THINK AGAIN IN THE NEWS ABOUT GIRLS’ SCHOOLS AND WOMEN’S COLLEGES

Check out Natalie Swartz’s article in the Harvard Political Review, Coming Out While Staying In: How Transgender Students Are Pushing Girls’ Schools to Examine Gender Policies. Natalie interviewed Think Again’s Davey Shlasko:

Shlasko believes schools must work to address their communities’ concerns about students’ biological sex, which may prompt questions like, “What does this mean? Does that mean there will be a girl who has a penis?” “There’s some important work that needs to be done around helping people who make these policy decisions get over their anxiety about that,” Shlasko says. “Girls are girls because they say they are and because that’s the gender identity that they know themselves to be.”

And, Sam Davis’s new film, In Our Own Words: On Being Trans at Smith, featuring interviews with Davey Shlasko and Think Again friend Tobias Davis. Sam says:

As society’s definition of who constitutes a gender-minority evolves, how do traditionally all-female colleges decide to or not to adapt? Over the span of one year, I interviewed up to 40 current Smith students and alumni who identify as trans and/or non-binary to create the first trans archive at Smith College. This film is a collection of footage from these interviews– it examines the relationship between Smith and their trans and non-binary students through the lens of one trans student. “In Our Own Words” asks– how do these trans students fit into Smith’s vision of “women for the world”? How are trans students supported or unsupported by the administration and their fellow students? This film explores erasure, hypervisibility, transphobia, views about trans students within all levels of the institution, and the ongoing debate of who does and does not “belong” at Smith.