#TransinSTEM

[palaeoiris]

Transgender Pride Flag + Carnotaurus sketch for the International Trans day of Visiblity Personal use with credit welcome and encouraged ^^

[unlikelybanditpartyeagle]

Well I definitely haven't posted in a bit.

Here, have a pic of me looking like a little child.

Now let's talk Abt something I've been struggling with somewhat recently:

Accepting success

I'm currently in a place I never imagined myself in. I live alone, with my cat, across the country from my parents, and I'm taking the time and space to find out who I am and who I want to be without school.

I had a huge struggle w imposter syndrome / accepting that I can be in this space and have everything be ok. I've never had this much time in my life where it doesn't feel like something is about to start crashing down. I'm allowed to be proud of myself, and I'm allowed to just let the good things happen and to indulge in being alive, and happy, and in one of the most beautiful places on earth.

Work is going well, I'm learning and becoming a much more reliable dev, I've lead a few projects, and people have started coming to me for help.

Life is _good_. I am proud of what I've done, what I'm going to do, and who I am. I don't think I would have been able to honestly say that when I started this blog.

[jkxcomics]

Making bold innovations in computer science and engineering once is remarkable. But to do it twice while pioneering the foundation of many computing methods and high-tech companies is revolutionary. And that’s exactly what the incredible @conwaylynn did. Lynn Conway is most known as a renowned computer scientist and co-author of the textbook “Introduction to VSLI Systems” – what started as a guide and became the future standard microprocessor and memory chip design. Very large-scale integration (VSLI) is a system used to create many circuits in a single piece of semiconductor as opposed to electronic components – allowing for smaller, cheaper, and more efficient microchip creation. This revolutionary work occurred when she restarted her career in “stealth mode” after her gender transition in 1968. Before this, Lynn had made major contributions to out-of-order dynamic instruction scheduling (DIS) in computers at IBM but was fired for being transgender. DIS is the basis that allows supercomputers to complete tasks out of the order it’s written in when it can be executed independently of other tasks. However, she was separated from this work for 30+ years simply for being who she is. As such, in addition to being the STEM superstar she is, Lynn Conway is also a fierce transgender activist. Thank you for all that you do @conwaylynn! #WomensHistoryMonth #WHM #WomenInSTEM #TransInSTEM #ComputerScience #ElectricalEngineering #WomenInEngineering #LynnConway https://www.instagram.com/p/CM0VRNFj13N/?igshid=12poakdaq16bw

[sciencenewsforstudents]

When Miles Ott was in high school, he had a love-hate relationship with math. Sometimes, he enjoyed his classes. At other times, he felt confused. “I did not understand what the point was,” he says. “I just thought I wasn’t good at it.”

But that changed in college when he took a calculus class. The teacher explained the concepts very clearly. “‘Oh, this makes sense now,’” Ott recalls thinking at the time. “It was a great feeling to finally understand this thing that was so profoundly confusing to me. And I just never wanted to stop.”

He didn’t. Later, he went to graduate school and studied biostatistics. That field combines math and statistics to understand how to improve the health of large groups of people. Ott now works at Smith College in Northampton, Mass. He has done research on topics such as HIV in South Africa and alcohol use among college students.

He also has explored mental health issues in transgender people. This area has special meaning to Ott because he is a transgender man.

Miles Ott is a biostatistician. He uses math and statistics to study how we can improve people’s health.Smith College

What does being transgender mean? Imagine that when a baby is born, the doctor looks at their body parts and proclaims, “It’s a girl!” But at some point, that person comes to realize that they don’t feel like a girl at all. In fact, they knowthey’re supposed to be a boy. Put another way, their “gender identity” is male, making that person a transgender boy or man.

This can go the other way around, too. Doctors could say that a child is a boy at birth. But that person grows up knowing they are female. This is a transgender girl or woman.

Many transgender people then go through a process called a “transition.” Often, they start wearing clothes that match their gender identity. They may change their name. A transgender man named Andrea at birth, for instance, might start going by Alexander. And they can change their pronouns. Pronouns are words such as “he,” “she”, “him” and “her.” A transgender woman would ask people to refer to her as “she” and “her.”

Some people take medications or have surgery to change their bodies. A transgender man could undergo these treatments to develop male features. A transgender woman could go through other treatments to develop female features.

For Ott, being a transgender scientist has come with challenges. He was going through his transition when he applied to graduate school. He wasn’t sure which name to use on his applications. He decided to list his old name, even though it didn’t feel right.

In grad school, some people asked him overly personal questions. He slowly learned how to deal with these situations. “It took me a while to figure out that I don’t have to answer anybody’s questions,” he says. “I get to decide what I’m comfortable with.”

Becoming a scientist takes years of hard work and dedication. Transgender scientists and engineers, though, face extra hurdles. Sometimes they feel alone because they don’t know other transgender researchers. When they transition, colleagues may treat them rudely and disrespectfully. And transgender researchers can be in greater physical danger when they travel to other countries for fieldwork.

But these scientists and engineers are gaining support. Universities and organizations are working to make them feel included in science, technology, engineering and math (STEM) fields. More researchers are talking openly about being transgender (often abbreviated as “trans”). And they are finding other trans people through meetings and social media.

[thescientistrans]

Good night. I just killed my shoulders for the third time this week, passed a chemistry test that I was terrified I wouldn’t, turned in a paper thank God @patter_daughter proof read it, and did a super long and very difficult lab, and worked my jobs this weekend. Glad to close this week out. 😴😴 #gym #gymrat #shoulderworkout #tattoo #trans #transftm #ftm #transman #transguy #bio #biology #biomajor #stem #transinstem #hrt #armday #tatt #fitness #gains #nerd (at Tuscaloosa, Alabama) https://www.instagram.com/p/B2-nrGpjDAo/?igshid=sowqhxmdvhei

[taonf]

When technical writer and former WWII pilot Jonathan Ferguson changed his gender in 1958, it made the news in Britain. I’ve imagined the moment many times since I first read about it in a paper called “Hacking the Cis-Tem” by scholar Mar Hicks. Ferguson’s name change, according to the U.K.’s Daily Telegraph and Morning Post, was straightforward: someone took a pen and amended a line in the Official Register. In my imagination, it was a fountain pen and written with a flourish, and in that moment Ferguson felt truly seen after years of hiding his true identity. I’m embellishing, but I want it to have been simple and meaningful. These bureaucratic moments, like signing a marriage license or signing the lease on a first apartment, mark life stage transitions.

— Meredith Broussard

[ecoeschatologist]

Happy tdov!!! I’m an nb person studying science and interning in museum work!!! I love myself and I’m visible

[palaeoiris]

Transgeder Pride Flag+Charnia sketch for the Trans Visibility Week.

Personal use with credit welcome and encouraged ^^

[palaeoiris]

It's Trans Visibility Week and we're thinking back on how a simple idea to signpost location for an LGBTQ+ meetup at one palaeontoogical conference has grown into what Palaeoiris is today. Our pins and buttons are meant to be worn, both to aid in visibility without having to loudly draw attention to queer identity/ies of the wearer, but also to visibly showcase support and signal that the space queer people are finding themselves in is a safe space where they will be cherished and valued as everyone else.

And showcasing allyship to trans people has never been more important, as the moral panic around trans people existing keeps progressing and being pushed forward. So we must push back.

If you are a proud wearer of one of our trans, non-binary, or genderqueer Queerlobites, Queerutili, Queeraminifera, and others, we would love to hear from you. Let us know in the comments if it has resulted in some exchanges, if it made you or someone else happy, and feel free to also share a photo in your story and tag us so we don't miss it. We absolutely LOVE seeing our creations out and about around the world. Seeing them after they leave our HQ really makes their quest real and heart warming. Of course, if you're not in a position to share and out yourself, we completely understand and value you still. 🩵🩷🤍🩷🩵

[sciencenewsforstudents]

When Miles Ott was in high school, he had a love-hate relationship with math. Sometimes, he enjoyed his classes. At other times, he felt confused. “I did not understand what the point was,” he says. “I just thought I wasn’t good at it.”

But that changed in college when he took a calculus class. The teacher explained the concepts very clearly. “‘Oh, this makes sense now,’” Ott recalls thinking at the time. “It was a great feeling to finally understand this thing that was so profoundly confusing to me. And I just never wanted to stop.”

He didn’t. Later, he went to graduate school and studied biostatistics. That field combines math and statistics to understand how to improve the health of large groups of people. Ott now works at Smith College in Northampton, Mass. He has done research on topics such as HIV in South Africa and alcohol use among college students.

He also has explored mental health issues in transgender people. This area has special meaning to Ott because he is a transgender man.

What does being transgender mean? Imagine that when a baby is born, the doctor looks at their body parts and proclaims, “It’s a girl!” But at some point, that person comes to realize that they don’t feel like a girl at all. In fact, they knowthey’re supposed to be a boy. Put another way, their “gender identity” is male, making that person a transgender boy or man.

This can go the other way around, too. Doctors could say that a child is a boy at birth. But that person grows up knowing they are female. This is a transgender girl or woman.

Many transgender people then go through a process called a “transition.” Often, they start wearing clothes that match their gender identity. They may change their name. A transgender man named Andrea at birth, for instance, might start going by Alexander. And they can change their pronouns. Pronouns are words such as “he,” “she”, “him” and “her.” A transgender woman would ask people to refer to her as “she” and “her.”

Some people take medications or have surgery to change their bodies. A transgender man could undergo these treatments to develop male features. A transgender woman could go through other treatments to develop female features.

For Ott, being a transgender scientist has come with challenges. He was going through his transition when he applied to graduate school. He wasn’t sure which name to use on his applications. He decided to list his old name, even though it didn’t feel right.

In grad school, some people asked him overly personal questions. He slowly learned how to deal with these situations. “It took me a while to figure out that I don’t have to answer anybody’s questions,” he says. “I get to decide what I’m comfortable with.”

Becoming a scientist takes years of hard work and dedication. Transgender scientists and engineers, though, face extra hurdles. Sometimes they feel alone because they don’t know other transgender researchers. When they transition, colleagues may treat them rudely and disrespectfully. And transgender researchers can be in greater physical danger when they travel to other countries for fieldwork.

But these scientists and engineers are gaining support. Universities and organizations are working to make them feel included in science, technology, engineering and math (STEM) fields. More researchers are talking openly about being transgender (often abbreviated as “trans”). And they are finding other trans people through meetings and social media.

“It is slowly — maybe slowly, but surely — changing for the better,” says Daniel Cruz-Ramírez de Arellano. “I genuinely feel like that is the case.” He is a chemist at the University of South Florida in Tampa. Cruz-Ramírez de Arellano also has studied transgender scientists’ experiences.

[sciencenewsforstudents]

When Miles Ott was in high school, he had a love-hate relationship with math. Sometimes, he enjoyed his classes. At other times, he felt confused. “I did not understand what the point was,” he says. “I just thought I wasn’t good at it.”

But that changed in college when he took a calculus class. The teacher explained the concepts very clearly. “‘Oh, this makes sense now,’” Ott recalls thinking at the time. “It was a great feeling to finally understand this thing that was so profoundly confusing to me. And I just never wanted to stop.”

He didn’t. Later, he went to graduate school and studied biostatistics. That field combines math and statistics to understand how to improve the health of large groups of people. Ott now works at Smith College in Northampton, Mass. He has done research on topics such as HIV in South Africa and alcohol use among college students.

He also has explored mental health issues in transgender people. This area has special meaning to Ott because he is a transgender man.

What does being transgender mean? Imagine that when a baby is born, the doctor looks at their body parts and proclaims, “It’s a girl!” But at some point, that person comes to realize that they don’t feel like a girl at all. In fact, they knowthey’re supposed to be a boy. Put another way, their “gender identity” is male, making that person a transgender boy or man.

This can go the other way around, too. Doctors could say that a child is a boy at birth. But that person grows up knowing they are female. This is a transgender girl or woman.

Many transgender people then go through a process called a “transition.” Often, they start wearing clothes that match their gender identity. They may change their name. A transgender man named Andrea at birth, for instance, might start going by Alexander. And they can change their pronouns. Pronouns are words such as “he,” “she”, “him” and “her.” A transgender woman would ask people to refer to her as “she” and “her.”

Some people take medications or have surgery to change their bodies. A transgender man could undergo these treatments to develop male features. A transgender woman could go through other treatments to develop female features.

For Ott, being a transgender scientist has come with challenges. He was going through his transition when he applied to graduate school. He wasn’t sure which name to use on his applications. He decided to list his old name, even though it didn’t feel right.

In grad school, some people asked him overly personal questions. He slowly learned how to deal with these situations. “It took me a while to figure out that I don’t have to answer anybody’s questions,” he says. “I get to decide what I’m comfortable with.”

Becoming a scientist takes years of hard work and dedication. Transgender scientists and engineers, though, face extra hurdles. Sometimes they feel alone because they don’t know other transgender researchers. When they transition, colleagues may treat them rudely and disrespectfully. And transgender researchers can be in greater physical danger when they travel to other countries for fieldwork.

But these scientists and engineers are gaining support. Universities and organizations are working to make them feel included in science, technology, engineering and math (STEM) fields. More researchers are talking openly about being transgender (often abbreviated as “trans”). And they are finding other trans people through meetings and social media.

“It is slowly — maybe slowly, but surely — changing for the better,” says Daniel Cruz-Ramírez de Arellano. “I genuinely feel like that is the case.” He is a chemist at the University of South Florida in Tampa. Cruz-Ramírez de Arellano also has studied transgender scientists’ experiences.

[taonf]

"Not knowing something is impossible has interesting effects on your work." — Sophie Wilson

Sophie Wilson and colleague Steve Furber took less than a week to design and implement the prototype of what became the BBC Microcomputer. Furber and Wilson refined their design over the same summer, with Wilson designing the operating system and writing the BBC basic interpreter.

Wilson and Furber then co-designed the 32-bit RISC Machine processor (1985). This was used in the BBC Micro as a second processor (1986); Acorn's first general-purpose home computer based on their own ARM architecture, the Archimedes (1987); and Apple Computer's first personal digital assistant, the Newton (1993).

[taonf]

Many people are unaware that LGBT+ people have been heavily involved in the ongoing video gaming revolution since its inception, largely because their achievements are often hidden or not celebrated.

David Gaider is one of gaming’s leading writers, as well as a skilled narrative designer, novelist, and creative director. David explained why it is so important to challenge the status quo, saying:

“There’s a tendency for every character’s default to be straight, white, and male in our industry – and nobody questions that default. No character ever has to justify why they’re straight, white, and male. The moment you make them anything else, you suddenly need reasons why that’s okay… or do you? A certain amount of deliberateness is required to challenge the idea of a default, and while it feels a bit unnatural to do so, it’s absolutely necessary. It’s a way to create without unthinkingly doing things the same way simply because that’s how you’ve always done them.”

As one of many pioneering trans women in game designing and programming, Danielle Bunten Berry helped to influence the multiplayer genre with the birthing of the iconic 80s strategy multiplayer video game M.U.L.E, which combines real-time and turn-based styles as you battle for land and resources on a newly colonised planet.

American transgender video game designer Rebecca Heineman has been involved in iconic gaming titles from Crystal Quest to DOOM. She is also one of the founding members of several video game companies including Interplay Productions, Logicware, Contraband Entertainment, and Olde Sküül.

In the Netflix series High Score, Heineman talks about her earliest gaming achievement, becoming the first national gaming champion in 1980, when she was crowned the best Space Invaders player in the country aged just 16.

Jamie Fenton has been an active voice and presence in the gaming community for transgender women since 1998. Acting as the head designer for the iconic 1981 arcade game Gorf, Jamie was one of the creators of MacroMind’s VideoWorks software.

Maddy Thorson is the Canadian genius behind the development of two popular indie games: TowerFall and Celeste. Thorson came out as non-binary in July 2019 and uses them/they pronouns. Using their life experiences as a reference, Maddy created the character, Madeline, in the game Celeste, who was transgender – with Thorson later revealing in an interview with PC Gamer that the process of creating the game “was a reflection on their own coming-to-terms with their gender identity”.

In the 80s, Veda Hlublinka-Cook was a talented, pioneering video game programmer at Broderbund Software, Inc., designing and writing games like Gumball and D/Generation – and even modelling for one of the characters in Jordan Mechner’s 1989 game Prince of Persia. Veda came out as transgender in 2017.

Known for being the founder of game company Junglevision, Cathryn Mataga is one of the leading female game programmers in the world. Way back in the 80s, she was writing early video games for the Atari 8-bit computer under Synapse Software. From the flip-shooter game Shamus (1982) to X-Men: Reign of Apocalypse and Spiderman 2, Cathryn has been a visible voice and activist for the LGBT+ community, opening many doors for people who wanted to be accepted for who they are, and their talents – and nothing else.

[taonf]

Dr. Ben Barres was a neuroscientist whose research focuses on the glia, not nerve cells but other cells which help to sculpt and maintain the wiring of the brain.

Once he realized that he was transgender, he was nervous about coming out, afraid that he would lose his job and his friends. He wrote a letter explaining his situation,

“Although the idea of my changing sex will take some time for you to get used to, the reality is that I’m not going to change all that much. I’m still going to wear jeans and tee shirts and pretty much be the same person I always have been—it’s just that I am going to be a lot happier.”

But his family and all of his colleagues were immediately supportive.

And he found a lot more support now that he presented as male. After a talk, one scientist remarked what a great seminar it had been, saying that “Ben Barres’s work is much better than his sister’s.” That was no sister — he was the same person presenting the same research.

“By far, the main difference that I have noticed is that people who don’t know I am transgendered treat me with much more respect; I can even complete a whole sentence without being interrupted by a man.”

He became an outspoken advocate for gender equity and fairness to LGBTQ+ scientists.

He changed procedures of the National Institute of Health Pioneer Award. Previously, a nearly-all-male committee selected almost exclusively male winners.

He changed the nomination process for candidates to be chosen as Howard Hughes Medical Institute investigators, seeking gender equity.

He helped establish the child care assistance program for Stanford untenured faculty.

He convinced multiple science conferences to require a pledge from attendees that they will not sexually harass, with the understanding that that behavior would bar them from future participation.

His neurological discoveries with glial cells led him to co-founding ANNEXON, a biopharmaceutical company testing drugs for the treatment of neurodegenerative autoimmune diseases such as ALS, Huntington’s disease, Guillain-Barre syndrome, and geographic atrophy. Barres also worked with the Christopher & Dana Reeve Foundation to explore ways to promote recovery of function after spinal cord injury.

Dr. Ben Barres deserves to be celebrated for his work and for his activism. Dr. Barres believed that our differences should be honored, as there is a place for everyone in science. He hoped to inspire young people, especially women and LGBTQ+, to become the next generation of scientists.