Varying degrees
of “stealth” have allowed many transgender
people to be quite successful in spite of the
challenges. The 12th and final installment in The
Advocate’s Transgender 101 series
I might have
transitioned sooner to live as a female had there been
greater public awareness of transgender people. There has
been no shortage of stereotypes and Hollywood images,
and none of them ever seemed to fit me. It wasn't
until I read Crossing, the autobiography of
noted economist and university professor Deirdre
McCloskey, that I started to realize that there are
transgender people in every walk of life—even
mine.
Since then I have
learned of lots of transgender success stories, many of
which were not widely known because those involved had kept
quiet about their transgender status. I’d like
to share some of those stories with you. Since my
space is limited, I’m going to limit my sharing to
stories you probably have not heard. That means
I’ll only mention people outside of the
entertainment industry and whose “day jobs” do
not directly involve transgender activism.
One of the more
famous success stories in this category is that of
computer scientist Lynn Conway. Lynn invented technology
while she was at IBM in the 1960s that is used in most
computers today—probably including the machine
you're using right now. But when Lynn announced her plans to
transition from male to female, she was fired. How ironic
that seems now, because the IBM of today was the first
corporation to add gender identity and expression to
its global nondiscrimination policy.
Following her
transition in 1968, Lynn chose to live
“stealth” to preserve her career
prospects. She went on to a distinguished research
career, pioneering new methods of computer chip design while
working at Xerox’s legendary Palo Alto,
Calif.., Research Laboratory, and is now
professor emerita of engineering at the University of
Michigan. She chose to come out as transgender only in
1999, when an author writing on the history of
computer science set out to find the person who had
developed that technology at IBM.
Since then, Lynn
has devoted much time to making information about
transgenderism available in as many languages as possible. I
probably would not have had the courage to transition
if it weren't for her profiles of successful
transitioners on www.lynnconway.com.
There are other
transgender successes in academia. Ben Barres is a
popular Professor of Neurobiology at Stanford who recently
made the headlines when his article challenging sexist
comments made by former Harvard President Lawrence
Summers was published in the prestigious scientific
journal Nature. My hat is off to Ben. He has
seen firsthand, through his transition from female, just how
much bias there is facing women who pursue careers in the
sciences. I applaud him for speaking out against the
bias as a man.
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Herman is the first transgender member of the
boards of The Point Foundation, the
national LGBT scholarship fund, and of Gay and
Lesbian Advocates and Defenders, the New
England–based LGBT legal rights organization that
filed and argued the court case that brought same-sex
marriage to Massachusetts. She is also a member of
the advisory board of the National Center for Transgender Equality.