Another good article by Rachel McKinnon about being trans in academia – this one more focused on the job market than on teaching per se.
Props to CHE for publishing these, too.
Out as Trans in Academia
Here’s a nice piece by Rachel McKinnon in CHE about being out as trans in the classroom.
But let’s face it: If I don’t say something, there is a great big elephant in the room. My name has been changed, and there are features of my physical appearance that are undergoing change: clothes, hair, and other aspects. As I say, I’m “visibly” trans, for the moment at least, and I don’t want it to be a distraction without an explanation.
I also wanted to inform my students for pedagogical reasons. First, it’s relevant to my business-ethics course, since I’m teaching gender and transgender issues in the business context. I want to be able to draw on my experiences, including policy changes at my university and some local businesses, when I teach those issues.
Second, I think it’s important for students to see successful trans people in professional positions. The media portrayal and general public knowledge of us is terrible. All too often, the only reason to talk about trans people is to make fun of us, or to pity us because of the discrimination, violence, and hardships we encounter.
Of course many have gone before her, including Jennifer Finney Boylan and Miqqi Alicia Gilbert, amonstt (many) others.
Tierney (un)Truth and (not) Dare
A little more than a week ago, John Tierney published an article in the NYT “daring” to question whether or not girls just aren’t good at math.
Maggie Koerth-Baker over at BoingBoing actually interviewed some female scientists on the topic. One of them, a Dr. Isis, had some great things to say:
John Tierney titles his article “Daring to Discuss Women’s Potential in Science,” as though he is bravely daring to out the dirty little secret that we all supposedly know deep in our hearts. Girls suck at math and science. The truth is, they really don’t. It’s just that John Tierney sucks at googling.
I love the idea of John Tierney publishing pie recipes instead:
Yet, he clearly has ignored the fact that this phenomenon is unique to the United States. Indeed, in countries with more gender equal cultural norms, the divide disappears. In Iceland, girls out perform boys in math and science. Japanese girls out perform American boys. Maybe in his next column Tierney will argue some type of evolutionary difference between the boys and girls in these other countries and American boys and girls. Personally, I would find it much more interesting if he would start posting recipes for pies we could make with all the cherries he’s picking.
and then:
Can we all agree that Tierny pulled this completely out of his ass? Someone who scores in the top 99.9% of an aptitude test is more likely to get tenure than someone who scores in the top 99.1% in the seventh grade? Really?
Honestly, the NYT had no business publishing a poorly-researched and obviously biased article. Let’s all keep in mind that Tierney has already written in defense of Summers, which indicates some pre-existing bias — other than the obvious sexist one, of course.
These guys tire me.
Halberstam on Gender Studies
A recent talk by J. Jack Halberstam on Gender Studies as a discipline, at The New School for Social Research: