This article is the second installment in the Wheel's LGBT Series, in celebration of LGBT History Month in October. Read part 1 on Emory's LGBT history, and part 3 on Emory students' coming-out stories.


Awareness happens in shifts. Small incidents that can spur discussion, question norms.

This year alone, a cluster of events have sparked awareness about transgender issues. August: A South African track athlete’s sex comes into question. September: An armed man is arrested on Emory’s campus while wearing a dress and trying to use the women’s restroom. October: Morehouse College bans cross-dressing at the all-male school.

Out of these tidbits, a discussion is emerging about what transgender means to Emory.

For graduate student and president of Trans-Forming Emory Anson Koch-Rein, shifts like these define his experience as a transgender man.

“A very, very, very long time ago, as a little teenager, I came out as a lesbian, but I realized that wasn’t the right label,” Koch-Rein says, now in his second year at the Institute of Liberal Arts at Emory. It took time for Koch-Rein to arrive at transgender, and he says his identity remains in flux. With a degree in gender studies from the Humboldt University of Berlin under his belt, he now feels open to act as a spokesperson of sorts with Trans-Forming Emory.

He wants to build a transgender presence on campus through Trans-Forming Emory, a group he started this semester. He says that Emory’s policies are trans-friendly, but he knows that a trans-accepting community isn’t made on rainbow Safe Space stickers alone.

Rez Pullen, a fourth-year doctoral student who will teach a class on transgender studies next semester, sees education as the key to raising awareness and ultimately acceptance.

“In the last year, there’s been increased interest in transgenderism,” Pullen says. “In the courses I’ve taught, I’ve seen students taking interest in issues about transgenderism in popular culture or theoretical issues.”

Step one in awareness is a comprehensive definition of transgender. The word hinges on a differentiation between sex and gender — sex being biological and genetically determined, and gender referring to the cultural norms and stereotypes associated with a sex.

A transgender person does not identify with the gender identity with which he or she was born. In rejecting this identity, a person may cross-dress, take hormones, undergo reassignment surgery or live an androgynous lifestyle, free from either gender. All these options fit under the aegis of “transgender.”

Before adding the “T” to its acronym, the Office of Lesbian, Gay and Bisexual Life opened its doors in 1991. Seven years later, it became the Office of Lesbian, Gay, Bisexual and Transgender (LGBT) and thereby legitimated the needs of transgender students, faculty and staff at Emory.

It’s hard to pinpoint when transgenderism first entered campus discussion, but the renaming of the both Office and the President’s Commission on LGBT Concerns in 1998 gives a general milestone. No incident of discrimination inspired the change, just a community aware of what was happening nationally.

Fast-forward to the spring of 2007: the University amends its nondiscrimination policy to include gender identity and gender expression — a clear, institution-wide commitment to transgender issues.

In the past decade, the number of “out” transgender students has fluctuated, never more than a handful.

Michael Shutt took the helm as director of the LGBT Office in 2008. After the wave of the nondiscrimination win crested, he says the question became, “Now what?”

“We’re ahead of the game, but we have a long way to go,” Shutt says. “A gender binary is so institutionalized. We’ve taken on name changes, we’ve taken on policies, but now it’s, ‘What is next?’”

Comfort Zone

Koch-Rein sees creating community as the main goal for Trans-Forming Emory. But he also seeks to make his day-to-day life as transgender easier, starting with unisex bathrooms in every building. For most, going to the restroom doesn’t require strategic planning and fear.

Koch-Rein says, “At this point, I’m not using bathrooms in the DUC [Dobbs University Center], because apparently people call the police,” referring to last month’s incident when Emory police arrested a trespassing suspect who attempted to enter the women’s restroom. “I go out of my way to use gender-neutral bathrooms, like those in Candler Library.”

Shutt points out that the need for unisex bathrooms isn’t just a transgender issue. Caretakers of children and handicapped persons of a different sex benefit from single-stall restrooms too, he says.

Check out a map of unisex and single-use restrooms on campus:

View Unisex Restrooms at Emory in a larger map

Though there’s no policy in place to guarantee retrofitting existing buildings with unisex restrooms, all new residence halls — including Turman, Few and Evans — will have single-occupancy unisex restrooms.

Trans undergrads may run across other problems with housing at Emory, and Residence Life is fully prepared to handle all matters in a personal manner.

Director of Residence Life Andy Wilson acknowledges that he’s been in touch with several transgender students going through student housing. ResLife assigns all students to dorms by biological sex, and handles all special circumstances on a case-by-case basis. He asserts that a policy on the books for transgender students would do more harm than good.

“That would assume that we know what their ideal would be. Everyone’s a little bit different,” Wilson says. “We guarantee that we will work with them, in the same way we accommodate students who have other issues around their housing.”

To inform this process, Wilson looks at what peers do and what housing options are feasible. For now, Wilson says there are ample single rooms and apartments to accommodate transgender students’ requests.

Once in dorms, transgender students can seek help from resident advisers (RA) and sophomore advisers (SA), who have been trained by the LGBT Office.

Frank Gaertner chairs the Residence Life Diversity Committee, a new group meeting for the first time today. Gaertner says the committee, made up of RAs and SAs, seeks to become better attuned to the needs of all students. The RAs and SAs are the committee’s eyes and ears to understanding the needs of minority groups, including transgender students.

“When a group is very small in nature, there tends to be less support for them,” Gaertner says. “We are concerned about doing what we can.”

Perhaps nothing defines a person by gender so much as name. Koch-Rein goes by Anson, but since this is not his given name, he has to go through the routine of correcting his name — just as any one who uses a nickname, middle name or other name would know. Koch-Rein sees it as a tedious need to reassert his identity.

While seeing this fault, he is awed by how easily United States citizens can change their names. He’s originally from a small town in northern Germany, and a long-time resident of Berlin after that — though his accent barely sounds Canadian, let alone German. The name-change process in Germany, he explains, can be long and difficult, demanding not only court approval but psychological evaluations, too.

Equal Care

Besides grappling with institutional restrictions, transgender people face an inner struggle. Psychologist Mark McLeod, director of the Counseling Center, says transgender students deal with all the same stress, depression and anxiety of any other Emory student.

“In addition, transgendered students can struggle to manage concerns of societal oppression that are unique to living outside of the gender binary,” McLeod says.

Students seeking chemical or surgical transition, McLeod says, should seek a clinician outside the University, so that counseling does not end once the student’s four years are up.

Shutt says one of the biggest lacuna in transgender concerns lies in Emory’s health-care plan. The University-wide provider, Aetna, covers the surgery and hormones of a transgender transformation, but Emory opts out.

“We have the ability to do so, but we choose not to,” Shutt says.

Shutt hopes this may change when Emory hosts the World Professional Association for Transgender Health in 2011. The international transgender community will be looking to Emory.

A much more impenetrable realm for transgender students is that of gender-divided organizations, like sports teams.

“When you’re talking about the traditional sororities and fraternities and athletics, those are huge systems to figure out,” Shutt says.

Emory as an institution allows athletes to participate in the gender division they identify with. For NCAA sports, it gets a bit trickier. Trans athletes are not explicitly prohibited, but all athletes must follow the sex listed on their state identification.

In most states, it’s possible to change sex (including Georgia), but only with proof of sex reassignment surgery — a long, intense procedure most college-aged transgender students have not undergone, or may never want to go through.

Looking Forward

“The Office of LGBT Life has to continue to walk a walk to ensure that people know that this is a trans-inclusive space,” Shutt says. “We have ‘transgender’ on our door, but what are we doing to demonstrate to the trans community that we are trans-inclusive? That is the challenge we put across to people on campus. It’s something we all have to do.”

Koch-Rein has started holding weekly meetings for Trans-Forming Emory. So far, there’s been a film screening of “Transgeneration” and several open discussions.

“There’s been a maximum of three people,” he says, his warm face beaming beneath a jet-black faux-hawk. “But not the same people.”

The low turnout doesn’t deter Koch-Rein. He says he’s prepared to come to a meeting when no one shows up, and wait until Emory comes around.

— Contact Bridget Riley.