In the spring of 2014, I was scuba diving in the warm, crystal clear tropical waters of the Philippines, scanning for sea slugs. It was my first field expedition as a biology grad student, and I was searching for interesting specimens hiding in the maze of the coral reef. I looked for signs of movement as I hovered weightlessly above the reef, only the sound of my breath breaking the silence. Nothing. Ten minutes of slow, methodical scanning passed---still nothing.
Then I spotted it. I’d found my first sea slug! I quickly opened up my collection bag to get out a small jar when all the little plastic containers started floating up and out of my bag towards the surface—I’d forgotten to fill them with water before the dive.
But learning how to catch a sea slug wasn’t my biggest challenge that day. After I finally managed to collect the slugs, I identified and preserved them in ethanol, returned to my room back at base camp, and pulled down my pants. I readied a needle, and I was just about to push it into my thigh when I heard the door open and… “Sorry!” It was my roommate---a well-established director from a different department, who had just arrived to join the expedition. I looked up, took a deep breath and said, “It’s OK...we have something to talk about. I’m transgender.”
Negotiating your body while doing field research is just one of the many challenges that transgender men and women face in science. When I started my masters degree in the fall of 2012, my major insurance provider didn’t have a policy for transgender coverage, the only gender neutral restrooms on my graduate school campus were in the humanities or the health center, and I didn’t know a single transgender scientist---faculty or student---in my field.
Things have gotten better since I started my transition in 2013, while I was conducting research at a museum on the evolutionary histories of a group of sea slugs—just months shy of embarking on that first field expedition. Back then, there was no Transparent or Caitlyn Jenner, Laverne Cox had yet to grace the cover of Time, and Don’t Ask Don’t Tell was still the norm.
But while the rise in media attention surrounding transgender issues has led to increased awareness and hopefully acceptance, much remains to be done—especially in the sciences. Transgender scientists are underrepresented in all fields, and that lack of diversity affects everyone. Science prides itself on objective analysis of the world. But like it or not, identity drives what questions we ask, how we answer those questions, and how we interpret data. The best safeguard against bias is to have scientists of all backgrounds doing work---which means reshaping science to be as open as possible.
Most people in science don’t intend to make life difficult to for trans researchers, but there are still many barriers, both systematic and cultural, to recruiting and sustaining the next generation of transgender scientists.
The cultural barriers are perhaps the most potent. Two months before my first testosterone injection, I handed a scholarship essay to my faculty advisor at the California Academy of Sciences that essentially served as my coming out as trans. I didn’t sleep the night before. I was terrified. I paced the halls with sweaty palms waiting for him to read it.
Like most academic and research institutions in the US, the overwhelming majority of the lead researchers in the museum department where I did my research were white cis-gendered (a term used to describe people who identify with the gender they were assigned at birth) heterosexual men. Growing up in the Midwest as a mixed-race, gay, Jewish, boyish girl, I never saw myself reflected in any of the science teachers I had, and struggled to visualize myself in a career in science.
Other graduate students in different parts of the country are notably worse off. One woman confided that no one knew she was trans---not her advisor, labmates, or even her friends---because she feared the repercussions if her department found out. Another postponed applying to a graduate program until he was able to start hormones and change his legal documents: He wanted to avoid coming out on campus for fear of retribution and stigmatization. A third confided in me that she was not only the only trans person but also the only person of color, in a surrounding town riddled with violence. She felt more than alone: She lived in fear. Without the right resources or institutional awareness, their graduate programs were tacitly enabling ignorance and discrimination.
I was lucky. Coming out as transgender could have been career sabotage in some places, but as I turned the corner to my advisor’s office, I saw him standing there with a grin on his face. He told me that it was going to be hard, but that he had my back.
Even when your colleagues are supportive, the process of coming out and beginning your social (and oftentimes hormonal and surgical) transition is physically and mentally exhausting. Every tiny obstacle---practical and psychological---that a scientist encounters during this period can impact their ability to stay in the field.
Once I chose to start my physical transition, hormones made it hard for me to focus in class, and for the first time I thought about taking time off. I battled new bouts of anger and frustration alongside the expected emotional roller coaster as I adjusted to weekly hormone injections, all the while trying to present myself as professionally as I could—and as my colleagues struggled to remember to address me with the correct pronoun. Under these conditions, my confidence withered, and for the first time I considered leaving science.
At the museum, peeing became almost as difficult as getting everyone to call me by the right pronoun. The only staff gender neutral restroom was five floors up and on the opposite side of the building from my desk. The practical challenges are more severe, too: For scientists early in their careers, it’s incredibly difficult to live off a TA salary while bearing the costs of hormones, medical procedures, mandated weekly therapy sessions, legal document fees, and clothes to fit a rapidly changing body. I have trans friends who either had to postpone their surgeries until after graduation or take time off from school.
There’s little the scientific community can do to change the physical and financial challenges of transitioning. But it can change the way it runs its labs and universities to ease those transitions and keep trans students invested in and focused on their work.
Trans men and women in all fields face employment discrimination, but what makes science so unique is that you need a doctoral degree to move forward—and in the process of getting a PhD, you rarely can work alone. Some institutions have policies that can protect against blatant discrimination, but not all. And those policies don’t mean much if a campus doesn’t provide gender confirming health benefits, gender neutral restrooms, training on LGBT competency, and active condemnation of transphobia.
As I began looking for PhD programs, I looked into labs and advisors all over the country doing research that interested me. Like all young scientists, I wanted a good advisor with a strong lab at a respected university.
At first, I was determined not to let my transgender identity affect my professional life. But I quickly realized that my academic success hinged on there being institutional policies and LGBT resources, a campus climate that celebrated diversity, access to safe and affordable healthcare, and living in an open-minded city, so that when the unexpected comes up, like when I found out my testosterone was contaminated, I can access fast, safe and reliable resources with confidence so my research isn’t compromised.
I found the PhD advisor of my dreams, and scrolled through her pages of cutting-edge coral research only to reach the fine print—her lab was full and she wasn’t taking any more PhD students. But I hedged my bets and sent an email expressing interest anyway. She wrote back, asking me to answer two questions: One, why did I want to do a PhD? And two, in a perfect scenario, what did my next five years look like?
I’d thought about that second question a lot as I’d come to the realization that I’d never be happy unless I transitioned. I decided to take the risk, and told her so. A few days later we Skyped, and now I live on a little island in the middle of the Pacific.
Ignorance and prejudice is no excuse to exclude people from science. It takes direct and deliberate action—like that of my advisor—to change the status quo. This work has begun. As the general public becomes more educated about trans issues, so too does the scientific community.
My old institution just hosted its first LGBT Cultural Competency staff training. It’s actively recruiting lead scientists from underrepresented groups, including LGBT, and now includes transgender health care in their benefits packages. Scientific conferences are offering more student scholarships to students from minority groups, and many conferences have started hosting panel discussions on the topics of diversity in science. Those changes aren’t going to solve the problem—but they’re a start. And if that trend continues, maybe the next generation of trans biologists won’t be bogged down by transphobia and instead can focus their energy on finding sneaky sea slugs.
