World
Cross-dressing Ban Unbecoming Morehouse

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A new ban on cross-dressing at Morehouse College in Atlanta betrays
the iconoclastic history of the all-male institution that educated
African-American luminaries such as Martin Luther King Jr. and Spike
Lee, says one writer.
Elizabeth Gates, a style correspondent for The Daily Beast,
criticizes the recent "appropriate dress policy" that forbids "the
wearing of clothing associated with women's garb (dresses, tops,
tunics, purses, pumps, etc.) on the Morehouse campus or at
college-sponsored events."
"For Morehouse to turn against the
men that have chosen to hand over their hard-earned scholarships,
loans, or family savings is unacceptable," writes Gates. "To tell a
student that his sense of self is only as good as his ability to
conform is to reduce this student, and Morehouse at large, to the exact
consciousness it fought so hard to defeat."
Gates attended
Spelman College, the sister institution of Morehouse, but says she left
because of the stifling atmosphere that included antigay attitudes and
violence.
"The year before I left, a boy was brutally beaten
with a baseball bat in a bathroom stall at a Morehouse dorm for
'looking at' another student in the shower," Gates writes. "The victim
was rushed to the hospital and underwent emergency brain surgery that
saved his life. The abuser was sentenced to serve two consecutive
10-year sentences in prison. Astonishingly, the campus was left divided
about whether or not the incident should be considered a hate crime."