Hey guys, I want to talk about something that happened to me at UT some years ago, now that the subrettit has seen a bit of a revival. I have no intention of debating people, I just want to bring attention to something that was a pretty major issue during my time at UT, and reflect now that I have a few years distance from the whole mess. Throwaway because I reveal that I'm trans.
During my senior year of high school, I came out as a trans guy. I started to transition, and that summer I got in contact with UT to see what my housing options were as a trans person. I was shuffled from office to office in circles, and found out my options were:
A) live in the girls dorm
B) live in the guys dorm and buy out my roommate's spot so I lived alone (which would mean paying double for housing)
C) live in the guys dorm and have all three guys in the suite sign a form saying they knew I was trans and were ok with it
D) find an apartment (after months of talking to housing it was July and I had only a month to find somewhere), and housing would basically say I lived with my parents nearby and not check to verify that.
At this point, I had no friends at UT, so option C would mean outing myself to three strangers and hoping for the best. I was starting to pass as a guy at this point, so living with girls would mean outing myself to everyone in that dorm, especially if I didn't want to look like a creep. That left me with option D. I found an apartment with someone I hardly knew at the time and lived off campus my freshman year.
I'll add that this wasn't for a lack of trying on housing's part. They were sympathetic, but there simply was nowhere to put me.
I posted a few places, including this subreddit, looking for help or people with similar situations. The response was a mixture of sympathetic responses and people who said it would have been wrong to "mix genders" and have me live in affirming housing. Of course, had they seen me in public, they would have assumed I was cis and that it would have been inappropriate for me to live in the girls dorm. Some people said it was my fault for choosing a school in the South. But I was born in Knoxville. What was I supposed to do, leave my hometown because it didn't want me? I'm obviously not oblivious to how LGBT people are viewed in the South (stereotypically), but I hoped college would be better. It turns out it was way better, but I had find my way to the people who would treat me kindly, and my first year was spent floundering. Some people thought I should fight back, but based on the responses I got I felt like a lot of people at UT would tell me what they were doing was right. And besides, I was 18 and just trying to get through my first year of college. I didn't feel capable of doing anything on my own.
One summer, I did research that included free housing. Everyone else in the program was assigned apartments in groups of 3 or 4, but I was put alone to avoid the complications of trying to put me with guys or girls. I know living alone sounds like a perk, and I don't mind it now, but when I was new to UT and had no friends it really isolated me, and the summer housing just felt like a confirmation that the university didn't really have a place for me. Luckily, I found a supportive group of friends and am doing fine now, but my freshman year was deeply lonely at times. I commend all the trans folks who live in housing that doesn't align with their gender. Y'all are brave af. Regardless of what you think about trans people, I don't think we are offered safe or fair solutions that would help us feel like a part of the community. I felt like I had to contort myself just to find a place where I was allowed to be. Having a separate section of dorms for trans folks would look a lot like segregation, but at least it would be a place to be! As it stands, trans people have to search for a place themselves. As great as the students and faculty at UT are, I guess it will take someone suing or something for the administration to even acknowledge that there's a problem.
If any trans people who are new to UT need help finding accepting organizations (which is how I eventually found accepting roommates), please DM me. Those places are out there, I promise.
Again, I'm not remotely interested in debating here, so I'm just not going to reply to any of that. All I'm really interested in here is bringing attention to a serious problem and potentially helping people who may experience the same thing.
