As Harvard administrators contemplate changing the University's non-discrimination policy, national transgender activists say Harvard is at the forefront of a profound change in the way society perceives gender.

Indeed, a national media blitz has surrounded Alex S. Myers '00, an outspoken, openly transgendered undergraduate, since last spring when he urged the Undergraduate Council to add a statement on gender expression to its non-discrimination policy.

Nancy R. Nangeroni, an MIT graduate and Cambridge resident who is "not content to be simply [male or female]", says there is no harm in "allowing people to self-determine gender", despite the American Psychiatric Association (APA) classification of transsexualism as a "sexual deviation."

Nangeroni and activists on campus say Harvard should ignore that definition and let students self-determine their gender for the purposes of housing and athletic teams.

After some debate, the council complied with Myers' request to include the idea of gender-expression in its non-discrimination clause, which applies to all student groups who receive funding from the council.

But the College and the University have been slower to change.

The administrators who met with the undergraduate Transgender Task Force last year seem to be receptive to the idea of discounting the APA's designation though they have yet to make a definitive decision on the validity of self-determination of gender.

"We will not use it as a standard," say Dean of Students Archie C. Epps III, "I personally don't consider [transgenderism] a disorder."

The task force, comprised of members from the Bisexual, Gay, Lesbian, Transgendered and Supporter's Alliance and the Undergraduate Council, plans to begin campus-wide education efforts about the issue this year. It will also contact Faculty within the next few weeks to urge them to adopt the change if the issue is brought to them by the deans.

But some psychiatrists, such as Charles W. Socarides '45, agree with the APA's designation and believe that people who want to change their gender should be treated through psychoanalysis.

"To call [transgenderism] something as normal as apple pie does a great injustice to children as well as adults," says Socarides, who is president of the National Association for Research and Therapy of Homosexuality.

"For Harvard itself--this great institution--to formally approve of such a pathology is flagrantly wrong and unscientific no matter what the gay activists would say," he says.

'Born to Be...Transgendered'

For Myers, who renounced his biological sex and began living as a male during his senior year of high school, transgenderism has nothing to do with medicine.

"From a personal standpoint, what the APA thinks of transgenderism, I'm not really concerned with," he says, adding that the APA also classified homosexuality as a mental disorder until the mid-1970s. "There's historical precedent for the APA being wrong."

Myers says he was "born to be...transgendered" in the same way people are born to be a certain race.