community Conversations reading packet’s description of a “surgeon [who] could have been a woman first, and then a gay man” is ironic confirmation that education is sorely lacking and desperately needed. Directing focus toward the period in which a trans man was perceived as a woman, and endowing it with importance, is reductive and unfair. In fact, many transgender people do not identify with the gender they were assigned at birth, so the trans man referenced in the reading would likely never have identified as a woman.

This is the same misgendering to which Alcorn was subjected, her mother telling her “that [she] would never truly be a girl, that God doesn’t make mistakes, that [Leelah was] wrong.” The dangers of excluding and marginalizing transgender and gender-nonconforming students are real.

In April, representatives of The Diversity Report, a coalition of Harvard students of color, met with Dean of Freshmen Thomas A. Dingman ’67. The students voiced various concerns about institutional support for minority students, and the representation of all genders in Community Conversations was among them.

“We did note that there were a lot of pieces missing on queer issues and trans issues from the packet,” Sasanka N. Jinadasa ’15, a member of The Diversity Report, told me in an interview.

The Freshman Dean’s Office, Jinadasa said, seemed amenable to changes but noted that Harvard must purchase the right to reproduce readings. “It seems like… the FDO might not have wanted to or had the capacity to change the readings in that way.”

Willful apathy is not okay; concerns about the price of readings ring hollow given our nearly $40 billion endowment and the high rate of attempted suicide among transgender Americans.

“The world,” stressed Garrison-Desany, “is not a nice space for trans people.”

A majority of transgender Americans are mistreated at work and at school. Because of their gender identity and presentation, they are denied homes. They are harassed by the police and refused medical care. Like Alcorn, they are rejected by their friends and their families. They are misunderstood and marginalized by the people with whom they live.

Today’s Harvard students will become bosses and landlords. We will write laws, and enforce them. We will become doctors and parents, and we are already roommates. We will all impact the lives of transgender and gender-nonconforming people—without, it seems, learning about them or attending a school that really includes them.

Last week, Bruno Moguel Gallegos quoted Alcorn’s suicide note: “My death needs to mean something.” He offers a national agenda for policy change, but we have work to do at Harvard, too. All trans students must feel safe in restrooms and with their housing arrangements. More trans faculty members must feel safe enough to come out. Trans people must not be erased in our sexual assault workshops or in Community Conversations.

If we continue to exclude transgender and gender-nonconforming community members, we are complicit in the marginalization that is happening now—and in the discrimination, harassment, and suicides that will persist for years if we do not take action.

Leelah Alcorn’s death must mean something. At Harvard, it should mean an end to trans exclusion and the administration’s acknowledgement that no price is too high for the safety of our students. Above all, it should mean a staunch and definitive statement that transgender people exist, and that they belong here.

Of all the words in next year’s readings for Community Conversations, many more than one should be the word “transgender.”

Ted G. Waechter ’18 is a Crimson editorial writer living in Canaday Hall.