The Madness of Crowds: Gender, Race and Identity

by Douglas Murray

At Wellesley College in 2014 there was a fascinating case where a student arriving at the all-female college announced that she was a ‘masculine of centre genderqueer person’ who wanted to be known as ‘Timothy’ and expected people to use male pronouns. Despite having applied to Hillary Clinton’s alma mater as a girl, the other students reportedly had no problem in particular with their male-identifying contemporary. That is, until Timothy announced that he wanted to run for the position of multicultural affairs coordinator: the purpose of this role being to promote a ‘culture of diversity’ on the university campus. It might have been expected that a ‘masculine of centre genderqueer person’ might have the perfect scorecard for the position. Except that students at Wellesley reportedly felt that having Timothy in such a position would perpetuate the patriarchy at the college. A campaign got under way to abstain in the election. One student behind the ‘campaign to abstain’ said, ‘I thought he’d do a perfectly fine job, but it just felt inappropriate to have a white man there.’