Photo Credit: Parkway Baptist Church Youth Ministry Dress Code
Last weekend, I was at the National Collegiate Honors Council Conference. My awareness of how gendered the space at the conference was began before I even arrived in Boston. A week before the conference, all student attendees received an email from one of the student organizers; it included a gendered dress-code:
What to wear:
• MEN
-Slacks
-Polo or button up
-Tie not required
• WOMEN
-Blouse, sweater, or button up
-Skirt or slacks (a business appropriate dress is acceptable)
Though this is certainly not the most offensive dress code I have ever seen or heard about in contemporary society (see the picture on the left), the fact that it was gendered at all creates two distinct, separate spaces for men and women–and shuts out those who don’t identify fully as either.
I also found out that since CUNY was paying for myself and my fellow students to attend the conference, our hotel rooms could not be gender-mixed. I was bewildered: why couldn’t two students, adults, who mutually consented, share a multiple-occupancy room regardless of the students’ sex or gender identity? Having gender-inclusive housing is listed as a best practice to suppor transgender and other-gender nonconforming students at colleges and universities. There is also a list of colleges that provide gender-inclusive housing (CUNY’s not on it). But frankly, even for students who do identify as male or female, to not allow gender-mixed housing seems nonsensical. If this policy is based on creating a safe space for students, there’s an assumption being made that all students find same-sex housing to a be a safer space than mixed gender. Though this may be true for some students, it’s certainly not true for all.
A Boston Police Officer came to talk to students the first morning of the conference. Given the recent controversy and backlash against statements by a police officer in Toronto (the prompt for Slutwalks), I would have thought all police departments would make it a priority to retrain their officers on how to give a safety talk. Unfortunately, this wasn’t the case–the office repeatedly said that “girls” were more likely to get rufied, told “girls” not to walk around alone at night, and ended his talk with the explicit instructions “Don’t be the victim.” As if anyone would choose to.
Needless to say, there were no gender-inclusive restrooms at the conference, and their lack of inclusion betrayed a large lack of diversity at the conference. Of course, creating gender-inclusive restrooms can be tricky, as this recent post on Feministing (Gender-neutral restrooms are every BODY’s business) makes clear. But it’s possible, and it’s important to create these spaces so that situations don’t arise like the one recently reported in the Toronto Star (what is UP with Toronto?), in which a transgendered student was told to use a bathroom OUTSIDE of his school.
What was most striking for me, after our coursework on transgendered individuals, was realizing how gendered physical space is. As a woman, I already often find myself struggling to deal with the way gendered space subordinates women; I can’t even imagine the struggle transgender individuals face in trying to navigate spaces that specifically exclude them. Though we have created gender-inclusive spaces online, we need to now also create physical space that is gender-inclusive.
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