"I am the first transgender woman to rush sororities at the University of Michigan," Emily Kaufman captioned a selfie on Tumblr in September 2015, "and because I am representing trans people, looking cute is a must!" She wore her dark, naturally curly hair in a bob; a dainty silver necklace with starfish charms hung around her neck.

Emily is bubbly and chatty, and, as a sophomore, already had friends in a few of the sororities. After 18 years of what she calls “suppressed femininity,” Emily started coming out to friends and family during her freshman year; she’d spoken about her transition in classes and LGBT groups on campus. On the first day of rush, a sister in one house approached her and said, "You were in my women’s studies class! I think it’s so amazing what you’re doing. I really hope your rush process goes well."

"I was all excited," Emily remembers. "I called my parents and said, ’I’m totally joining a sorority.’"



After round one, a dizzying tour of the stately brick mansions that house Michigan’s 15 NPC sororities, Emily could have been invited back to as many as 11 for round two, per the rules of the university’s Panhellenic Council, which governs sorority life on campus. Many of Emily’s friends were called back to seven or more sororities. Emily was only asked back to three.



“From what my friends told me, basically the rush board for that sorority [made up of 21- to 22-year-old women] chooses most of the girls,” Emily says. With no guidelines on transgender members from their national leadership, all it takes is one or two students on the rush board to say, "We don’t want a trans girl," to exclude even the most beloved rushee.

After the second round, only one sorority invited Emily back, one where she didn’t feel at home, and she dropped out of rush.

“I was heartbroken,” Emily says. “It hurt. It hurt a lot.”

Growing up in Delaware, assigned male at birth, Emily hung out with boys who didn’t want her around. “In second grade, I don’t think I had a single friend,” she recalls. In high school, "I tried to be the classic, muscular, athletic boy," she says. "I just couldn’t do it. I didn’t know how to be a boy.”

Emily Kaufman with her official name change document in June 2015.

Despite trying hard to fit in, Emily was that kid: the one whose supposed best friend threw food at her at lunch every day. The one who came to school on Senior Skip Day because her lacrosse teammates lied to her and said the whole team had to. She coped with an escapist fantasy — that she could someday, somehow, be part of a group of girlfriends. “That was where my desire for a sisterhood started — daydreaming about being on the girls’ field hockey team,” she says. “Then, it became being in a sorority.”



Now a 20-year-old junior, Emily is trying again, rushing the one new sorority on campus this year. (There’s only one round of interviews to rush new sororities.) The day after her interview on Oct. 20, she’ll board a flight to Montreal, Canada, to fulfill another dream: undergoing gender confirmation surgery in which doctors will turn her penis into a vagina. It’s a long-awaited step in Emily’s transition as a transgender woman. “I’m calling it V-Day,” she jokes.

Emily considered not coming out as trans in her interview — the sorority she’s rushing doesn’t have an official trans-inclusive policy, and she was afraid it would hurt her chances of a bid (an official invitation to join). “I don’t want them to see me as the trans girl,” she says. “I just want to be Emily.” She also hasn’t asked Michigan’s Panhellenic Council if she’s welcome to rush; she’s too scared they’d say "no." (When contacted by Cosmopolitan.com, the Council’s current president Lexi Wung said the University of Michigan does not have a formal policy on trans women participating in sorority recruitment, but "if you identify as a woman," you’re welcome to go through recruitment.) Ultimately, Emily decided it would be best to come out to the women who might become her sorority sisters.

“I wouldn’t want to join a sorority,” she says, “and then find out that it’s transphobic.”

But as she preps for rush, she knows not to get her hopes up. In 2016, trans women like Emily are still not officially protected from discrimination in sorority life. In fact, sororities and fraternities (and other single-gender organizations like the Girl and Boy Scouts) are exempt from the federal sex-discrimination law Title IX, so they’re legally allowed to discriminate based on sex. The National Panhellenic Conference is the largest Greek umbrella organization for women, overseeing 26 sororities that count over 4 million undergraduate members and alumni. But only three of those sororities — Delta Gamma, Sigma Sigma Sigma and Kappa Kappa Gamma — have formal, public policies saying they welcome transgender members.



Other Greek organizations are doing better. The Latino, Asian/Pacific, and “multicultural” or “multiethnic” umbrella organizations all have higher percentages of sororities with nondiscrimination policies for trans students than the predominantly white NPC. Local sororities without national governance are also more accepting, but they lack the large sisterhoods and alumni networks of national sororities.

NPC sororities have kept quiet about the incertitude of where — and even if — trans rushees fit in. "It’s been crickets at the national level," says Stevie Tran, an attorney and transgender woman who has advised sororities and fraternities on creating policies on transgender members. "Students are coming out younger and younger, and schools don’t know what to do with them."

The current approach to addressing transgender students in sorority life is a game of "not it." The NPC (which is staffed with adult professionals) does not hand down specific policy guidelines. “Fundamentally, the 26 single-sex women’s organizations that constitute the National Panhellenic Conference are sovereign entities, which means they set their own membership standards," NPC executive director Dani Weatherford said in a statement. That means the issue is up to the sororities’ national offices (also helmed by professionals), 23 of which pass it off to their collegiate chapters. This leaves the decisions on whether to accept a transgender rushee to 18- to 22-year-old college women with little, if any, diversity training.

Emily studies in her University of Michigan dorm room. RACHEL WOOLF

Over the last decade, at least five national Greek organizations have considered adopting policies that would deny transgender students membership, according to Jessica Pettitt, a former college administrator and consultant who has advised the national offices of dozens of fraternities and sororities on trans inclusion. Based on the nature of their meetings, Pettitt believes one NPC sorority she recently advised will land on an official policy blocking trans women from joining, though trans women could go through the entire rush process and not even know it: As private organizations, sororities are allowed to keep their policies private. And those who have considered banning trans members aren’t about to blast out the news, Pettitt says, because, frankly, "they’re afraid of looking like assholes."



Still, even a public policy that explicitly excludes trans students would be better than no policy at all, Pettitt notes. "Not knowing is a liability," she says. "Trans people are trying to navigate your system. It’s bad customer service."

Emily walks with friends to a campus coffee shop. Rachel Woolf

Some sororities may seem unfriendly to diversity, but for trans students like Emily, who can face discrimination in housing, health care, and gaining the legal documentation required by some universities to be recognized by their self-identified gender, having a group of sisters sworn to have your back could be a haven. Emily deals with transphobia all the time. After a Halloween party last year, a group of drunk people yelled out to her, “Are you a man?” A group of guys catcalled her from their truck, then said, “Oh, that’s a sir.” Recently, on a day she felt beautiful and confident in a lacy cream-colored dress and “Barbie-pink” lipstick, someone interviewing her for a job referred to her as “he.” “This stuff really stings,” she says. “I hate it.”



Though outgoing and social, Emily admits that she still struggles to shed some of the social awkwardness she felt growing up in a boy’s body. Her friends are scattered in different groups, and she works long hours in the dining hall, in part to pay back her parents for the cost of surgery. “I generally always text my friends to hang out,” she says. “I think that it comes off as needy.” Emily gets lonely, and, year after year, she gets anxious figuring out who she’ll live with.



Part of the reason she still wants to join a sorority is to have built-in roommates, and friends to go to football games with (a huge part of the Michigan social scene) or stay in on Monday nights and watch Legally Blonde with. Getting into a sorority would feel, finally, like being one of the girls. “It would be validating for my womanhood, just like getting my vagina is validating,” Emily says. “I hate to say it, but I feel like a real girl when I fit in with [cis women].”

When sororities consider how trans women fit in, Pettitt says one controversial question comes up over and over: Should a vagina be required for membership?

Some sorority women believe that trans women should only be allowed in after undergoing gender confirmation surgery. Elizabeth C., author of the Greek life blog Sorority Sugar, and an alumna of an NPC sorority at Arizona State University, is one of them. In response to a reader’s question about trans members in sorority life, Elizabeth wrote that "if a transgender wishes to join as a woman, I think the total transformation should be completed before pledging. I don’t think it’s appropriate for a man who is still 100-percent male physically, to join a female sorority." (Using transgender as a noun rather than as an adjective — "a transgender" — is not a GLAAD-accepted descriptor.)

"When I was in a sorority (in the early aughts) it would have been odd to have a trans rushee going through formal recruitment. And I doubt the bylaws of my NPC chapter would have permitted a trans pledge," Elizabeth told me in an email. "If a physically male student is living in a small sorority bedroom with several other sisters, I don’t think the members would be totally comfortable with that… Transitioning is not something that every female wants to deal with up close and personal… unless the trans sister is absolutely stable in her new identity, it will be like living in a hornet’s nest for everyone."



It’s a common misconception that genitals define gender identity, and though no one explicitly said this was why she didn’t get a bid at last year’s rush, Emily believes some of the cisgender, heterosexual sorority members might have correctly assumed she hadn’t yet had "bottom surgery”: "Like, ’Ew, we don’t want someone with a penis here.’"

Emily says her upcoming gender confirmation surgery has nothing to do with her past failed sorority recruitment, and "everything to do with who I want to be.” In the meantime, she does worry she’ll be found out in the women’s bathroom and struggles with clothes: “I don’t wear leggings because of the bulge situation.”

But it’s one thing for a trans woman like Emily to choose surgery for herself, and another for a sorority to unofficially require it for membership, according to Stevie Tran. "Why are you creating special requirements for trans members? Because you certainly don’t pull down all your potential new members’ pants and do a genital check," she says. She suggests sororities ask themselves, "Do we want to create a policy where we check to make sure every sorority member has a vagina? Why is a vagina so important to being a woman within our organization? How does having a vagina impact our ability to build character and to develop leaders and to instill values in people?"

Stevie Tran (left) remained close with her fraternity brothers after she transitioned.

Emily doesn’t know for sure why she was invited back to so few sororities last year but trans women at other schools have been shut out in similarly confusing ways. Some sorority members, it seems, are happy to admit a trans woman but are afraid of disapproval from their national offices.



This was clear to Kat Callahan, the Asian correspondent at Jalopnik and editor of Jezebel’s LGBTQ vertical, ROY G BIV, when she was a student at Texas Woman’s University from 2012 to 2013. At the time, Callahan, a trans woman, was presenting male and pledging a historic national fraternity. When she began transitioning, she befriended a group of women who belonged to a NPC sorority. "I said something like, ’Too bad I can’t join [the sorority]," she says.



In general, her sorority friends seemed "quite open" to the idea of Callahan rushing, she says, but they told her they felt "crippled" about the possibility of giving her a bid. "They felt that nationals would say ’no’ if permission was asked," she says. Beyond that, they “simply didn’t want the attention, or to end up in conflict with nationals.” Nationals might’ve been upset with media attention garnered by a transgender pledge, putting the chapter on the rocks with nationals and possibly revoking Callahan’s Greek membership. Had the national office of the NPC sorority had a clear policy welcoming students who identify as women, "I think I would have been in a sorority," Callahan says. Instead, she remained a member of her North American Interfraternity Conference frat (the male equivalent of the NPC) but hasn’t asked about her membership status since she transitioned.

Addison Rose Vincent, a transfeminine genderqueer student (Vincent identifies as non-binary and goes by they/them pronouns, but identifies more closely with femininity), also saw confusion between college sorority chapters and their governing boards when they went through recruitment at Chapman University in California in 2013. The cover of Chapman’s sorority recruitment handbook blares, in sparkly all-caps letters: "All You Need Is Love." But Vincent never quite felt it.



After round one of recruitment, Vincent received an invitation back to only one of a possible five sorority houses — Delta Gamma. But a second house had also chosen to invite Vincent back, according to a former member of that sorority who was present when Vincent rushed. For reasons the sorority member, who requested anonymity, still doesn’t know, her sorority’s invite never got to Vincent. "We didn’t know why [Vincent] had been dropped," the sorority member says. "It’s possible the decision could have been made by the Panhellenic Council or nationals." (The Panhellenic Council receives a list of rushees to be invited back from each sorority and is responsible for sending out the next round of invites.)

After Delta Gamma didn’t invite Vincent back for a third round, they were forced out of rush. On Bid Day, "I could hear all the girls screaming in excitement for what sororities they got into," Vincent says. "I was so close yet so distant."



Vincent believes that Delta Gamma was the only house able to invite them back because the sorority’s national office has a formal, public trans-inclusive policy. "As a council, we are not aware if people complained about Addie’s recruitment process," Chapman’s Panhellenic Council president Bailey Martz told me via email. "Chapman Panhellenic supports undergraduate students who identify as women to go through a Panhellenic recruitment process, and we are working to ensure that our council By Laws reflect this."



Addison Rose Vincent

Cosmopolitan.com contacted the national offices of all 26 NPC sororities about the guidance, or lack of guidance, they offer to sorority members on the topic of transgender pledges. Twenty-one of them did not reply. Delta Gamma and Kappa Kappa Gamma responded, confirming that the official trans-inclusive policies on their websites are current. Theta Phi Alpha said in an email, “At this time, Theta Phi Alpha doesn’t have a policy addressing transgender membership, but this topic is currently under discussion. It is important to us that we stay committed to promoting an inclusive member experience that values having a diverse membership, accessible national leadership, and professional staff support to meet the needs of our membership.” Alpha Phi replied, “Undergraduates who identify as women are eligible for membership in Alpha Phi,” but when asked if this meant they had a trans-inclusive policy, clarified, “Our formal policies are pretty broad, so we provide this clarification to campuses and potential new members whenever it is requested.”



Kappa Alpha Theta, the NPC sorority of which I am an alumna, told me via a representative that it does not have a policy on trans students and would direct any chapter with a question about their eligibility to Theta’s non-discrimination policy, which welcomes members "without regard to race, religion, national origin, age, disability or other characteristics protected by applicable law," but makes no mention of gender. The representative added that none of the sorority’s laws state that transgender women are not eligible. (But none of those laws state that trans women are eligible either.)



In February, in a headline-making effort to make a clear policy for students, Brown University’s Panhellenic Council — and the college chapters of the school’s three NPC sororities, Alpha Chi Omega, Kappa Alpha Theta, and Kappa Delta — voted to allow all students who identify as female to participate in recruitment. It was a progressive decision that reflects the school’s inclusive stance on the LGBT community, but there was a potential snafu: Though Brown’s Panhellenic Council "strongly believe(s) that any member who goes through recruitment would be accepted … it’s almost impossible to know how national organizations would react," says Sophia Blistein, then the council’s vice president of recruitment. When making the policy, she says, Brown’s recruitment board figured that sorority nationals wouldn’t want to attract negative attention by countering the policy, and in the event that nationals does put up a fight against transgender pledges, "we [are] prepared to fight for these members.”



According to Jessica Pettitt, three NPC sororities that she’s never worked with before have called her this year for guidance in considering trans inclusion policies. It’s a big step toward doing better for trans students, but even when sororities do enact public policies, the rest of the battle is upholding them. “Policy is only one thing,” Pettitt says. “Culture is the other.” Until NPC sororities, which have long struggled with diversity, actually begin admitting more trans women, rushing will continue to be a big risk for girls like Emily.



Emily gets ready for a night out. Rachel Woolf

Emily knows the odds are stacked against her. She’s a junior rushing with a bunch of freshmen. She’s rushed before and didn’t make it through. She’ll be gone for a month recovering from surgery. “There’s a fairly large probability that they won’t let me in just because I won’t be around to do sorority things,” she says. And, without a trans-inclusive policy, she has no way of knowing how the board at the NPC sorority she’s rushing feels about admitting trans women.



But she’s going to try. She pictures coming back to Michigan later this semester, post-surgery, and fitting in. “If anyone saw me naked ... if I’m showering or something in the house ... there wouldn’t be that fear,” she says. “Once I have [the surgery], I completely fit the cis-normative definitions of womanhood, so people will accept me more. I hate to say it. It’s sad, but it’s true.”

Maybe she’ll even inspire other LGBTQ women to rush and change the culture from the inside, she thinks. “It’s not as much about me getting in as it is about trans people getting in,” she says. Her sorority sisters and those in other houses would “get to know me and see that I’m a normal person just like everyone else.”

Emily is hopeful all over again: “I would be such a good sorority girl.”

Update: Emily Kaufman did not receive a sorority bid. Read her reaction here.

Follow Michelle on Twitter.

