Transitioning in STEM
Transitioning in STEM
telling someone they look exotic is insane
This must be another reason why conservatives are so afriad of trans people: they disprove their misogynistic assumptions.
I transitioned to male 15 years ago, I was already well into adulthood by that time so had experience to compare. 100% agree with the post. It was night and day. (I'm not in Stem; just generally in life.)
The weirdest thing was some of the individual people who changed how they treat me over time, for the better. After I started transitioning. Its cool they are so trans positive and affirming I guess. But if you can turn that shit on like a tap why not do for everyone?
Now as a man I struggle to notice when I'm getting special treatment. Even with my prior experience. Sometimes I have been oblivious for years until I finally clocked it or it was pointed out by a woman.
It has made me much more respect cis men who manage to have a keen eye on sexism. Especially those who are masc presenting. It is so easy to not notice. It's very comfortable. People are polite. You have good luck. To all the guys commenting here that it doesn't go on around them: it sure as fuck does.
Transitioning to a point of passing in my understanding (mtf or ftm) comes with pros and cons.
I often think about this article as well when it comes to trans men's negative experiences once accepted as men: https://www.newsweek.com/trans-man-broken-men-1817169
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.
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.
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.
One observation I made is that when women get to comprise a significant part of workforce in science, those things seem to be flattened 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.
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.
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.
here's a related video from Angela Collier, if you want to read more about how women are treated in STEM
That is horrible that anyone has to go through that.
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.