Transgender activist becomes first to join Douglass Residential College

September 14, 2014 2:40pm | By Katie Park

Courtesy of Vanessa González | Vanessa González became the first openly transgender activist and student in the Douglass Residential College.

On an average day, Vanessa González attracts more stares, tittering whispers and jeering points than the average student walking around on any of the five campuses at Rutgers.

From afar, she seems no different than the thousands of her undergraduate peers. She has a loving family and supportive friends; she lives in an apartment, takes classes, and rides the campus buses.

Yet at nearly six feet tall, she is no stranger to hearing transphobic slurs shouted at her in the bathroom or having harrowing threats whispered into her ear on the bus by complete strangers.

González, a School of Arts and Sciences junior, is the first openly transgender activist and student in the Douglass Residential College. As the member of several social justice and LGBTQIA organizations on campus, she is a young leader in expanding dialogue about issues of gender and sexuality through teaching, mentoring and event coordination.

She is a native of Manhattan, a product of mixed Cuban, Iranian and Jewish descent, and daughter of two mothers. She came out as a transgender woman last March.

“I think that she is a tremendously impressive individual,” said Jacquelyn Litt, dean of the Douglass Residential College. “I have incredible admiration for her courage and leadership, and I think that she’ll be a great contributor to the college.”

The Douglass Residential College completely welcomes any student who identifies as transgender or self-identifies as a woman, Litt said. The mission of the residential college is to provide an open and inclusive atmosphere where students can freely explore their educational goals.

Since González has come out as a transgender woman, she has received applause and been asked for advice by trans individuals in similar situations.

She has sat for a television interview, chatted with popular transgender figures and been a part of “The Trans Calendar Project,” a nationwide artistic effort to better the lives of the trans* community by providing funding for transition surgeries for trans individuals.

The transition process is a very personal experience, González said. Yet there’s an egregious amount of inappropriate fixation on the “transitioned” body when trans individuals are asked to come onto talk shows, a pattern evidenced by trans activist Janet Mock on CNN’s Piers Morgan Live and “Orange is the New Black” star Laverne Cox on ABC’s “Katie.”

González herself has been the target of “transitioned body” fascination. When she runs training sessions at her workplace and introduces herself as a transgender woman, she said people only see her as a gender, not as a person.

“They don’t see that I’m Cuban, that I was raised in a multi-ethnic and multi-religious household, that I was born in New York — all that is irrelevant because they can’t see me as anything else but being trans,” she said. “Get to know me for who I am, and not what I am.”

González first applied to become a part of the Douglass Residential College in the middle of the spring semester in 2014. Unclear about the DRC’s policies towards transgender women, she emailed campus administration asking about housing policy and general accommodations extended to transgender people.

She feared how the DRC might react to her circumstances — González knew that women’s colleges in the United States and in nations overseas often deny transgender women to live in campus housing facilities because they do not legally classify them as women.

Fortunately, the Douglass Residential College had little problems processing González’s requests for housing. González moved into “Rainbow Perspectives,” a two-story LGBTQIA-friendly residence compartmentalized within New Gibbons Hall on the Cook campus.

“For trans people, there’s a lot of anxiety in dorming because unfortunately housing is assigned by legal sex, not how we identify,” González said. “So sometimes it can be very triggering for someone to be assigned a dorm.”

She no longer lives in “Rainbow Perspectives” or any other campus housing, but she hopes to remain integrated with student affairs after college.

She has ambitions to apply to graduate school after obtaining her bachelor’s degree, study student affairs, and then begin a career at a cultural center at a university where she can create a safe space for her students “to be themselves without having to worry.”

Despite having a safe haven on campus, González still faces hostility and transphobia from people.

Rutgers is within the pool of the top 25 LGBTQA-friendly universities in the country, sitting among Princeton and Syracuse, but the ranking isn’t necessarily reflective of what actually happens, she said.

“Walking around, I do relatively feel safe, but it doesn’t mean I haven’t had experiences,” she said.

A student tried to follow her into a bathroom stall, demanding that a man cannot be in the women’s bathroom.

A group of men surrounded her on one of the campus buses, intimidating her.

Strangers have referred to her as “it” and commented on her body.

Even more frighteningly, once, a man on a bus grabbed her as he was leaving and hissed, “You’re lucky I’m seeing you in the daytime.”

Given that a transgender woman was murdered walking home only two blocks from the Douglass campus a little over a year ago, these experiences of bullying and harassment are even more chilling, she said.

But even in the face of hateful behavior, González remains positive and optimistic for change.

She said she wants Rutgers to revise its policy of sexual assault by making the pronouns gender-neutral and thus more inclusive— she wants to get away from the archetype that the survivor is a straight, cisgender woman and that the perpetrator is a straight, cisgender man.

Similarly, she wants to see more emphasis put on the recently-enacted preferred name change policy. Although she’s pleased that it has finally happened, there are more changes that need to happen.

Her name in gradebooks were not changed, and her legal name was still called in each of her classes until this past Monday, she said. When she filled out the name change form in August, she was told her preferred name would be on the rosters for the first day of class.

“That was a very triggering moment in each of my classes,” she said. “If [the administration] saw it as a triggering experience, they might think differently about names and not just perceive it as an issue of mild discomfort.”

Campus administration might be slow to act about the name change policy because they believe that it affects such a small minority of Rutgers, and because they see bigger issues that perhaps will affect a bigger bulk of students, González said.

She said that type of attitude comes from not understanding the lived experiences of the trans community and not having people speak for themselves.

If the viewpoint of the administration changes it might be a different game for trans individuals like González at Rutgers.

Dialogue between the trans* community and administration still has its knots, but she has fairly confident expectations for Rutgers, given time.

Natasha Payano, president of Trans*missions said González is daring and inspiring — from challenging the status quo of the University to kickstarting her own transition process to taking on the position of treasurer at Trans*missions, she is determined in her own right.

González cares very much about the feelings of others — she’s very aware of that, said Xochilt Lamas, graduate intern at the Center for Social Justice Education.

“She’s very strong-willed," Lamas said. "She's very passionate."

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