Trans Inclusion and the Fraternal Movement

Jessica Pettitt

Living our values. This is what connects all members of the fraternal movement regardless of our affiliations. For some, our commitment to our brothers and sisters saves our lives, teaches us how to be in the world, and ingrains a lifelong sense of responsibility to each other.

We can play this song over and over again until we start talking about gender. Sure, some organizations have openly gay, lesbian, bisexual members, not to mention multiple faiths, ethnic and racial identities, and socioeconomic classes, ability issues, and other forms of diversity in our memberships. The conversation that needs to start now is about gender.

In single gender institutions like fraternities and sororities, what happens if alumni transition into a new gender expression? How do we define membership given a single sex status? Can a transman still live by his sorority’s values? If a potential member is drawn to your organization for all of the right reasons and would be a perfect leader — does this change if they are going through a transition process? How does transition impact a Title IX status? Does it matter what dedicated leader’s birth certificate says?

As Facebook says, “its complicated.” Join in on a frank, humorous, and up front facilitated conversation on the difference between sex (anatomy/biology), gender (roles, identity, expression, and perception), and sexual identity (straight, gay, lesbian, bisexual, queer, asexual, etc). Let’s talk about the qualifications and legal precedent in various states as well as organizational and campus non-discrimination policies’ impact on recruitment and membership standards. Let’s have a conversation so we aren’t caught off-guard when this topic presents itself. We may not develop answers on this call, but you will be able to engaged and make informed decisions.

This FREE in-depth interactive training aims to:

• Increase awareness of the existence of the trans/gender variant populations
• Transfer this knowledge to proactively identify organization actions steps
• Create more higher education administrator advocates for trans needs