Category: trans

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Lynn Conway: Trans Icon and Pioneer, 1938 – 2024

I am very sad to hear that the trailblazer Lynn Conway has passed.

She invented things I don’t even understand, created one of the most ferocious and useful trans websites back in the day, and was a friend and fellow crank.

I always felt richer and smarter talking to her, and am glad she started to be recognized by the wider world in recent years, garnering honorary degrees and other lifelong achievement recognition (including a very belated apology from IBM for firing her for transitioning).

Thank you, Lynn, for everything. Here is Lynn in her own words, and Dallas Denny’s obituary is below, and then a few more memories from me about working with her and her giant brain and heart.

Lynn Ann Conway

January 2, 1938 – June 9, 2024

Prepared by Dallas Denny

June 10, 2024

An Obituary

Lynn Ann Conway was an electrical engineer, computer scientist, and an activist on behalf of transgender people. She died in Jackson, Michigan on Sunday, June 9, 2024 of heart trouble.

Lynn was born in Mount Vernon, New York on January 2, 1938. She was a reserved but exceptionally bright student who attended MIT but did not graduate due a difficult and ultimately unsuccessful gender transition. Conway continued education at Columbia University, where she earned B.S. and M.S.E.E. degrees in 1962 and 1963, respectively. In 1964, Conway accepted a position as a researcher at IBM’s facility in Yorktown Heights, New York. There, Conway worked with others on an advanced supercomputer project. Conway was fired in 1968 when it became known that she intended to transition. IBM later apologized for that action.

That same year, Lynn consulted Dr. Harry Benjamin and became a patient. She completed her gender transition, also in 1968. In a divorce, she was denied the right to visit with her minor children.

Using her new name, Lynn continued work as a computer research scientist, working at Computer Applications, Inc., Memorex, and, Xerox PARC, and DARPA. In 1985, she became a professor of electrical engineering and computer science at the University of Michigan and, simultaneously, Associate Dean of Engineering.

Lynn’s post-transition accomplishments were foundational in the develop of computers, but her pre-transition work was not credited to her until 1998, when a researcher who was examining IBM’s three-decades old supercomputer project discovered that a scientist he had been unable to identify had become known as Lynn Conway. For Lynn, this resulted in a difficult decision to come out as transgender. She has since been hailed not only for her myriad post-transition accomplishments, but for her earlier work. She is famous for, among many other things, launching the Mead-Conway VLSI chip design revolution.

Lynn was well-known in transgender circles for her accomplishments and for her website, on which she told her personal story and worked to advance the rights of transgender people. She is perhaps best known in this regard for her criticism of Ray Blanchard’s theory of autogynephilia and a failed lawsuit, with Dierdre McCloskey, against J. Michael Bailey author of The Man Who Would be Queen.

In 2002, Lynn married her long-time boyfriend Charles Rogers. They lived on a 24-acre wooded property in rural Michigan.

Sandra Samons, a therapist in Ann Arbor and a long-time friend of Lynn’s, asked me tonight to share the following information:

Lynn Conway died yesterday, June 9, 2024

Her husband Charlie Rogers can be contacted at cwrogers@voyager.net

Arrangements are still incomplete, but Lynn Conway’s funeral will be held at: Sherwood Funeral Home, 1109 Norvell Rd., Grass Lake, MI 49240 (Tel. 517-522-3000, URL www.sherwoodfh.com.

Service will be at 1 pm Saturday, June 22 with visitation the night before from 4-7 pm.

Lynn helped so much with my first book – there’s a photo of her and her husband in it, even – and I’d sought her out because she was the most ferocious critic of how trans women were portrayed, and I didn’t want to get it wrong. Back then, we lived on two sides – crossdressers on one, “transsexual” women on the other – and we spent months on the phone, talking to each other about these worlds. She didn’t believe she had anything in common with crossdressers, as maligned as they were for being fetishists and the like – and at the time, no one really believed crossdressers were trans women who hadn’t yet transitioned.

In these conversations, I could hear the lightbulb go on when we talked, about how a long suppressed gender identity might manifest in complicated ways for some, and in a more direct path for others. It was astounding to hear someone whose brain actively engaged any detail in order to make a connection, bridge a difference, and her own story, told to me during those calls, helped me understand why the divide even existed.

Rest in peace, brilliant friend. You represented the best of us with your incredible intelligence that combined with kindness to create a true icon and role model. I will never even aspire to her scientific genius, but I will always aspire to her generosity of spirit, and how much she believed in knowledge, and that knowledge is power.

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Articles About the Current Anti Trans Moment

I’ve been gathering and sending these to people lately but thought it might be time to gather a bunch of them, so here goes:

Chase Strangio on the Arkansas law

Brian Lehrer on WNYC with guest Kate Sosin

My favorite podcast, Is This Democracy, on why the attack on trans rights is an assault on democracy.

Mother Jones on the organization that wrote these anti trans laws and pushed them on to state legislatures (that is, it’s no coincidence that they all seem similar)

Heather Cox Richardson, everyone’s favorite historian, on why standing up for trans rights is a basic issue of equality, saying, “Once you give up the principle of equality, you have given up the whole game. You have admitted the principle that people are unequal, and that some people are better than others. Once you have replaced the principle of equality with the idea that humans are unequal, you have stamped your approval on the idea of rulers and subjects. At that point, all you can do is to hope that no one in power decides that you belong in the lesser group.”

A much more emphatic piece by Jay Kuo on what genocide is, how this language signals that is the intention, and shows us how history always has the lessons.

A new interview with the one and only Masha Gessen, who I just learned identifies as trans and non binary, from The New Yorker‘s David Remnick, and a radio interview too.

An explainer from Vox.

And to close, this piece of good news out of Minnesota, which has effectively become a sanctuary state for trans people and their families, adding to a short list of states and countries that have done so.

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Guest Author: Ariela Rosa

A partner recently sent me this piece she’d written for a contest and I was struck not just by the writing style but by the deep urge, as ever, to get a partner’s truth you in the world. Enjoy.

Transition in 2000 Words – by Ariela Rosa

May 24, 2022

I wanted to say I appreciate R’s commitment to building community and giving everyone a voice. Their style in leading with heart, reaffirming that the conversation is a safe space, and being open to everyone’s inputs is so appreciated. 

I stop to ask R, my spouse, if he has changed his pronouns.

“Oh yeah,” they say. “I was encouraging people at work to put their pronouns in their email signatures, so I started by putting mine. And when I went to put “he/him,” it felt wrong. So I just put they/them.”

This casual decision completely devastates me.

They came out as trans two years ago, 16 years into our relationship. I could not promise that our marriage would last through all the changes, but I of course wanted to treat them with dignity and respect, starting with the most basic of the basics: calling them what they wanted to be called. So I’d been checking in constantly about pronouns. They promised they’d let me know when they were ready, but suddenly I find out that I’ve been misgendering my spouse without knowing it.

I am angry at us both. Once again they’ve made a decision without letting me in, but also I want to get this right, and because I had no warning there is no way for me to not fuck this up over and over.

Saying “they” makes my heart ache for me.

Accidentally uttering “he” makes my heart ache for them.

December 23, 2021

“Hey, I got this for you for Christmas. I know it’s not much, but…”

I’d bought a few pairs of earrings that reminded me of my husband spouse. One set was two halves of an avocado with smiling faces painted onto the pits. I paid for his lobe piercings two weeks ago, crying later that day about this step in his evolving womanhood. Buying the earrings is my way of manning up.

I get on a plane to Utah the next day. I was tired of asking a dysphoric person to hold me through my tears as if I were the one suffering and needed to be someone else’s problem for a while. I also needed to know if I felt better with or without him.

The trip did not help me figure this out.

He called on Christmas Day to thank me. I sobbed.

January 2022

My friend sends me back from Utah with a gift certificate to Sephora. “I want R. to go to somewhere where they will take care of him and treat him with respect.”

What a thoughtful gift; I am happy and know he’ll love it. But also, I’m so angry; I feel a responsibility to go with him so I can shake my cis privilege at everyone and ensure that he will be treated right. But that also means seeing him glow in his foundation and eyeliner, watching “him” fade further away.

He shares that he’s afraid of looking like a man in a dress.

But what’s wrong with being a man in a dress? I could totally handle that! I tell myself to shut the fuck up; what awful thoughts. If there is a hell, then I’m sure I belong there.

We have fun for once; I’m proud that I was able to ignore the lump in my throat the whole time.

Back in the car, he cried. “They made me feel so valid,” he said. I tried extra hard to smile in spite of myself.

September 2020

My spouse’s summertime online affair came to an abrupt end when I found the transcripts of him and his partner sexting the other week. I had suspected the affair from the beginning, but I felt an extra sting when I realized that the other person had treated my husband like a woman when I felt I couldn’t. He even gave this person his chosen name while telling me he wasn’t ready to make that change yet. The potent mix of rage, guilt, and despair boiling all over my body makes me want to tear off my own skin.

Perhaps it is because I feel so much loss, pain, and eroding trust that I decide to finally confide in one of my best friends about R. being trans, hoping to lean on someone else for a while.

I do not tell her about the affair.

Still, she is angry. “OH MY GOD, THIS MAN IS ALWAYS DOING SOMETHING TO YOU!”

I stop her and explain sternly that my spouse being trans isn’t doing anything to me, and that she can’t be mad at someone just for being trans.

I do not lean on her for support.

October 2020

“Well, do you WANT to buy girl’s clothes?” I ask.

“I guess I should,” he replies.

“Cool beans. I will take you to Torrid, and we will get you a dressing room. And if someone dares to say something I’ll fuck ’em up.”

We find some vibrant skirts and blouses. I choose many of the options, insisting that he try everything because he has no idea what he’ll like. He is too shy to ask the sales associate for help, so I do.

“Hey you,” I say with as much non-nonchalant confidence as I can muster, “My husband wants to try on these clothes.”

She opens a room without hesitation and with a warm smile. Turns out I didn’t need to beat up anyone today. Lucky her.

I ask what he thinks. Turns out a shirt I had chosen was less than flattering. If he wants my opinion, I will gladly give it to him. But I also will encourage him to buy the damn thing if he disagrees.

“Yeah, hell no, ick.” I breathe a sigh of relief. We throw it aside and laugh.

July 2020

After making passionate love, we cuddle in bed as a stream of afternoon sunlight shines through the window and onto our nakedness. I cry while I caress his chest hair, which glistens from the light and the sweat of our sex. He is going to shave his chest for the first time today, and with laser starting next month I know that this is the last time I will ever feel this part of him.

His hair is so coarse, long, full, curly. We used to make jokes about the possibility of his chest hair poking through his t-shirts, making him and the shirt one and giving him super powers.

He won’t feel like my person without this hair.

He holds me tight, giving me this last chance even though it kills him. I apologize.

When he finally goes to the bathroom, I sob and scream into my pillow until I fall asleep.

June 2022

R. is having a bad dysphoria day.

I just want to gouge out my own eyes. I feel like a fraud. In my head I imagine people referring to me as ‘he’ but then I feel like I’m referring to myself that way and it makes me feel like I’m lying if I keep misgendering myself. I feel lost and can’t function.

I should be there to help them through this, but my deadlines don’t care. So I work while I listen, trying hard to understand something that I know I never will.

I know. It’s ok. I think I just need to say it. Sometimes just sharing things with you helps.

I feel guilty for missing the man they need to get rid of to feel right.

Spring 2022

“Oh wow! And you’re okay with that?” This seems to be the chief question during the public phase of my spouse’s coming out.

“I mean, we’re a work in progress,” I giggle because I don’t know how else to respond. “Anyway, he hasn’t changed pronouns yet, but I’ll let you know when.”

What I really want to say is fuck you. I don’t think I get to choose or “okay” the core of my spouse’s self, assholes.

Or is everyone asking whether I want to stay married? This seems like a terribly invasive question that I can’t even answer for myself yet.

“It’s so great that you are supporting him—oh, I mean her? Is that right?” They look for me to assure them that they are indeed not transphobic. But I don’t have energy to help anyone else.

Instead of expecting me to take care of them or make them comfortable, why doesn’t anyone ever just ask me what I need?

Today that online group for partners of trans folks posted a meme: “As a trans person you don’t transition to become a different person. You transition to stop pretending to be someone you’re not!”

This stings. I know it’s correct. I also know that I fell in love with the person my spouse was pretending to be. I miss that person every day. I write this in response to the original poster.

“My wife is trans,” OP replies. “I tend to focus on how much happier she is.”

Dismissed again.

June 2020

“I’m gonna order some books on gender and sexuality,” he mutters while I’m in the middle of a Zoom meeting. There is maybe six inches of space between the back of my chair and the side of his. Our second room barely accommodates our desks, but I’m insistent that we separate our work space from the rest of the house so they don’t meld together. This work from home thing is temporary anyway.

I wave him away so that I can pay attention.

The books arrive a few days later. One book in the pile… is a gender workbook?

“Babe, are you questioning your gender?”

He doesn’t look at me when he says yes.

The floor has fallen out beneath me.

“I can’t do this! Of course you can transition and I will always support you, but I cannot be your wife! We need to divorce NOW. Seriously, what the fuck! 16 years! After everything we’ve gone though, you didn’t tell me?! 16 fucking years!”

“I didn’t know either.”

When R. was five, a bunch of her cousins visited her apartment, and her first instinct was to pick up some cans to join the girls in playing restaurant. The room fell silent: every adult whipped their head around, instilling deep shame into her as they said “boys don’t play like that.”

That’s when he was born.

So I know he’s right: how could he have known?

But how do I reconcile falling in love with a mask?  I’m grieving him while she is alive; I grieve him even though he wasn’t right. I don’t understand my reality or my feelings.

It doesn’t take long for her to peak through and for him to start fading away, though in the quiet phase of the transition he comes back sometimes to keep up appearances for those who do not yet know.

I envy my friends for getting to keep him for just a little longer.

June 2004

We met through a mutual friend when we were 17 and 19. I was about to graduate high school and was pretty sure I didn’t have a future, so I had stopped dreaming by the time he came along.

But being with him made dreaming seem possible.

After talking each other’s ears off for a week over the phone, we met for pizza, walking across the Harlem Bridge to the Bronx. On the way back, we stopped in the middle of the bridge to enjoy the light breeze and cloudless sky. We held hands while watching the late afternoon sun bounce along the water.

Something felt so familiar in this moment, like I’d known him before and would know him again. I already could not picture my life without him.

“Hey, I just want you to know… I can’t predict what will happen with us, but no matter what, I will always be your friend.”

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Response to That NYT Op Ed

The NYT published a shitty ‘both sides’ op ed today that is supposed to be about Roe but is basically a transphobic POS.

My coment:

It’s inexcusable that anyone would fall for this bait: divide and conquer, over and over again, and white women – I’ll use the term since it’s the one you prefer – fall for it the hardest.

I am one so don’t at me.

As a feminist who has been committed to gender liberation for my lifetime, and who has been working with an for trans and non binary people for a couple of decades, it pains me to see women cling to a biological reality that is now criminalizing all of us.

The destruction of Roe is connected to all of the transphobic laws out there. You know how you tell? The same people who are for Roe being overturned are also the ones who are passing transphobia.

Not understanding or accepting the newer lingo of gender liberation is not a good reason to join the oppressors, which is exactly what Pamela Paul just did here, and what half of you in these comments is applauding.

It’s a sad state of affairs when cis women do not recognize how deeply feminist trans movement is, how radically inclusive it aims to be, and how bodily autonomy is a shared concern.

Get it together, folks. We have no time for this.

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Witness: Rachel See at SCOTUS

My friend Rachel See of NCTE was in the courtroom today and wrote this compelling observation about what it was like.:

I don’t think I’ll be able to forget the look I saw from the bench. Near the start of the first case, Justice Kavanaugh looked up from whatever he was reading and seemed to stare straight at me. Straight through me. I met his gaze for a few moments, and then I realized that Aimee Stephens was sitting immediately behind me.

I don’t know what was running through Justice Kavanaugh’s mind. He asked a single question this morning, about whether the statute used the literal or the ordinary meaning of the word “sex”. I feel incapable of reading those tea leaves.

But in those few lingering moments, feeling his gaze upon me, I felt literally judged, as a trans woman, by a man in a position to affect the lives of me and my family and friends and the 1.4 million trans adults in America. A man with the power to declare, as Justice Sotomayor suggests the Court should say, that “invidious discrimination” against LGBT people must stop now, and that courts can and should use the broad language of Title VII to do so. But also a man with the power to declare, as our adversaries would have him say, that sex assigned at birth is destiny, and that an employer can dictate where you pee. And, by extension, someone with the power to declare that “invidious discrimination” against LGBT people will be permitted by the law, and even be encouraged in the name of “religious freedom”.

It is the most-uncomfortable I’ve ever felt in a courtroom. My heart goes out to Aimee Stephens, who felt the true focus of that gaze and the scrutiny of the Court and the media and all the vile hatred that we see on Twitter and “in the comments”. Aimee looked so tired this afternoon; who wouldn’t be tired, under all that scrutiny? I can’t imagine what she’s been through these past months, and I am in awe at her quiet strength and perseverance.

For all the discomfort I felt from Justice Kavanaugh’s scrutiny, the message I want to deliver to my trans and nonbinary friends is that you are seen by people who love you. You are seen by people who look upon you with friendship, with compassion, with love. By your chosen family, by allies, by people who will fight for all of us. In a few months we may very well lose at the Supreme Court; win or lose on these cases, the fight will continue. And we will not be alone, because we exist. We are seen. We are loved.

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Life Coach: Kate Bornstein

I just recently found out, during a brief trip to NYC, that Kate Bornstein has started doing life coaching! How cool is that?

From Kate’s website:

What is Heart to Heart Coaching With Kate?

A coaching session is you and I talking about your life in gender. You decide what issue(s) you want to work on and what results you’d like to achieve. My job is to help you…

  • get clear about what you want
  • identify and name areas of your life where gender is causing you to suffer
  • find some immediate relief from that suffering
  • identify blocks or beliefs standing between you and the happiness you’re looking for
  • take positive action by giving you a plan tailored for your who you are, how you live, and whatever resources you’ve got in terms of available time, energy and health.

How cool is that? I’m thinking about taking her up on it myself, to be honest.

You can read more or contact her if you know you’re already interested: katebornsteincoaching@gmail.com

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TDOR 2018

For this year’s TDOR, I want to highlight a beautiful piece by none other than S. Bear Bergman, who writes about being scared in the dark and gathering light by drawing both on trans experience and on Jewish experience.

This fall was a rough one for trans people and for Jewish people with the news out of the WH and the Tree of Life shooting, so I just wanted to affirm the beauty that is transness and the beauty that is Jewishness.

My life would be so much darker without these two communities who know how to hold fast in the dark.

Love to all of you. Let Bear’s words inspire you and keep you warm today:

“I hope that someday trans people too have the moment to call such a signal light out of darkness, that we too can celebrate our resistance with friends and family. I would enjoy it very much. But until then, we are going to have continue to resist, and we are going to have to get better and smarter and more cohesive and more compassionate and more resolute and more fabulous in our resistance. That is the light that we can call out of this darkness. We are the light that we can call out of this darkness.”

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Gay Trans Men

I asked friends on Facebook recently for stories, memoir, or narratives of whatever kind about gay trans men negotiating sex with cis gay men.

Here’s what we came up with:

If anyone knows of any others, do let me know or add others in the comments.

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In Response To The New York Times’ October 21 Story “Trump Administration Eyes Defining Transgender Out of Existence”

from Mara Keisling of NCTE:

“This proposal is an attempt to put heartless restraints on the lives of 2 million people, effectively abandoning our right to equal access to health care, to housing, to education, or to fair treatment under the law. This administration is willing to disregard the established medical and legal view of our rights and ourselves to solidify an archaic, dogmatic, and frightening view of the world. This transparent political attack will not succeed administratively, legally, or morally.

In the name of preempting some misinformation, let’s talk about what this proposed rule would not do. It would not eliminate the precedents set by dozens of federal courts over the last two decades affirming the full rights and identities of transgender people. It would not undo the consensus of the medical providers and scientists across the globe who see transgender people, know transgender people, and urge everyone to accept us for who we are. And no rule—no administration—can erase the experiences of transgender people and our families. While foolish, this proposed rule deflates itself in the face of the facts, and the facts don’t care how the Trump administration feels.

To transgender people: I know you are frightened. I know you are horrified to see your existence treated in such an inhumane and flippant manner. What this administration is trying to do is an abomination, a reckless attack on your life and mine. But this administration is also staffed by inexperienced amateurs overplaying their hand by taking extreme positions that ignore law, medicine, and basic human decency.

With each awful headline like this, remember that you are far from alone. NCTE and other organizations are continuing to fight against this bigotry. Remember that there is an entire human rights community that not only stands with us but will always fight back—and fight hard. Thousands of us have devoted our lives to protecting you and your families, and our ability to do so is nothing short of a privilege. And we will not lay down now.

Transgender people have fought rules like this one in federal and state court and won. We have stood toe-to-toe with administrators, legislatures, and executives who would agree with this rule and yet we won. We have fought and will continue to fight for The Equality Act, a bill currently in Congress that would explicitly enshrine civil rights protections for transgender people—Congress must pass this long overdue bill now. We know how to defeat this, and we will do everything we can until every transgender person feels secure in their rights under the law.

At the heart of our work at NCTE is the belief that no one should have to suffer just to be true to themselves. And yet transgender people are still often forced from their homes, fired from their jobs, harassed at their schools, and denied the most basic level of dignity by a broken system. Knowing this, millions of transgender people wake up every day and step into an uncertain world. This is the most common trait shared by transgender people: A strength and resilience for hard and difficult times. If this administration is hoping to demoralize us, they will be disappointed. If they are hoping we will give up, they should reconsider the power of our persistence and our fury.”