It was recently announced that in June 2023, that the Catholic, historically women’s college St. Mary’s in South Bend, Indiana, made a change to its admissions policy:
Saint Mary’s College is a Catholic women’s college. Saint Mary’s considers admission for undergraduate applicants whose sex is female or who consistently live and identify as women.
I have no connection to St. Mary’s, nor have I ever been a part of an all-female institution. I was never even a Girl Scout. But as a woman, an observer of issues impacting women, both in the present and historically, of matters related to education and the Catholic world, I’m moved to comment.
There are a number of angles from which I could begin to explore this–most of which I’ve covered in my commentary on gender issues over the years–but here, I’ll be more limited. I won’t be commenting on—nor should my words be taken to comment on:
- Any individual’s situation or feelings about their situation
- Any individual or group’s mental or emotional state
- The motivations individuals might have for seeking admission to the college under this new policy
- The relationship of sex and “gender.”
- The already apparent consequences of gender self-identification on women
- The impact of males, including males seeking to identify as female—on female-only spaces, whether that be athletics, domestic violence shelters, medical facilities, political or advocacy organizations or interest and hobby groups
- How St. Mary’s oft-repeated claims about the benefits of an all-female environment are subverted by this policy
- Religion. No, not even religion.
Instead, what I’m challenging you about concerns one simple question: What does this policy say to women about their identity and personhood?
This new policy is built on the acceptance of self-identification. A person’s sex—and the consequent rights of that person according to law and policy—has nothing to do with biology, but simply with a feeling and a desire.
In short: that being a woman has nothing to do with the embodied experience of being female. That being a woman is, in fact, a performance.
Is this really the education St. Mary’s intends to give to young women? That the mystery and fact of their embodied experience as female is secondary to some amorphous claim of “living as?” That their identity as women can be appropriated by human beings with penises and testicles? Just because those people—called males—desire it and claim it?
That in a space historically reserved for women to flourish on their own, they must privilege male desires and experience?
This is a disservice to women—especially young women—in many ways.
First, it is just not true. An individual cannot change sex. She can present herself or think of herself in innumerable permutations of gendered expression, but none of that, even those brought about by the surgical knife or cross-sex hormones, actually change a person’s sex. To suggest as much is to accept an intellectual falsehood.
It might seem simplistic, but it’s a question that must be answered. Is this true—this claim that an aspect of identity rooted in biology can be identified out of or into—true of ethnicity? Age? If I cannot “identify” as a 25-year-old Korean…on what basis can I, a woman, “identify” as a male?
Secondly, if it is true that one’s sex is something that can be claimed by “identifying” as that sex, and if that self-identifying claim then must be the basis of how one is treated by law, policy and society, perhaps we should try telling that to:
- The women and girls who, throughout history and in the present, have been vulnerable to male violence—which is all of us. Could we not, when threatened, simply hold up a hand and say, “Please. You’re mistaken. I don’t identify as a woman. Take that male-pattern violence-against-women elsewhere.”
- The women whose rights to own property, to move freely in society, to vote, to be educated have been restricted throughout history and in the present. Should they, all along, simply “identified” as male to solve this problem?
It’s too bad women couldn’t have figured out this clever solution to historical prejudice and oppression before now, isn’t it?
Are these scenarios ridiculous? Of course they are. And we know this because we know that being a woman is more than appearance, performance or the desire to be seen as a member of this sex. It just is.
So in the end, it is a great—even astonishing, perhaps even shocking—disservice to women to teach them that their embodied experience is irrelevant to their identity as women.
Because that is what this policy communicates. It communicates that there can be a “woman” who is not actually female. Which then means that “woman” is nothing more than desire and performance.
It is deeply disrespectful to the realities, complexities and mystery—and the painful beauty—of women’s lives. It’s an act, quite frankly, of capitulation to an understanding of womanhood based on externalities, which means, in essence, stereotypes. It expresses an expectation that women will—once again—repress their own instincts and self-understanding for the sake of male—dare I say, male privilege.
There is no “progress” here. It is regressive. It is misogynistic. It is deeply disrespectful to the lived experiences of women and girls who, unlike any other group on the planet, have identities that apparently can now be appropriated and colonized at will while they are told, once again, to just “be nice.”
(Editor’s note: This post appeared originally on the “Charlotte was Both” blog and is reposted here in slightly different form with the kind permission of the author.)
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This harkens back to the Land O Lakes pact, i.e. the LOL pact. SMH (The “legacy” of Hesburgh sadly lives on in the degradation that continues)
So, another “catholic” institution caves to woke leftist ideology. How pathetic. It must be very clear by now that the people posing as “transgender” have emotional problems. Or, like the men in prison posing as women, they want to be in an all female situation in hopes of taking physical advantage of the women. This has happened in more than one case as it has in high schools , to the harm of the women there. It is nothing short of disgusting and I hope they reconsider. Failing that, and support revenues they get from the church should be withdrawn. And, I hope all alumni are taking note and close their purses accordingly.
Clearly, the administrators (read court jesters) at St. Mary’s college have blundered by not vetting their proposed policy as a broader step toward interreligious pluralism…
In the sense that Islam permits female genital mutilation, so why not this identity thingy for males in an anti-Christian culture? Indeed, why even stop there? Where is the needed prior policy enabling regressive brain transplants for college administrators?
Oh, wait, there is such a policy already on the books! It’s called the 1967 Land O’ Lakes Declaration of “independence from authority of whatever kind, lay or clerical, external to the academic community [read coven] itself.”
And the new EDI (equality, diversity, identity) surely includes male ED (inclusivity!).
This has been decades in the making. Sad. Study only the example of Daniel P. Horan, OFM, PhD, and you will see.
https://www.saintmarys.edu/spiritual-life/center-for-spirituality/contact-us
This pontificate expedited the embrace of secularism.
Anti-woman.
Anti-Catholic.
Anti-science.
Anti-truth.
Anti-sanity.
* * *
Take your pick.
Anti-financially sustainable in the future…
Smaller private colleges have been struggling & more so if they’re single gender schools. Many have either given up & closed their doors or opened enrollment to both men & women. The number of confused men who might be attracted by this admissions policy is unlikely to outweigh the number of orthodox Catholics who will choose not to enroll at or support this college.
Demographic projections are of a shrinking pool of young people. Families who will be having greater numbers of children in the future are the same ones who embrace traditional teachings on family & marriage & reject “gender fluidity.”
This is indeed pathetic, but it is not surprising – the reaction of alumnae should be interesting.
Well said. Thank you.
This is undeniably pathetic, but it is not surprising – it was only a matter of time. One wonders what will happen when one of the incoming trans students wishes to join in athletic competition with ‘her’ classmates, and then take a shower after the game.
What a sad thought.
With this action SMC officially joins the ‘CINO’ – Catholic In Name Only’ club.
I wholeheartedly agree with everything that was written in your article. These times remind me of when I was younger and the call was to tear down the walls of male institutions because they were discriminatory against women. It appears these years are doing the same but sneaking in through a facade.
Judging by what has happened at sororities forced to accept (self-identified) “transwomen”, the female students will be told to accept the policy or else. But when alumnae, students, or some staff members object, the administration can then strike a “courageous” pose and attract favorable media attention, possibly generating new donations.
Being a Catholic college, hope they would use any related occasion , to manifest the power of The Spirit and employ the remedy of the persistent widow – for same to spread through the culture as a whole at much more speed than the errors , to be speedy remedy for the German Church , the culture as a whole, in the battle against family and marriage .
https://www.biblegateway.com/passage/?search=Luke%2018%3A1-8&version=NIV –
The unjust judge sounds like the enemy who does not fear God nor humans , only concerend about being ‘struck ‘ by the widow …the need to use ‘striking ‘ prayers to free the faculties that are under its power , to thus help free oneself and others from its holds….asking The Mother to ‘strike ‘ , using the sword of Gabriel , to silence all negative thoughts in oneself or others, when one senses its presence any where, including obsessive thougts about past wounds , fear , anger , hatreds ..to instead invoke Holy Spirit inspired thoughts in oneness with that of The Lord,for thanking and praising The Lord ..
Messianic sword, to disempower powers meant for evil , for persons who are using such for terrorism , wars and violence , all related evils that could harm body and soul …sword of Elisha , to blind enemy powers and persons from abuse of gift of sight, instead to use them to bring glory to God ,to see themselves and others in His Truth and holiness .. FIAT !
I agree I graduated from Saint Mary’s in 1991 and have seen the slow decline of the school. I was too young, naive and involved in classes while I was there to notice, but the signs were evident as I look back. It is so sad to see my once loved school go down the this trajectory.
I am the father of two women and the grandfather of three women and I am dismayed at the abandonment of women by the left. This is a sign for women of all ages that liberal thinkers are incredibly disloyal and will turn on some part of their constituency in an instant if a bigger political fish comes along. Godless people have no moral compass and their existence depends on gaining power over others.
That being said, what else do women have to do to please men? Must they submit sexually because a man desires it or imagines it? Give up their job if a man identifies as having that job? Marry a man who identifies as her spouse? After all, being a women is just, as you said, a performançe and women must always submit to the male wishes. I would hope that no DNA-identified female ever attends St. Mary’s in the future.