NORTHAMPTON – Writer and transgender rights activist Julia Serano told a Smith College audience Thursday night that transwomen often face "transmisogyny."



"A lot of times the transphobia we face is full of misogyny," Serano said. A transwoman, she made her remarks during a presentation titled "On Gender Entitlement and Perception" in Wright Hall. The event was sponsored by Transcending Gender, an advocacy group for transgender students at Smith, and attended by about 50 people.



As an example, Serano said that feminine boys are seen as more disturbing to adults than are masculine girls.



Serano touched on Smith's recent rejection of the application of a male-to-female transgender high school student. The college denied the application of Calliope Wong, a student at Amity Regional Senior High School in Connecticut, on the grounds that she listed herself as male on her Free Application for Federal Student Aid.



"It is really an arbitrary thing," Serano said of the rejection, which she characterized as a bureaucratic snafu.



She went on to characterize women's colleges as being more welcoming of females transitioning to being men with transmen being seen as more serious under transmisogyny. Serano's book "Whipping Girl" is often used in college and graduate-level classes.



Meanwhile, Republican legislators seeking to establish that sex-segregated facilities like bathrooms and locker rooms in schools be determined by anatomical sex rather that gender identity were stymied during a budget debate Wednesday in the statehouse.



Language around public accommodations was taken out of a 2011 transgender rights bill before it became law. However, a recent advisory to local education officials from the state Department of Elementary and Secondary Education interpreted the law to guide school officials in how to handle the issues of locker rooms and rest rooms for transgender students. The advisory states that students may access the rest room, locker room or changing facility that corresponds to the student's gender identity.



Rep. James Lyons, R-Andover, sponsored an amendment that sought to retroactively revoke the advisory and establish that a person's anatomical sex rather than gender identity determine which rest room a person uses. That amendment was approved after being amended to require a determination by administration officials that the amendment not cause discrimination or safety issues.



