Smithsonian “Women’s History” Museum to Feature Men Who Identify As Women
“From the DNA of this museum, there has been a desire to be inclusive."
The future Smithsonian Women’s History Museum will include men who identify as women as part of its effort to be “inclusive,” the interim director for the project, Lisa Sasaki, recently said.
Sasaki is spearheading the museum, which is being built “from scratch,” as she told The New York Times, and as of yet has no building or even planned site but has pulled in $55 million in pledges from such philanthropic heavy-hitters as Melinda French Gates, Tory Burch, and Alice Walton.
“The stories we tell about our country’s history so often overlook the contributions of the women in every generation whose efforts and ideas helped make us who we are today,” French Gates, the former wife of Microsoft founder Bill Gates, said in a statement. “By paying tribute to the women who shaped our past, the Smithsonian American Women’s History Museum empowers and inspires the ones who will shape our future.”
Sasaki told the Times that the museum will feature women who have contributed to politics, entertainment, and science as well as “transgender women,” i.e. men who identify as women.
“There is no monolithic experience of womanhood, and Sasaki emphasized that her museum would not attempt to create a singular narrative. The institution will include an oral history program for visitors to submit their own stories, for example,” the paper explained.
“But Sasaki said that she plans to include transgender women, who have been subject to increasing harassment and violence at a time when there is a national discussion, and deep partisan divide, about the acceptance of transgender identities,” it revealed.
“We have a job to build a museum that’s going to serve the public for a very, very long time,” Sasaki told the Times. “From the DNA of this museum, there has been a desire to be inclusive.”
This comes not long after we reported that Rachel Levine, the highest-ranking transgender official in the federal government who began identifying as a woman in 2011, is the subject of an upcoming children’s book on women who “persisted.”