Program traps students in ‘cycle of sex denial,’ conservative argues
A Queer Resource Center serving a consortium of five private, elite colleges in Southern California offers free, “gender-affirming” resources such as “TransTape” to students.
One conservative advocate told The College Fix the program, offered by the center serving the Claremont Colleges, will keep students with gender dysphoria “trapped in the cycle of sex denial.”
Free chest binders, designed to flatten the chest for trans-identifying individuals, are available to students who may not “have the means to purchase them,” the center’s “Trans & Nonbinary at the Colleges” page states.
The center also offers “TransTape” for “chest masculinization” and gaffs, which are undergarments designed to flatten the pelvic area for men attempting to appear more feminine.
The request form stipulates that “this program will continue to provide the listed gender affirming resources until the budget for this program is exhausted.”
Students are further advised, “due to budget limitations, please be mindful to request one item per person, per academic year.”
The center’s website promises the colleges will “do [their] best to update sizes and skin tones” of products as they go out of stock, and maintain students’ anonymity by sending binders “directly to [their] campus mailbox in a plain campus envelope.”
The center serves “the lesbian, gay, bisexual, transgender, queer, questioning, asexual, omnisexual, and pansexual communities, as well as allies, at The Claremont Colleges,” the website states.
The campuses include Claremont McKenna, Scripps, Harvey Mudd, Pomona and Pitzer colleges.
The page also instructs students on how to update their pronouns and chosen names on their student portals.
Heritage Foundation Research Fellow Delano Squires told The Fix that this program will do more harm than good for students.
“College students who feel discomfort with their body should receive services that help their minds accept the reality that their sex was determined at conception—not ‘assigned at birth’—and cannot be changed based on their feelings, clothing choices, or medical interventions,” he said.
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Although Claremont’s QRC Binder Program request form includes a “TransTape” FAQ and “how-to” application video, some doubt remains about the safety and potential outcomes resulting from the use of these products.
Squires cited a New York Times article which found that students using chest binders “reported several physical health risks, including back pain, overheating, chest pain and shortness of breath, numbness, bad posture and lightheadedness.”
Squires also told The Fix that binders “keep trans-identifying teens and adults trapped in the cycle of sex denial. Flattening, hiding, and even removing healthy breast tissue does not make a woman any less female.”
“Hopefully, universities will get back to their roots of seeking truth by accepting the reality that every human being is either male or female and rejecting the idea that our sex can be changed through medical interventions, linguistic sleight of hand, or clothing choices,” Squires said.
Apart from the center, Claremont Colleges also offer students the ability to declare their “chosen name” and pronouns.
Additionally, housing is “gender-inclusive” at Claremont. At the Pitzer campus, for example, there are “no restrictions based on gender in terms of students choosing their suitemates or roommates.”
“Students may indicate their gender preferences in their Roommate Matching Profile in their student portal to assist in searching for LGBTQIA-Identified suitemates and roommates,” the site reads.
Squires also said that colleges often advance the harmful ideas “at the heart of gender ideology.”
“These institutions further betray their values by treating the false claims of gender radicals (e.g., ‘men’ can have babies) as dogma and accusing those who affirm the sex binary of bigotry,” he said.
The College Fix reached out to the Claremont Colleges media relations office as well as Bri Sérráno, director of the Queer Resource Center, to ask about the scope of the program via multiple emails in the last week. Neither responded.
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IMAGE CAPTION AND CREDIT: Women taping chests; Alice Che/Shutterstock