And even if there are, why would they matter? Women aren’t a suspect classification, so they aren’t entitled to strict scrutiny which is the justification used for affirmative action. Societal benefits scarcely matter outside of strict scrutiny; it’s just about the text of the law.
Not if they’re private. As already mentioned, there are also private all-male schools so it’s not like it’s only the ladies who have the option of a single-sex education. There aren’t many all-male schools left, but this seems to be largely because few men want to attend a college without women.
Depends on the college, and probably state law as to the legal sex of post-op transsexuals. I doubt this precise issue comes up a lot though, as the student would need to transition while in high school in order to enter college as a post-op. (Can someone even have the operation before they’re 18?)
The NYT article linked above is about a different, but related issue – female-to-male transgendered students at women’s colleges. I’ve known two such people personally myself. They went to two different women’s colleges; I attended one and later worked at another. One student wasn’t out as being transgendered while in school, as far as anyone knew he was just a kinda butch lesbian. The second was out at school but not to his family, so I don’t think the college knew he was transgendered when he was accepted. After a year he transferred because, although he liked the school and was actually quite popular, he didn’t think it was right to stay at a women’s college if he didn’t see himself as a woman.
If you just want to take classes at a women’s college you don’t need a sex change operation, though. You should be able to enroll in classes as a guest or non-degree student. It’s not impossible for a man to graduate from a women’s college, either. Several women’s colleges have special co-ed programs for distance students (online classes) or non-traditional age students. Some women’s colleges also have graduate degree programs, and I believe all of those are co-ed even if the undergraduate program is women-only.
If you don’t see the fundamental biological connection between sex and nudity, I’m not going to be able to explain it to you.
And if you believe that sex and gender are identical, you should at least question that position.
I talked about this in the thread we had on the “transsexuals in women’s colleges” article, but I’ll tell you again - when I was at ASC, there was a student who was taking male hormones. I don’t know if she was transitioning or not - she went by her female name, which sadly I no longer remember so I can’t recall if it was a “Esmerelda” or a “Pat” kind of name. She started taking the hormones and dressing in men’s clothing during the college years. She committed suicide in her junior or senior year. I feel she was much more accepted in this women’s college than she would have been elsewhere, but I know the percentage of transsexual people who kill themselves is very high and I’m sure there’s a good chance that her gender identity, whatever it was, had a part in her suicide. Anyway, there was no problem with her continued enrollment.
No, because not everybody enters college as an 18-year old straight out of high school. Lots of people take several years to work and then go to college.
Most don’t, though. And as I mentioned above, many women’s colleges have co-ed programs for non-traditional age students. So it wouldn’t matter if an older student was transsexual or not, male or female.
There is just as much connection between physical attributes associated with a particular race and nudity (penis jokes aside). So what is this “rationale for allowing facilities to provide a place for women to shower and change clothes without the presence of men” that “is clear to most people”? I always found segregated bathrooms and locker rooms puzzling and most people justify them with “If you don’t get it, then I can’t help you”.
If I’m a female attending Smith and I decide to cross-dress to look like a man, can I be expelled?
If you’re just wearing men’s clothing? Certainly not.
I was across town from you at UNT right around that same time. 
Are you kidding? Smith College has an annual Drag Ball. It’s not like no one there has ever seen a cross-dresser before. I have no doubt that there are butch lesbian students at Smith who wear a lot of men’s clothes already, and as I alluded to in my previous post, openly transgendered students aren’t unheard of at women’s colleges today. The second student I referred to above didn’t just dress as a man, he used a man’s name and his public Facebook profile explained that he was a “pre-everything” masculine-gendered person in a female body.
While single-sex colleges may seem rather old-fashioned to some, most are fairly liberal and they certainly don’t have strict dress codes or anything. A woman at Smith or any other women’s college isn’t required to wear a uniform or a dress. She can wear pretty much what she likes, just like women at other colleges. Even if you went streaking you probably wouldn’t be expelled over it.
At one point, public universities were required to maintain 15% minority students to keep their federal funding.
Oddly enough, at the black school I attended, I was informed that minority students included whites, hispanics and asians.
It appeared that most minority students at my college were in the graduate schools, incidentally.
The situation in the dorms was radically different.
Out of a couple thousand of the university’s on-campus students, the number of white students living on campus would have fit in my car.
I know this, because at one point we all went out to dinner…
What is stopping a man from applying to a woman’s college and claiming he is a female?
Shagnasty writes:
> I don’t think there are any actual all black colleges in the U.S. There are only
> historically black colleges which are different. They may hay have a 99% black
> student population but whites can attend as well and often do with cross-over
> classes with other schools. My home state of Louisiana has Grambling with a
> once famous football coaching program and a handful of white students have
> joined over the years.
I believe I’ve read that the “historically black” colleges in the U.S. now have anywhere from 95% to 50% black student populations. Historically black colleges are an anomaly of history which are slowly disappearing, just as separate men’s and women’s colleges are. Until the 1940’s and 1950’s, a lot of colleges were all white or all black. Not surprisingly, the all-white colleges tended to be better funded and thus provided the best education. When discrimination in college education was declared illegal, many of the best black high school students applied to the previously all-white colleges (which usually enforced higher admission standards). The black students who couldn’t make it into the previously all-white colleges still went to the previously all-black colleges, and not very many white students applied to them.
This meant that what was left were colleges with a vast majority of white students but a significant number of blacks and colleges that were nearly all black with only a very small number of whites. The nearly all black colleges were referred to historically black colleges. The colleges with a vast majority of white students were called . . . colleges. Nobody referred to them as historically white colleges, even though that’s what they are.
Since the 1950’s, some of the historically black colleges have shut down for lack of students. Gradually, white students have begun attending them in significant proportions, often local students who wanted someplace to attend that they could commute to from their homes. Just as the number of all-men’s and all-women’s colleges is slowly decreasing, the number of historically black colleges is slowly decreasing. It will be many decades before they all disappear, but it will happen.
Mr. Slant writes:
> At one point, public universities were required to maintain 15% minority
> students to keep their federal funding.
I don’t believe this. Cite? The proportion of minority students in most American public universities (except for the historically black ones) was never as high as 15%.
copperwindow writes:
> What is stopping a man from applying to a woman’s college and claiming he is a
> female?
What’s to keep a student from faking his SAT’s or high school grades to get into a college when otherwise he wouldn’t get in? Lying on your application is sufficient reason to be expelled. Any man who tried this would arrive for classes and announce, “Surprise, I’m actually a man,” and be promptly expelled.
I’ve got no cite, except for constantly being told this [as an interesting piece of trivia] by the school administration and faculty circa 1998.
If it was an urban legend, it was a well-circulated one…
There’s nothing at all stopping you from doing so, but I don’t know how you’d manage to fraudulently change your sex on all your previous academic-related records. Even if you pulled this paper hoax off successfully, your freshman roommate would surely complain when she found a man in her room.
If you’re determined to attend a woman’s college I don’t know why you’d go this route though, as there are a number of other legitimate ways a man can attend a women’s college.
How would they know I was a man? I’m certainly not going to start parading my penis around. I could just say that I’m a really good Cross dresser or a transvestite.
Explain to me your legitimate way to graduate with a degree from Barnard!
I dunno, the moustache might be a giveaway.
According to Wikipedia West Virginia State in now over ninety percent white. This might be the record.