It’s a conversation many women’s colleges are having — what are their policies on admitting students who don’t identify exclusively as women?
Rachel Yinger MFA ’19 broached the subject last fall with her project Moore Inclusion: noncisgender students at a women’s college.
“I was mostly trying to answer two questions, which were ‘Can transgender and nonbinary students apply to this college,’ and ‘Can students who transition while enrolled still matriculate?’” she said.
Yinger was working as a teaching assistant for a first-year undergraduate class at Moore when she learned that one of the students identified as male. That interest sparked a research project resulting in a zine, which looked at North American colleges historically women-only and what their admissions policies are. Yinger compiled the information through websites and by emailing colleges. She found that institutions considered to be more liberal are more receptive to admitting transgender and non-binary students, some colleges have vague policies, and some have policies that are extremely detailed.
“Some have requirements that would be really hard for a lot of 17- and 18-year-old trans women to have, like complete legal, medical and surgical transition,” she said, “which can be hard for someone who is probably still depending on their parents.” Yinger said her research found not many would accept nonbinary people who are assigned male at birth, and that few all-women colleges accepted trans men. Moore considers for undergraduate admission all qualified students who live as women and who consistently identify as women at the time of application.
“I’ve talked to a lot of undergraduate students who lied when they applied, who maybe did identify as non-binary or agender or genderqueer, but didn’t tell the admissions counselors that,” she said.
As part of the same project for her Curatorial Studio class, Yinger solicited art from Moore undergrad students who don’t identify as cisgender. The drawings, paintings, and sculptures on view from November to January were tagged with the artists’ information, including their pronouns and gender identity.
NEW PROJECT
Yinger’s thesis exhibit for the spring semester focused on queer representation and themes in popular culture, specifically the movies she grew up watching, such as My Girl, Now and Then, Fried Green Tomatoes and But I’m a Cheerleader.
“They all have some sort of queer theme that I am exploring, especially through writing in the zines,” she said. “My Girl has the tomboy trope storyline that I noticed with a lot of movies and TV shows that I grew up with, and I dissect that in the writing. Now and Then and Fried Green Tomatoes both have characters that were altered for the movie to appear to be straight.”
In the book version of Fried Green Tomatoes, the characters were queer.
“What I realized through research was that there was a sort of relationship between the idea of visibility and concealment,” Yinger said. “The two characters were concealed and altered to appear to be straight, but because of that the movies themselves were more visible to me and probably to a lot of other people and the queer subtext in those movies still comes through for queer audiences, especially for young people.”
That concealment brought a moment of realization for Yinger’s mother.
“Fried Green Tomatoes is one of my mom’s favorite movies, and we later learned by watching the special features together that the friends were supposed to be a couple, which I realized, but she hadn’t,” Yinger said. “There’s a funny part in my zine where I wrote about how we both realized that my mom’s favorite movie was a lesbian movie.”
THE FUTURE
Yinger received a bachelor’s of fine art at the Pennsylvania College of Art and Design, and chose Moore for her master’s degree. Her love for art started at an early age. Her father has an associate’s degree in visual communication, now called graphic design.
“He would make little sketch books for my sister and me out of copy paper that my mom brought home from work,” she said. Her older paintings explore the body, with Yinger using herself as muse in portraits and up-close images of various parts of her anatomy. Newer works feature characters she’s writing about from the movies she is exploring.
With her MFA diploma in hand, Yinger would like to continue her series on queer representation in popular culture, she’d like to teach, and she’d like to use her skills as a curator. She is currently working with Caroline Woolard, Moore’s inaugural Walentas Endowed Distinguished Fellow, helping to prepare for Woolard’s upcoming exhibition in The Galleries at Moore.
See more of Rachel Yinger’s art here.
