At Home with Self-Advocacy

For most people, going away to college is a life event that exists in the liminal space between exhilaration and terror. The myriad fears that rear their anxious heads come to taunt us all, in some form or another: will I make friends? Will people like me? Will I embarrass myself? Will I fit in? As I prepared to go away to college in 2013, similar anxieties haunted me, but one question loomed larger than the rest: will I be able to room with other girls, or will I be forced to room with guys?

I have always been vocal about my identity. When I was five, I argued with my mother that, one day, I, too, would be a mom. Cabbage Patch Doll snug in the crook of my arm, basketball tucked up under my shirt to emulate a pregnancy, I listened to her tell me that I would not, could not be a mother, and I saw my femininity as a threat to the outside world for the first time.

I came out as trans to family and friends at large when I was in high school. After one night of playing dress-up in thrifted couture and snapping photos at a friend's house, something clicked in me and I felt true euphoria at finally being able to express my gender openly and honestly. Like a butterfly emerging from its glittering chrysalis, I took flight and never looked back. This of course put me at odds with the backwoods, conservative people in my hometown, and high school became an incubation place for my gender dysphoria, a breeding ground for my insecurities as I struggled to fit in, but never quite managed. I dreamt of leaving home and blossoming into the real me as soon as I turned eighteen.

My top choice for college was an art school, well-known for its inclusivity, queer student community, and gender-neutral housing policies. My older sibling had attended the same school, and their experiences had inspired me to apply for the prestigious, and selective, Creative Writing Conservatory. I was accepted, and imagined myself starting a dazzling new chapter away from the small minds that had kept me confined, as if in a cage, for so long. To be on the safe side, I emailed the housing department in advance and explained my situation: I was an incoming trans woman who wanted to request appropriate accommodations and be housed with other women. I was promised that I would receive adequate housing that matched my gender.

The week before I was to move in to campus, my grandmother suffered a severe stroke and had to be hospitalized. My parents therefore were unable to help me move in, so my sister drove me to the university for move-in day. My fears had all dissipated since my talk with the housing department; I was full of excitement. As we drove, I thought about how to introduce myself to the other girls in my dorm. I wondered if there would be room for my makeup, how big the shared bathrooms were, if my roommate would mind me decorating my half of the room with Siouxsie Sioux posters and astrology tapestries and Stevie Nicks album covers. As I registered and signed in, I received my housing assignment.

When I pointed out that there was a mistake, I was told to speak to the housing department the following week. My stomach felt like a nest of serpents as my sister and I navigated the twisting streets that led like arteries into the heart of the campus where my dormitory sat, a squat building of drab brick and grimy glass. Inside, my heart grew heavy with the weight of invalidation as the hall began to fill with eager college-age men, all searching for their room assignments, brushing past me with confused expressions: the girl's dormitories were several floors above, yet, here I was, in the thick of the men's dorms. I walked to my double at the end of the hall and closed myself in, beginning the melancholy process of trying to make the space my own, but the pale cinderblock walls and dingy tile floors offered me no inspiration. Outside, the boisterous sounds of men getting familiar with one another filled the air. I prayed for the week to fly by so that I could speak with the housing director.

My door opened and a young man in khaki shorts and a polo shirt entered with two middle-aged parents. His mom set at once to organizing his closet space and making his bed while he and his father patrolled the space, eying me as I lined my own closet with latex and cheetah-print coats, sleek skirt-suits, and fetishistic performance garments. Every time their eyes passed over me, I felt myself shrink, like my mouth after too much red wine. I couldn't even escape to a private bathroom; the dorm had shared facilities at the other end of the hall, accessible only through a sea of gazes. The women's bathrooms in the dorms above might as well have been on different planets.

That week, I rose before the sun to get into the showers before any of the guys. Some mornings, as I washed hastily, I would hear friends shaving at the sinks or talking across the urinals. Every time I hurried out of the shower stall, draped in a cinched kimono with my hair swirled up in a towel, I felt like a sideshow exhibit among them; eyes and conjecture always followed in my wake. My grandmother passed away that week, and I was not even able to mourn comfortably.

The housing department's solution to my grievance was to move me from the dingy dorms with communal bathrooms to the newest dorm building where I would have a bathroom to share with only one other roommate. The downside was, I was still forced to room with a guy. It didn't matter that it was just us, or even that we both got along well; roommate selection was based on sex assigned at birth. Being roomed with a guy automatically outed me and nullified my identity. I requested the campus's gender-neutral housing accommodations, and was told they were reserved for upper-classmen. It infuriated me that a college I had chosen specifically because of its reputation within the queer community seemed to respect one's dignity only after a certain number of credit hours.

When I pressed the housing department about gender-neutral housing, I learned that it was reserved for the on-campus apartments, for juniors and seniors in good-standing. Since I could think of no correlation between grades and respect for one's identity, I asked for more information and found out that the policy also considered "gender-neutral" to be four roommates, two AFAB, two AMAB. Such archaic strictures rooted in biological essentialism made my skin crawl. Those rules were only gender-neutral in the sense that they neutralized gender and reduced us to our assigned sexes, the ink on a birth certificate.

Eventually, I wore the powers that be down with my criticisms of the outdated housing guidelines. I was tired of feeling uncomfortable in my living situation. Before I had left for college, everyone told me that these would be some of my happiest years; I was sick of feeling so isolated and hyper-visible, out of place, avoided. I was tired of the invalidation and disrespect, rushing my morning routine to avoid being caught in the shower by a crowd of guys or laughed at as I combed my hair. I had left home to embrace myself and show that self to the world, but my every attempt had been stymied by the very institution that I thought would be my salvation. I wanted to be respected, to have my gender acknowledged and taken into account when housing me, since I was paying tuition like everyone else.

My constant meetings with and emails to the director, the hours I spent sitting in the waiting room, it all seemed worth it when I was tasked with assembling a group of trans, non-binary, and gender-divergent students who could help me to rework the housing intake survey. We excised the questions pertaining to "sex" and instead opted for questions regarding identity and lived experience. We asked for students to provide their pronouns and their true names, and to say whether or not they felt comfortable living with cisgender peers. By the time we were done, the questionnaire looked completely different; it was validating and respectful, and sought to make all students feel represented, safe, and heard. Though it did not come into effect until after I graduated. I was able to leave college feeling a true sense of accomplishment; I had made an indelible difference that would ensure future students would never have to feel as ostracized uncomfortable as I had. My experiences paved the way for them to make their own gender-affirming collegiate memories without wrestling with the unnecessary red tape.

The lesson here is one we all should learn from, especially this Pride month. As a trans person, feeling a sense of inclusion can be frightening if you are like me and went so long feeling alienated from your family and peers. It can be challenging to fight for the right to be included but now, more than ever, it is necessary and life-saving. All of my experiences of social ostracism or ridicule for my gender expression paled in comparison to how unnatural it felt advocating for myself to the housing department, but I knew I deserved the right to be housed in a way that validated and affirmed me. Self-advocacy can make you feel more out of place than anything, but you owe it to yourself.

There are people who will listen, if you only raise your voice loud enough and demand it be heard.