Wang '08 looked at the staircases to her left and right. They both led to the fitness center in Dillon Gym — one through the men's locker room, the other through the women's. During her first week in college, on her first trip to the gym, neither staircase was right for her.
It was a reminder of the constant division she faces: though biologically a woman, she thinks of herself, in her heart, as a man.
Wang is transgender, casting aside the traditional labels of man and woman to view gender as a spectrum, on which she places herself closer to a man. On that first trip to the gym, she sought to avoid the question by bypassing the stairs to find an alternative route.
"Surely there's another way," Wang thought to herself. Descending down a third staircase, she found only the squash courts, the swimming pool and a door that led her back outside.
Eventually, she gave up and ran through the women's locker room to the fitness center.
Wang is part of an increasingly visible sector of college campuses nationwide that rejects traditional gender categories. While numbers are difficult to determine, there are at least thousands of transsexuals — people who undergo sex change operations — in the general population, and many more transgendered people, who identify with the opposite sex.
"If I woke up a boy tomorrow, I'd pray to stay that way forever," Wang said, her slender figure covered by a brown denim jacket and jeans, her wispy hair falling into her eyes.
Nationally, transgender people face heightened levels of violence and harassment. While some college campuses have made efforts to accommodate them, considerable challenges remain, at Princeton and elsewhere.
The current mismatch between Wang's physical features and self-identification makes it difficult to navigate a campus designed with traditional gender classifications in mind, reflecting a world that is far from coming to terms with the identity of transgender people.
Rejecting biology
Within a month of the start of freshman year, Wang had already told several friends that she identified more as a man than a woman. She asked for her first name not to be used in this article, however, because of the personal nature of her story.
Though her friends are supportive, she avoids some topics when talking with them.
"I haven't come out and said I want to modify my body, because physical change is always a touchy subject," she said.
Wang hasn't ruled out surgery in the long run, but said it won't happen anytime soon because of the cost and medical risks.
In addition to hormone therapy, some transgender people undergo operations that alter the chest, face, genitalia or internal organs and cost tens of thousands of dollars.
Such desires are classified as gender identity disorder by the American Psychological Association, though some activists are lobbying for its removal. The APA formerly listed homosexuality as a disorder until 1974.
Gaining acceptance
With studies showing that one quarter of transgender people have been victims of violence and one third have attempted suicide, lawmakers and university officials have tried to create a more comfortable environment for them.
Five states explicitly include gender identity in their nondiscrimination laws, while courts in six others, including New Jersey, have ruled against discrimination based on gender identity.
More than 20 schools, including the Massachusetts Institute of Technology and Rutgers University, have added the clause "gender identity and expression" to their nondiscrimination policies. Others universities, such as Wesleyan and Brown, have gender-neutral housing.
At Smith College, an all-women's school in Northampton, Mass., a transgender advocacy group called Tangent held an awareness week in November and is lobbying to admit biological males who identify themselves as female.
"People are really trying to take an active role in educating themselves," said Tangent co-chair Jessica Golden, a junior.
But advocates say that change is not occurring quickly enough.
Nick Sakurai, who heads LGBT issues at the United States Student Association, a student lobby in Washington, D.C., said much of the reluctance stems from trans-phobia.
"People say crazy, offensive stuff," Sakurai said. "They'll say that if the nondiscrimination policy includes trans stuff, guys will come to class in miniskirts [or] in a microthong [or] that you'll get men in women's restroom who just want to peep at women."
Transgender at Princeton
By the standards of some of its peers, Princeton has been slow to adopt trans-friendly policies. Its nondiscrimination act has not been changed, few public gender-free bathrooms exist on campus and there are no housing accommodations for transgender students.
That may not be the case for long, however, as some believe the climate is right for progress.
"Change comes slowly, but [the administration] has been supportive of trans issues," said LGBT student services coordinator Debbie Bazarsky.
This summer, Vice President for Campus Life Janet Dickerson commissioned a graduate student to prepare an "inventory" of possible changes to the University, based on what other schools have done.
"We can't say we're going to change policies in the current year," Dickerson said. "But it's intended to be under study, and we're hoping that by the end of the year, we will have identified areas where we can make some changes."
Also underway is a push to add gender identity and expression to the University's nondiscrimination policy, led by Jessie Weber '05, Claire Woo '06 and Paul Pawlowski '07.
Raised at a Council of the Princeton University Community meeting last May, the issue was tabled due to the impending departure of administrative officials. The students plan to submit a formal proposal this year.
The recent activism on campus grew out of efforts by Louisa Alexander '03, who also helped found a gay advocacy group called Queer Radicals. She first began researching the possibility of gender-neutral bathrooms and housing two years ago.
Alexander, who identifies as gender queer, shaved her head junior year and dresses in men's clothing. She said she set out to make the campus more trans-friendly because although she never experienced overt harassment, she always felt hostile stares in public bathrooms.
"People on campuses are too polite to be in your face about how they feel about you," Alexander said.
Support on campus
To confront such realities, Bazarsky has run a transgender support group attended by three or four students. For the past two years, it has brought together those who often find themselves outside the mainstream, providing a friendlier environment in which to explore gender issues.
The campus at large, on the other hand, can be an unwelcoming place.
"I don't look like a typical woman or girl, and certainly not your typical Princeton girl," said Alexander, who is now pursuing a master's degree in social work at the University of Pennsylvania. "So I created my own little world with my friends and Terrace and the Pride Alliance where I could walk around campus and not really care what other people thought."
Alexander found that students in Terrace Club, the most alternative of the eating clubs and the only one to host a drag ball every fall, didn't think twice of her cross-dressing. But her social options at the Street were limited; wearing a tie at Houseparties, she was reluctant to go to other clubs, fearing the reaction it might provoke.
Dana Leslie '78, a man who began living as a woman after changing her name a decade ago, recalled experiencing more direct hostility when she returned to campus last year for an LGBT conference.
As she walked outside with her boyfriend, who is a biological female living as a male, someone shouted out a window, "Are you a man or a woman?"
Leslie attributed such incidents in part to negative public portrayal. "The media is still stuck on transsexual novelty — the Geraldo Rivera, Jerry Springer level of transsexual exposure where they're saying, 'Look at these freaks,'" Leslie said.
Leslie did not question her gender while at Princeton, but she and several others have transitioned since graduating. The first known alumna, Donna Nadeau '62, is a man who attended the school before women were admitted and later began living as a woman. Nadeau died last spring of a disease similar to Parkinson's.
Seeking a community
Most transgender students at the University keep their gender identity private during their college years and only come to her during their senior year, Bazarsky said.
That's why she was surprised earlier this year to receive an email from a freshman inquiring about the transgender support group.
When Wang arrived at Princeton in September, she decided to seek out a community to explore gender issues. She signed up for a freshman seminar called "Men and Women" — which she says she got into by writing her "life story" in the application essay.
"Knowledge is power or ignorance is bliss," she said. "It's partly because I was raised in the land of individualism and opportunity . . . that I can think about these things."
Growing up in Atlanta at a suburban public school with no LGBT alliance, Wang didn't have anyone to talk with about her gender identity.
But within a month of starting Princeton, several of Wang's friends knew about her gender identity. She hasn't yet asked them to refer to her as a "he," though she's considering it.
"It would make me happy, but still uncomfortable on many levels," she said.
Seated in her dimly lit room recently, Wang leafed through a short story for her creative writing class. She was reading it over one more time before submitting it to be critiqued by her classmates. Stacks of books and half-filled sketchpads cluttered her desk, and her walls were covered with posters of Japanese gothic bands.
An Ethernet cable snaked from Wang's computer across the middle of the floor, dividing the room exactly in half. On the other side of the double, Wang's roommate looked like the stereotypical college student, with photos of her family adorning the walls.
On a typical night in their room this fall, Wang's roommate watched a Red Sox game on television with hallmates, while Wang and a friend watched episodes of the Showtime series "Queer as Folk" on her computer.
But Wang is thankful to have been assigned to share a bathroom with the girls next door, so she doesn't have to use a hall bathroom labeled "F."
Growing up
Raised by her father and stepmother, Wang never had a close female role model. During middle school, she became interested in makeup and dating, but her parents wanted her to wait to get older.
Everything changed during high school. "When I started, I had the middle school residue of boxing myself in," she said. "I was more conformist, more of a lemming."
She started visiting websites of alternative artists and musicians to view women she found good-looking, only to realize they were men.
Wang also spent hours reading about the costs and risks of sex reassignment surgery. She fantasized about changing her own body to acquire a more androgynous look.
By senior year, she was wearing baggy pants, chains and fishnet-sleeved shirts to school and had lost interest in stereotypically female activities.
Still struggling to determine exactly what being true to herself means, Wang knows that at the very least, it doesn't fit exactly with her physical identity.
"It's not always the same level of want," Wang said. "Some days, if I had the money, I would run out and get an operation right now. Other times, it's just like, 'Don't say that' when people call me 'girl.' "
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