The 21-year-old had started Spelman identifying as non-binary and using they/them pronouns, but “no one could catch on to that so it was kind of hard to exist as myself,” O’Neal said. He added that in his experience, “black folks really only understood the binary.”
What We Know:
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O’Neal says he’s the first openly trans man to graduate from Spelman College, America’s first private, liberal arts historically black college for women.
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O’Neal shared two smiling snapshots of himself in his graduation attire on Twitter that subsequently went viral. HuffPost talked to the recent graduate about his journey at Spelman and what it’s like to be a trans man at an all-women college.
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O’Neal said he loved Spelman as a freshman, but he didn’t feel like he could come into himself, so he transferred to a predominantly white institution.
- The school announced in September 2017 that it would revise its admissions and enrollment policy to “consider for admission women students including students who consistently live and self-identify as women, regardless of their gender assignment at birth.”
This story first seen at HuffPost.
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