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cosmolinguistOnce upon a time there was a woman who worked for IBM. This was in the 1960s. She solved a fundamental computer architecture problem in supercomputers, and helped design something called a superscalar computer. Her invention was used everywhere, making the chips of PCs in the 90s much more powerful than they would otherwise have been. By that point, people thought that this was the result of decades of work, and not something a single person had done in 1965. It was in all the textbooks, but no one knew it was the work of one person.
She couldn't tell them, because she hadn't been herself when she'd done that work. She was in a man's body and had a man's name.
Lynn Conway transitioned in 1967, at a time when few people even knew about what was then widely called transsexualism. She became one of the earliest women to have sex reassignment surgery and emerged with a new identity (at that time and in that place (San Francisco), it seems that name changes and living "full time" as the gender you want to be were things that happened after surgery).
Which was good, because she needed a new identity. She wrote, "The way people thought about such things in those days, I'd had to leave almost everyone I'd ever known completely behind, not just all my family members and relatives, but all my friends and acquaintances too. I had to go start a new life all over again, from scratch, like someone in what we now call a 'witness protection program'." Lynn had a wife and two children. She writes as if it were obvious it had not been a good marriage, and they'd agreed to divorce soon after Lynn's surgery, but she still got to see her kids sometimes. She went through surgery, in Mexico, with no friends or visitors.
She chose a new last name as well as a first name, because she was living in "deep stealth," wanting no one to be able to connect her pre-transition identity with the one she had now. It was also to protect her family and people who had known her, who felt betrayed and embarrassed by her transition and clearly didn't want to be associated with her. "I didn't want to stir up that hornet's nest again," she wrote, "and a new last name would help avoid that problem."
And of course, she'd lost her job. Before her surgery, she had been fired from IBM for being transsexual -- the corporate rationale was that she "would cause extreme emotional distress in fellow employees who saw her in the work environment if they ever learned she'd been transformed."
When Lynn started applying for jobs again she got several offers, but intending not to lie about herself she eventually revealed the truth on the forms and questionnaires, and watched one job offer after another be rescinded, as she says, "by people who'd never met me, and who didn't want to meet me, having some horrible stereotype in their minds instead."
One company even made her be interviewed by a psychiatrist, who said there was no problem employing her, but they ignored this advice from the professional they'd demandd she see, and refused her the job anyway.
I think she was treated very poorly by IBM too, writing to the director of her old project, pleading him to help her find a job anywhere, because she was out of money and having to borrow from friends just to put food on the table, and "he replied that as an IBM manager he could not help me, since the earlier IBM decision by the senior executives represented IBM's final position on the matter."
At this point, missing child support payments, social workers found out about Lynn's transition and she was told she'd be arrested if she ever tried to see her two daughters again. It was obvious to everyone that she was a sexual pervert who'd damage them.
"The problem of course was that everyone saw a 'boy with a terrible mental problem'," Lynn writes, "rather than a 'girl with a terrible physical problem'. That simple difference in perspective makes all the difference in the world in whether someone can grasp the reasons for transsexual gender transition."
Lynn eventually did get jobs -- giving the credit to being hired by people who had met her, after having gotten so much trouble from people who hadn't, both at IBM and all those places that had taken away job offers.
She built her career up from nothing again, unable of course to talk about what she'd done at IBM. She worked at Xerox PARC, MIT, and even the Department of Defense (where getting a top secret security clearance was no problem depsite her unusual history); she co-authored a widely-used textbook; she remarried and leads a quiet happy life in rural Michigan; she has a huge list of awards and honors.
Having been "outed" when the story of her early IBM work was being prepared for publication in 1999, Lynn started talking to friends and colleagues about her past. She was able to reconnect with many friends and relatives she'd had to abandon when she transitioned.
She's been an outspoken trans activist, her website is full of information and links about various aspects of transitioning, role models, surgery, and so on. She was a cast member in the first all-trans Vagina Monologues in L.A. in 2004.
In "A reflection" on her website, Lynn writes:
She couldn't tell them, because she hadn't been herself when she'd done that work. She was in a man's body and had a man's name.
Lynn Conway transitioned in 1967, at a time when few people even knew about what was then widely called transsexualism. She became one of the earliest women to have sex reassignment surgery and emerged with a new identity (at that time and in that place (San Francisco), it seems that name changes and living "full time" as the gender you want to be were things that happened after surgery).
Which was good, because she needed a new identity. She wrote, "The way people thought about such things in those days, I'd had to leave almost everyone I'd ever known completely behind, not just all my family members and relatives, but all my friends and acquaintances too. I had to go start a new life all over again, from scratch, like someone in what we now call a 'witness protection program'." Lynn had a wife and two children. She writes as if it were obvious it had not been a good marriage, and they'd agreed to divorce soon after Lynn's surgery, but she still got to see her kids sometimes. She went through surgery, in Mexico, with no friends or visitors.
She chose a new last name as well as a first name, because she was living in "deep stealth," wanting no one to be able to connect her pre-transition identity with the one she had now. It was also to protect her family and people who had known her, who felt betrayed and embarrassed by her transition and clearly didn't want to be associated with her. "I didn't want to stir up that hornet's nest again," she wrote, "and a new last name would help avoid that problem."
And of course, she'd lost her job. Before her surgery, she had been fired from IBM for being transsexual -- the corporate rationale was that she "would cause extreme emotional distress in fellow employees who saw her in the work environment if they ever learned she'd been transformed."
When Lynn started applying for jobs again she got several offers, but intending not to lie about herself she eventually revealed the truth on the forms and questionnaires, and watched one job offer after another be rescinded, as she says, "by people who'd never met me, and who didn't want to meet me, having some horrible stereotype in their minds instead."
One company even made her be interviewed by a psychiatrist, who said there was no problem employing her, but they ignored this advice from the professional they'd demandd she see, and refused her the job anyway.
I think she was treated very poorly by IBM too, writing to the director of her old project, pleading him to help her find a job anywhere, because she was out of money and having to borrow from friends just to put food on the table, and "he replied that as an IBM manager he could not help me, since the earlier IBM decision by the senior executives represented IBM's final position on the matter."
At this point, missing child support payments, social workers found out about Lynn's transition and she was told she'd be arrested if she ever tried to see her two daughters again. It was obvious to everyone that she was a sexual pervert who'd damage them.
"The problem of course was that everyone saw a 'boy with a terrible mental problem'," Lynn writes, "rather than a 'girl with a terrible physical problem'. That simple difference in perspective makes all the difference in the world in whether someone can grasp the reasons for transsexual gender transition."
Lynn eventually did get jobs -- giving the credit to being hired by people who had met her, after having gotten so much trouble from people who hadn't, both at IBM and all those places that had taken away job offers.
She built her career up from nothing again, unable of course to talk about what she'd done at IBM. She worked at Xerox PARC, MIT, and even the Department of Defense (where getting a top secret security clearance was no problem depsite her unusual history); she co-authored a widely-used textbook; she remarried and leads a quiet happy life in rural Michigan; she has a huge list of awards and honors.
Having been "outed" when the story of her early IBM work was being prepared for publication in 1999, Lynn started talking to friends and colleagues about her past. She was able to reconnect with many friends and relatives she'd had to abandon when she transitioned.
She's been an outspoken trans activist, her website is full of information and links about various aspects of transitioning, role models, surgery, and so on. She was a cast member in the first all-trans Vagina Monologues in L.A. in 2004.
In "A reflection" on her website, Lynn writes:
I've lived in a fantastic time to be a research engineer. Many of us have seen our ideas, initially glimmers in our heads, go out into action, intermingle with the works of others and impact the real world.... But those involved in such research and innovation know what a complex, dynamic process it all is. There is always confusion and debate at the frontier as to which direction to move in. Often new methods prove to be unworkable, controversial, unsound. It can seem safer to stay within the existing proven practice, even when that does not meet important human needs....
Thinking back to 1978, when our new VLSI methods were first gaining notice and notoriety upon being taught in university courses, I recall the reactions of many in the technology "establishment": Many thought that we were creating and teaching "unsound methods". Methods that went against conventional wisdom, and "just couldn't be right". That's the way it often is with new technologies. Until they are proven, they are "unsound". However, after MPC79, the methods were proven and resistance faded. Success couldn't be ignored. We won by virtue of a great and long-established engineering principle: "What works - works!"
That is how our "unsound methods" become "sound methods" - by virtue of working in practice.
Looking back at my lifelong gender explorations we can see a similar process - - - during the lonely and frightening struggle to find my way through the labyrinth of gender - - I approached my problem as I have many others - - by doing research into what is already known, and then experimenting and innovating at the frontier of what it is possible to do
I was very fortunate to have collaborated as patient and research subject with the great pioneer Harry Benjamin, M. D., right at the time his methods had just been fully worked out - - - for you see, 1967 was for Dr. Benjamin just like 1978 was for Mead and Conway - - - Dr. Benjamin's methods were then considered "unsound methods" by a medical establishment which still recommended institutionalization and shock therapy for transsexual people, and which called "sex-changes" transgressions against nature - -
Fortunately, Dr. Benjamin's methods for gender transition were truly "sound methods" after all - - as tens of thousands of successfully transitioned people have proven since then. His methods worked for me too. So, remember that great old engineering principle: What works - works! In the end, if the bridge stands, it stands, no matter what others may think!
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(no subject)
Date: 2011-10-07 10:43 pm (UTC)(no subject)
Date: 2011-10-08 09:40 am (UTC)(no subject)
Date: 2011-10-07 01:17 pm (UTC)Thank you for this. x
No title
Date: 2011-10-07 06:29 pm (UTC)A day late, but not a dollar short
Date: 2011-10-08 11:48 am (UTC)(no subject)
Date: 2011-10-08 01:42 pm (UTC)