Recently, a lot has been happening in my life that has made me think a lot about diversity, my identity, and discrimination.
Over the spring of 2019, I received an email regarding the Grace Hopper Celebration of Women in Computing. While I've always been a supporter of the women in tech initiative, the email was not geared towards supporters. It was an invitation directed at female students to celebrate their female identity at the conference with the college funding their travel. As a transgender man who is definitely not a woman, this email was incredibly insulting to me. After meeting with people withing the college, I learned the email was sent to all students with a "female" designation on their birth certificate, with no regards to their actual gender, which can also be designated in Drexel systems. This means, not only did transgender men receive an email not meant for them, transgender women and many nonbinary individuals did not receive this email that they could greatly benefit from. This made me realize how heteronormative[1] and cisnormative[2] the Women in Computing Initiative is. The initiative unintentionally ignores the issues that transgender women face.
Right after this issue with the college, I reached out to two student organizations on campus about it, and how to better include LGBTQ+ women and the specific issues they face into the women in tech initiatives. I reached out to the Society of Women Engineers (SWE) and the Women in Computing Society (WiCS). SWE was an incredible resource, and we were able to work together and talk about the different initiatives they have and how better to include LGBTQ+ people. I was very happy with their response. When contacting WiCS, they were more dismissive towards the issues I brought up. They focused on the Grace Hopper issue and were quick to not take any blame. They also stated that "all people are allowed to come to meetings", which is a good start, but doesn't address the individual issues that LGBTQ+ women face. The conversation quickly ended and left a sour taste in my mouth.
Flash forward to August of 2020, Drexel CCI posted a list of 18 resources for women in computing. I read through the article to find that there was only one resource that prioritized LGBTQ+ people. In a moment of frustration, I shared the article on my personal Instagram and vented about the lack of resources for LGBTQ+ people in STEM, citing the events that had happened a year ago with the Grace Hopper celebration and the response from WiCS. I woke up the next morning to many messages from Drexel CCI staff and WiCS representatives in an attempt to both understand and remedy the issue, but to also meet about how to support LGBTQ+ people in the future.
This past week I met with the current WiCS president and we had a wonderful conversation about advocacy and action items. The president admitted to WiCS having a lack of advocacy in their history and wanted to pave the way for a future where WiCS does more for their community. Together we brainstormed a variety of ways to improve the many issues that LGBTQ+ people face at many different levels at the college. Together we wrote a proposal to the college both explaining actions WiCS will take in the future in addition to recommendations for the college to take. Most notably, WiCS will be having an ally training in the fall term for their members that I will be hosting and delivering and they recommended that CCI do the same. This proposal is being sent out tomorrow, so I'm very excited to see where this goes moving forward.
This recent experience reminded me of a few things. Up until this point, I have been doing so much work in creating a safe space at CCI for LGBTQ+ students and I've been doing that alone. While I am proud of what I have accomplished, it has been slow progress and incredibly taxing on me. It was a reminder that, as a group with strong allies, it's easier to move forward and create progress. It was also a good reminder that while I had my original grievances with WiCS, we are always learning and growing. I'm really lucky that WiCS was able to learn and grow and listen and are now able to be better advocates in the future.
I was also able to recognize a larger shortcoming. As a transgender man, I am able to speak on the experiences I have faced as a result of my identity, but it's hard to fix issues that I have not experienced. While there are many common discriminations against transgender people, trans women and trans men and nonbinary people all face very different issues as a result of their identities. In addition to that, the trans experience is diverse and my experiences as a trans man may differ from other trans men. As the only vocal queer person at CCI, how can I best advocate for people that aren't speaking up? How can we best support people if we don't know what these people need? The sad reality is that we can't prevent everything. There has to be an ongoing conversations where we continually evaluate how we're doing and if we're providing the correct support and if we're facing issues as they arise. Right now, all I can do is to continue being vocal and hope it encourages other people to be vocal about their experiences. It's a shame that we have to wait for people to experience discrimination to do something about it.
Diversity is a tough subject. It's more than a rainbow corporate logo and some fancy statistics and numbers. I've noticed that people are more willing to pat themselves on the back for doing the bare minimum instead of admitting to their mistakes and being willing to learn and grow. I'm excited to plan out a proper diversity training. Hopefully I'll be able to get those ideas across. I'll probably write another blog post once I plan out and host the training.
[1]: heteronormative (adj) : of, relating to, or based on the attitude that heterosexuality is the only normal and natural expression of sexuality Merriam Webster full definition
[2]: cisnormative (adj) : of, relating to, or based on the attitude that cisgender is the only normal and natural expression of gender