Transitioning in STEM
Transitioning in STEM
73 comments
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And yet, the Supreme Court in the UK claims that trans people shouldn't be afforded the same gender-based discrimination protections as their cis counterparts.
Discrimination is a social artifact, based on performed gender, not biological sex (whatever that means), as evidenced here.
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One observation I made is that when women get to comprise a significant part of workforce in science, those things seem to be flatten out.
Working in the place and field (Russia, food technology) where women are about 50% of the workforce, I've never witnessed anything talked about here. Women are taken just as seriously on the position, they are promoted on par with men, they are in charge of many high-profile projects, and actively taking male and female students under scientific supervision. Any sort of workplace harassment will not just contribute to your potential termination, but will earn you very bad reputation - you'll be seen as a dangerous weirdo no one wants to deal with.
One other observation I made is that international scientists often come from the position of entitlement, which is also weird to me. Male scientists tend to flaunt their position any time they can, and many of the female scientists tend to sort of mimic this behavior, but it feels different, like if they try to claw the attention they were consistently denied.
For me, it is weird and unnatural. Where I live and work, some baseline respect towards your more experienced superiors, male or female, is to be expected, is taught since school, and doesn't require such performances. Since most school teachers are female, the role of woman as a potential superior to be respected is clearly defined and doesn't cause questions. Students are not afraid to contact their superiors, but do it respectfully and with full understanding they take valuable time of a high-profile scientist. Why do people have to constantly fight for attention and respect in many other cultures is beyond me.
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As a man, it is insane to me that this is real.
I have a difficult time imagining malicious intent towards women by all these people. But given how common these stories are, there is something true about it. I just don't understand why.
Is it really an unconscious cultural thing? Or am I naive about how my fellow men (I guess maybe women too) feel towards women?
Something in me refuses to believe that these people knowingly and intentionally harm women. But it sure as hell looks intentional.
I am not defending them. I am expressing my struggle with the reality of this shit.
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I want to say that "unconscious cultural" doesn't exist, but I don't think I'm right on it. You can easily build consciousness on those topics and thus easily spot the cases with risk for any wrongdoing, and with how common and well-known they are, it just feels more like "willingly ignorant".
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Assuming that it is cultural, as it seems like your comment kinda assumes that. Like it seems you are saying, it was cultural but by now it is kinda intentional.
I would argue "willingly ignorant" is bad but also not making it less "unconscious cultural".
If they were willingly ignorant but also no cultural sexist, they wouldn't be an issue.
So well you have a point, but I would say that the unconscious cultural sexism could lead to willfully ignorant and you would kinda expect it.
I am not saying, you are fully wrong about the willingly ignorant part, I just don't think it would remove the cultural part.
Edit: you also seem very offended by the idea that I judge the us electorate based on a popular vote, saying that not everyone is that way. While happily blaming white Americans based on exit polls, ignoring that not everyone is that way. That is odd. Why can't I judge the us electorate but you can judge the white us electorate?
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Personal experience from when I was newly an adult, and chatting with a female university classmate and somehow got on the topic of games and I started explaining what Steam was, because I just subconsciously assumed, her being a woman, didn't know.
She politely pointed out I had mansplained to her.
I am very thankful to her for the experience as it's stuck with me and saved me from making a fool of myself on more than one occasion since.
I'm sure there are possibly small things like this, that you may have been been "guilty" of in the past.
These men, are engaging in similar behaviour cranked up to 1000.
However, it's even more malicious with them, because it's not like the last 30 years or so haven't had constant and increasing messaging (in the anglosphere, at least) about feminism and ways in which women have been treated unfairly.
So, it's not like they haven't had the opportunity to reflect, and change.
In summary, yeah, it is kind of baffling, but I will say society, while largely better than 30 years ago, still does have structural as well as conscious and unconcious bias towards women.
So I'm not surprised people like this exist.
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I hear you but what cranked it up to 1000?
Like I always saw my mom as a extremely competent person, as a child she was flawless. Nowadays, I see her flaws but I am flawed, so if my father and any person I ever met. I am impressed by my sister and how I can be like the person that she is in many ways.
I am talking about my direct family because these women had a lot of influence on me. So I wonder, what was their experience like to think so poorly of women? Not blaming the women in their social circle for being "bad", I just wonder wtf happened. Where does that belief come from? I don't think they all had great experiences with their male role models but horrible ones with their female role models. So what is it?
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Selection bias, the people who don't discriminate aren't causing harm so you don't notice them but since they don't speak up they aren't helping either, so the jerks are still setting the tone. The solution is to not just do the right thing but actively call people out the jerks.
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I agree with you there. As someone in programming, I don't quite have the opportunity to fight these things when they happen because... There are no women. (obviously linked to this) but I can't call out behavior when it happens when I am not around. But I am happy to report that I have been vocal about my support of trans people and fought against transphobia, even at work. Obviously I am not happy it is needed.
So I am trying to see and support victims of discrimination.
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You're simply not paying attention, because you don't have to. Not to be harsh. I went from male to female and how I'm treated is night and day. You've never tried to see how the other side lives, and when you heard stories that went against your experiences you dismissed them like your mind is trying to do right now.
Why does it happen? Nurture. History. Patriarchy. I could blame a lot of things. It's mostly that men never get treated the way they treat women.
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I've heard in my university that a lab manger/ head was trying to always get with the female students, and would ignore male ones, or would not allow male to volunteer in his labs. It's very close to bordering SH. Most other labs with male PIs don't really care about either gender
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I think you're naive but in fairness, it is shocking and hard to believe.
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Yuuup. Woman in engineering here. I once had a supervisor whose behaviour I thought of as normal, but two guys I worked with separately reported him to HR for bullying after seeing how he treated me.
It's funny, I had many years with almost no career progression, now my boss is a woman and I'm having to get used to the idea that bonuses and promotions are things that actually happen when I work hard.
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I also am glad you got the support. I'm constantly reminded of a friend in college who was going through an electrical engineering undergrad with me. She got all the material so easily and literally dragged me through the classes. I wouldn't have passed some key topics without her help. Fast forward a few years and I'm getting my PhD and I decide to see what she is up to: she ended up quitting her PhD program because of the insane abuse and misogyny she experienced in the department and instead changed to a masters in music. This was a woman who could easily have made field changing discoveries but was shut down because of close minded individuals. It still makes me rage and is the reason I work so much harder now to ensure my female colleagues and employees have an equal voice at the table.
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Glad to hear you at least had some decent colleagues!
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My wife was marked down on her PhD because she "wasn't nice enough" to her supervisor. All the assessors gave her top marks, but her supervisor vetoed them.
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Not in stem but the same thing happened to me. I used to be able to speak to a room and be heard. Now I need to raise my voice, sound a little whiney or bitchy or nobody hears me. Only my closest friend still asks me for advice or to share my knowledge. Used to happen all the time.
At least I pass. I got that going for me.
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Is this unique to women? Do men experience anything similar in women-dominated fields? I'm not actually sure what these may be; teaching, childcare, hair stylists? I realise this may make me sound misogynist, but I'm really clueless.
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I know I'm gonna go on a hot take that looks like is deflecting the problem but I experienced bullying and seen it and it can be worse than how they treat women. I think is related to a play of power the alpha beta shit existed before it now just has a name. Is all a play of power over others an male social status in the eyes of other males may times is defined by the amount of vaginas they have, had and would have access to. I think is all related and women get the short end of the stick a lot more than men but some get get the stick that says "fuck your life haha". Of couse some men take it entirely with women for some reason too so with them women get both sticks.
And (knowing the internet i say this beforehand) please with this I do not mean to do a whataboutism argument. Women do have a problem here as well as many other problems we all need go help with. -
Unfortunately I've seen men tend to dominate the conversation in women dominated fields as well, but only if they are misogynistic. I work a lot in the fiber arts industry and more often than not it is assumed I don't know anything because I am a man and humble, but I quickly prove my worth with my 20 years experience and it's wonderfully collaborative. Then I see so many men come in and say, "Look I knit a sweater! This is easy! Give me praise!" and weirdly enough there are enough people out there that just feed those egos. I completely blame the men in this case, but this problem wouldn't be so prevalent if everyone was just willing to shut these idiots down.
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Men in fem dominated fields get the glass escalator to promotion.
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Glass_Escalator
Propublica has some useful peices, but it might take an ebsco search or three to pry loose that dangerous and embarassing level of ignorance about what living is like.
Watching sociology videos can be a bit of a grind, but tastes better than foot-in-the-mouth.
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This is anecdotal, but male teachers get a special treatment if the school staff is mostly women.
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Stem is still heavily dominated by Men, biology might be different as more woman are in bio than men are, and becoming more common in other stems. engineer and programming sitll gear towards men.
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I was actually joining the chat to write that things are not that different in biology. I have a PhD and 7 years of postdocs behind me. Over the years I have :
- been denied a management position because "the team was only men, who wouldn't listen to me" (spoiler alert, they put an incompetent guy in charge who screwed up massively and I ended up taking over, successfully).
- had a boss who systematically doubted my opinion (while he was not a specialist of the topic) but listened to the very same argument from a male colleague
- had male Masters students who could speak uninterrupted during meetings when I couldn't
- got denied a tenure position for a guy with the same profile (literally the same topic and same labs) but much less experience than mine (like 5 years younger) This last one broke me, I ended up quitting academia
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Patriarchy is not only cruel towards women, it's also dumb. It's like corruption. We're hurting ourselves, all of society, including men, by not giving the fitting positions and proper compensation and recognition to people who merit them.
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here's a related video from Angela Collier, if you want to read more about how women are treated in STEM
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I discovered her channel a few months ago and binged almost all of it. She’s great!
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When I was a freshman before transition, I had a guy save my number and call me like 2 years after we had an intro engineering class (we spoke maybe once?) to ask me out on a date.
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I had that with a contractor who had had my number for work purposes. He kept trying for 5 years.
I'm a butch lesbian, my mistake was being polite and chatty with him.
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My sister has a similar issue with a former classmate but for some reason she refuses to block/mark him as spam. it's been years now and he's persistent
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Is that ... a bad thing? I am missing something, did he take the number from somewhere or you gave it to him? But otherwise calling someone and asking out is a pretty harmless thing to do.
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Not when it was a number used once to arrange a group project meeting and that we had not connected otherwise? Two years later - I had dropped out?
One thing I noticed as in my progress through as STEM major was the decline in number of female classmates. Calc 3 might have a reasonable number, but the drop off was exponential. The college run that got me through was done as a man, so I didn’t experience the stuff but I heard rumors. Worse than rumors from post docs in the lab I worked in.
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The experiences trans men and women have with misogyny will never not be fascinating to me. Like, for the first time ever we have this huge sample size of people who have experienced how their gender presentation affects how people interact with them, giving tangible proof of misogyny in action. And it can't just be swept aside with 'MaYbE tHe wOmEn JuSt miSuNDerStOoD' or 'mAYbe tHe mAN diDN't MeAn iT LiKE tHaT'. I mean idiots will still make idiot arguments but at least it chips away at them a little bit.
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I'm female presenting. I've known people who thought I was a cis woman for months, and I don't keep being nonbinary or trans a secret.
When I read actual cis women's accounts of misogyny, and also trans women's accounts, I can't relate. I don't get shut down the same way. Somehow, despite others perceiving me as female, I kept the tiny part of gender presentation that tells people to sit down and shut up when I'm talking as if I were a man. I don't understand what it is, but I still have it the same as before I transitioned.
I would love to know what it is so I can share it, but I can't tell why people respect me as much as they would respect a man. It's bewildering.
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You could be lucky too or maybe you don't notice the microaggressions.
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Confidence goes a long way, but maybe that is simplifying the experience too much.
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I told one of my friends that I'm being looked at differently in crowds now, and he just said "no you're imagining it".
Many people just do not believe what trans people tell them. At all.
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In that specific case it might've been an answer to "Do you look at me differently now", brains like to short-circuit like that, and not everybody is comfortable speaking for the tribe. "Does the tribe like me?" -- "Well I do" -- "Does the tribe?" -- "I'm not the tribe".
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Women aren't believed, are you a trans woman? If so it could be either that you're a woman or that you're trans.
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Hello it's me a trans woman. I knew before transition about some of it but never really understood. When I was masc I didn't realize how much of it was basically hidden in plain sight because of how I learned to socialize. After transitioning though omg it's everywhere. I'm in Seattle right now where I don't have to try too hard to pass and still get treated at least base line okay. Even then I still use my masc voice more than my femme voice because people take me more seriously when I do. Like there's a cultural acceptance of trans people here but if I behave more masc I get the privilege of being "one of the boys" even if I'm visually in full femme mode. It's all so weird
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Religon is probably what initially does this to people's brains
Indoctrinating children into religious systems of arbitrary hierarchy gives little boys god complexes and makes little girls into property.
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I feel bad for female-presenting people having experienced being treated worse than their male peers. I didn't grow up religious or anything, but I can sense where I could be perpetuating that hidden misogyny myself.
For example: In work and social life, I'll give my phone number away to people I meet. But I'm not interested in relationships, so I'm far less likely to give it to women, since I don't want to give anyone the impression I'm making romantic advances by doing that.
I'm pretty sure for men that aren't outright misogynist jerks or bullies, it's stuff like that where they feel as if they might be viewed as awkward providing professional favours to women when they wouldn't think twice about it for their male peers. That leads to those experiences that women find themselves unable to receive those opportunities to get ahead in their career, or aren't listened to, or have to advocate their position more when career advancement seems to fall more naturally to men.
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Depends on where you are from, but the sort of thinking that gets people into religion gets people into misogyny even without religion in my experience.
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Oh my goodness yes! Not to mention the whole if you don’t dress “modestly” it’s your fault if you get unwanted attention thing. It’s a grooming ground.
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wow, that's really out there for being bee movie erotica
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Idk I'm pretty hard rn
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Could be anaphylactic shock
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That is horrible that anyone has to go through that.
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Is that bias confirmation or is it confirmation bias? I get them mixed up.
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I feel for OP. I really do. I want everyone to be treated as equals, honestly.
However, does OP even realize that their anecdotal experience doesn't even remotely satisfy the (heavy) burden of proof for their biased hypothesis?
In a blind study, everyone in a room going silent when a trans person talks is not necessarily experimentally a 1:1 to everyone in the room going silent when a biological male talks. MANY people that have transitioned (whether they want to admit it or not) have a noticeable difference in their vocal timbre than their biological counterparts. Maybe people went silent because they were fascinated by or fixated on the unusual timbre of the OP’s transitioned vocal cords. We will never know… and some of us realize that correlation does not equal causation.
For example, you wouldn’t conduct a scientific study where you’re attempting to show the differences between how males and females are treated and choose to have one of your control subjects be a trans male. It’s just different despite how inconvenient and hotly debated that truth is.
Additionally, OP was in the same department for years and then transitioned. So, naturally people would approach a more experienced person for help or advice regardless of perceived sex if they knew that person was there longer than them.
Obviously there are differences between how men and women are treated…but OP seems to be using the worst possible anecdotes to provide proof for their hypothesis without correcting for these sometimes subtle inconsistencies. Maybe OP thinks they pass as a male a lot more convincingly than they actually do.
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I get it gals, I wouldn't want to be around this either. Oof.
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The opposite happened to me when I transitioned. When I was perceived as a guy, if I was in a meeting, people didn't instantly fall silent if I spoke, but if they tried to overtalk me and I just kept speaking, they would eventually give way. I transitioned 8 years ago, and from the earliest days of my transition until now, if someone starts overtalking me, they will just keep doing it even if I don't stop talking. The only way to stop them is to vocally call them out and ask them to be quiet until I'm finished.
Similarly, I used to be seen as one of the two "tech guys". The person that people would come up to and ask for tech advice to avoid calling the internal helpdesk. After I transitioned, they started coming up to me and asking me where the other tech guy is.
My career has stalled since I came out. I'm in a trans inclusive country, in a trans inclusive workplace, and I transitioned so long ago, that most people don't know that I'm trans or simply forget. But since coming out, the various shoulder taps in to project opportunities and the like just don't happen anymore.
Maybe people went silent because they were fascinated by or fixated on the unusual timbre of the OP’s transitioned vocal cords.
It's a nice theory, but it's somewhat strange how my own experience as a trans person transitioning from male to female had the opposite impact. Did people start overtalking me because they were fascinated by my timbre?
Additionally, OP was in the same department for years and then transitioned. So, naturally people would approach a more experienced person for help or advice regardless of perceived sex if they knew that person was there longer than them.
Again, it's a nice theory, but in my case, they stopped approaching me. And even the ones who don't know that I'm trans don't approach me that way, because I'm not seen as one of the "tech folk" anymore, despite not losing my experience when I transitioned.
but OP seems to be using the worst possible anecdotes
Similarly, you are using the least likely possibilities that contradict the first hand experience of folk directly in these scenarios to fit your pre-conceived notion of what is happening.
Yeah, the OPs post and mine are anecdotal, so you shouldn't take either of our experiences as universal truths. But your takes aren't even anecdotal. They're suppositions.
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Thanks for sharing. All these experiences are very illuminating regarding the lesser impact of socialization, too. Like, I might have thought my female colleagues had just been told to cede the floor so many times they didn't often speak at meetings. And that could still be adding to it, but here are the same individuals with the same habits getting starkly different treatment.
Even knowing these trends from countless other stories and statistics, hearing each additional experience helps keep it in mind and see more often when it's happening.
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That’s true.
Thanks for not immediately dogpiling me and instead actually making some great points. I appreciate the perspective.
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Everything they are describing is well supported by solid evidence that you can look up. Further, in conversations of what would drive women out of stem, the welcome harshness and sexism pushing people away is the core of issue.
Ultimately this dismissive attitude towards a well known and understood phenomenon speaks to the arrogance of those that disagree with the well established reality.
You are going out of your way to poke holes in someone describing a very rare and valid view that demonstrates the discrepancy gender presentation gives in lived experience, and how it follows well tested sexist trends by holding their tumblr post to the standard of a scientific paper. You are so desperate to preserve your warped world view that the severity of sexism in STEM isn't as big of a deal as it is made out that you have taken a genuinely ridiculous position.
Do better.
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You are going out of your way to poke holes in someone describing a very rare and valid view that demonstrates the discrepancy gender presentation gives in lived experience, and how it follows well tested sexist trends by holding their tumblr post to the standard of a scientific paper.
I used a scientific approach in the science memes community. You don’t seem to care about actual science. You’re going out of your way to believe pseudo science in the name of being kind to someone.
Do better.
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