Transgender and gender-nonconforming students need role models. But where are those role models to come from if colleges don’t hire more transgender faculty?
Recently, I was an educator in residence at Camp Pride, a leadership academy, on the campuses of the University of North Carolina at Charlotte and Johnson C. Smith University, for LGBTQ+ college students and advisers. And even there, I was one of only two openly transgender academics — because there’s not exactly a huge pool to draw from.
Trans people have gotten a lot of media exposure lately and a new level of at least ostensible acceptance. The actress Laverne Cox was on the cover of Time Magazine last year. The writer and activist Janet Mock has hosted shows on MSNBC. And, of course, Caitlyn Jenner has become a veritable industry, spurring regional news outlets to seek out local activists to provide story angles close to home. All this has given the impression that the lives of trans people on the whole are comfortable and safe.
Not so.
In 2011, the National Center for Transgender Equality and the National LGBTQ Task Force published the results of the National Transgender Discrimination Survey, the most comprehensive look to date at the lives and challenges of transgender people across the country. The numbers were astonishing — and depressing. Of the approximately 6,450 respondents, 78 percent reported being victims of harassment, 35 percent reported being physically assaulted, and 12 percent reported being sexually assaulted. The hostile climate led 15 percent to drop out of school or college. Survey results showed disproportionately high levels of homelessness, incarceration, job loss, eviction, and denial of medical services, all due to bias.
The simple dignity of being called by one’s preferred name eludes many transgender students I’ve spoken to. In the survey, only 21 percent of those who had transitioned gender reported that they had changed all of their important identification documents, while 33 percent reported that they had changed none. The bureaucracy varies widely from state to state, but costs range from $100 to more than $1,000. That creates a serious financial burden on a student who may come from limited means, especially when the student’s family is unsupportive and unwilling to pay.
There is no explicit federal law banning discrimination based on gender identity or gender expression, so trans people have to rely on updated interpretations of existing law. In 2014, the U.S. Department of Education made clear that Title IX of the Education Amendments of 1972 covers trans people. As a result, colleges have been reviewing their policies and practices to ensure that they are in compliance. Currently, 19 states, plus the District of Columbia and Puerto Rico, have banned discrimination based on gender identity or expression. But away from the coasts, in the heartland and the Southeast, legal protections are particularly wanting.
Colleges are trying to take up some of the slack. The University of Tennessee at Knoxville (December 2007), the Tennessee Board of Regents (February 2008), Vanderbilt University (October 2008), Rhodes College (July 2013), Middle Tennessee State (where I teach), and the Louisiana State University system have all updated their nondiscrimination policies. But much more needs to be done.
If discrimination and violence plague the transgender community generally, they are even graver threats to trans women of color, especially African-American or Latina. So far in 2015, some 20 trans people in the United States have been killed, and most of them were trans women of color. Hiring more trans academics and other professionals from communities of color will send a powerful message that we are important, contributing members of society. I’m under no illusion that that will suddenly end the violence and oppression, but greater numbers in positions of privilege and respect will go a long way toward helping overcome stigma, stereotype, and oppression.
What might that greater faculty presence look like? It would — in fact it already does — vary considerably.
I’m middle-aged, and my trans peers and I typically chose to get tenure before coming out of the closet. Many even then adopted stealth identities, downplaying their trans lives. I got tenure at one institution, left, came out, then began at another. I had a pre-transition life and a post-transition life; in truth they were very similar.
In class I don’t talk about my personal life. I consider my gender identification and history private and irrelevant to my role as a professor. In contrast, I am very out as an activist, and many of my students are probably aware of that. Still, I keep my political work off campus.
Colleges support diversity in their missions; now they must support it in their hiring, promotion, and admissions.
Many of my younger colleagues, like Kai Green, have taken a different approach. Green is a transgender man and teaches at an urban, private university, Northwestern. He wrote in an email to me that “as a black transgender man, in the classroom I usually am given a certain amount of male privilege, at least until my students learn that I am trans. Because I teach African-American studies and queer studies, these are topics that are up for intellectual engagement, but of course a lot of these topics also become attached to my body because I am black and transgender. Many of my students have never encountered a transgender person, and for a lot of my black students it becomes a big lesson in helping them to understand the diversity within black communities.
“I think it’s always important to emphasize the importance of the personal being inextricably linked to the political because many of these students are not going to … study gender, sexuality, class, and race beyond my classroom. I want them to leave with critical tools to understand the world wherever they land, whether that be in a boardroom or a kitchen.”
My students have had exposure to black teachers, and many, at least in my trans-studies class, come from feminist or gay backgrounds and have some experience with trans people too. Being significantly older than my students, I also have a certain gravitas that puts at more ease those who might otherwise be uncomfortable. My younger colleagues will someday have that same experience if given time and opportunity.
Increasingly, students are out of the closet, pushing their departments to recognize both their talents and their gender identification and sexual orientation. Colleges support diversity in their missions; now they must support it in their hiring, promotion, and admissions. Yes, acceptance can be reflected in a warm greeting. But academics don’t live on greetings. They live on fair salaries, and benefits packages providing full health-care coverage, with all trans exclusions removed.
Many feminist and ethnic-studies programs exist today because students longed for and demanded them. They wanted to see professors whose life experiences reflected their own. Trans students, especially trans students of color, are no different.
You want a better, bolder, richer campus contributing to a fairer, stronger society? Then put your policies and your resources where your rhetoric is.
Marisa Richmond teaches history and women’s and gender studies at Middle Tennessee State University. In 2008 she became the first African-American transgender person from any state to serve as a delegate to the Democratic National Convention. She is also a lobbyist for the Tennessee Transgender Political Coalition.
