More on William and Mary’s Trans-Line
Judging from the origin of incoming traffic, many people looking for further information on gender-queer Jessee Vasold, who was honored earlier today as William and Mary’s Homecoming Queen, found last night’s post. This is just a quick nudge to go the school’s paper, The Flat Hat, to read the full range of comments the story has, er, engendered.
You’ll find some anger, but more compassion, understanding, and even humor. There’s useful information there, too: One reader writes that Old English had a gender-neutral pronoun (”hir”), which would surely come in handy in cases like this, where Vasold’s request for gender-neutral pronouns produced some amount of distracting ridicule.
Many of my friends, especially from the swim team, were on hand for this year’s Homecoming. I’m going to find out how important and discussed this whole issue was for those in attendance, and I’ll report back. If anyone has any insights, please pass them along to me. (For example, one reader commented to my earlier post that my wish for parade-goers’ mouths to be agape would likely not be fulfilled, because Jessee is very convincing as a woman.)
One Response to “More on William and Mary’s Trans-Line”
October 27th, 2009 at 1:38 pm
I will say from my perspective that nobody seemd to make a big deal of it in the least – board, administration, staff, students, and alum (tho I wasn’t at the actual “crowning” and am not naive enough to think that crassness didn’t transpire). Part of it I believe was that everyone was being exceedingly polite and even respectful, realizing that different people would obviously have different feelings about the matter, and that any strong sentiment expressed could potentially ignite an unpleasant discussion during what should be a most pleasant time. But the low keyness even persisted after much alcohol consumption, normally an acid test for something like this. Going back to my theme about why we split from Britain in the 1st place, who at W&M of all places can argue about the democratic process? I’ll tell you who: ironically it will be some state legislators who take it out on W&M
in the appropriations process. (As well as some private donors, but that is perfectly thweir perogative.)
As a side note, we were looking at old yearbooks from our era over the weekend and noted swimmers Dave Smith and Meg Lawlor were king and queen 1 of those years. Of course being swimmers they had SUCH an unfair advantage over the hoi polloi…
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