6 ms·

Does the tech field seem to be highly represented in the T part of LGBT? I can’t count how many times I’ve see a woman’s name as the maintainer of some software

Does the tech field seem to be highly represented in the T part of LGBT? I can’t count how many times I’ve see a woman’s name as the maintainer of some software and thought, wow it’s awesome to see a woman working on something as low-level or esoteric or whatever and it almost always ends up being a trans woman. Absolutely nothing wrong with that, just an observation.

smoldesu 4y ago
It's more that the tech industry is recovering from centuries of raising women to avoid engineering roles.
eganist 4y ago
> Does the tech field seem to be highly represented in the T part of LGBT? I can’t count how many times I’ve see a woman’s name as the maintainer of some software and thought, wow it’s awesome to see a woman working on something as low-level or esoteric or whatever and it almost always ends up being a trans woman. Absolutely nothing wrong with that, just an observation. Possibly, or also possibly likely that people are more likely to come out when they feel less constrained to societal expectations (i.e there may be more LGBTQIA+ who are closeted outside of tech because of nonconformity-related fears). Whether it's one or the other (or both), these populations have always gravitated towards tech because tech was always the outcast thing to do.
golemiprague 4y ago
alphabettsy 4y ago
That hasn’t been my experience, but possibly the over-representation of males in the industry means trans people in tech are more likely to be trans women.
detaro 4y ago
Tech has lots of places tolerant of people falling outside the "mainstream normal", pays well (which is quite useful for people who want to medically transition), and until quite a short time ago, niche online communities were probably one of the main avenues for people to understand what's going on with them and what they can do about it.
Gigachad 4y ago
You wouldn’t notice if the maintainer was in the LGB part.
- TheNorthman 4y ago
  That's not his point...?
- ThrowawayTestr 4y ago
  I wonder why that is.
  - Gigachad 4y ago
    There is no visual component to sexuality. Given that GitHub profiles are mostly just a name and profile pic, you can’t tell someone’s sexuality while you can easily tell if someone is trans.
    - Spivak 4y ago
      Ehhhhh this swerves into a long discussion about the stereotypes trans people face, how we have really narrow ideas about what men and women look like that leads to cis folks getting misgendered and the weird world of people who deny that passing trans folks exist. HOWEVER, you can easily tell trans folks on github because their avatar will be an anime picrew.
Tsiklon 4y ago
The field seems to have comparatively visible representation, which is something I'm happy to see. An immediate question I have is how much of this change is because of society becoming thankfully more accepting of transpeople? Further by extension, in prior generations of tech workers how many are people who would have not felt able to present who they are?
JBits 4y ago
More boys being encouraged to go into tech is a potential reason. However, personally I think the biggest reason is that lots of people with ASD are in tech, and there is an overlap between ASD and trans. All of the times I can remember where I came a across a trans women in programming, they also had ASD traits.
- dmix 4y ago
  ASD = Autism Spectrum Disorder (for those who didn't know)
rajin444 4y ago
Don’t trans females tend to be autistic? Given how well autistic individuals do in programming it isn’t surprising.
truthwhisperer 4y ago
forty 4y ago
Your observation (which I noticed too) boils down to the under representation of biological women (both cis women and trans men) in the tech industry, due to cultural and societal reasons.
factsarelolz 4y ago
- codefreeordie 4y ago
  - ajsnigrutin 4y ago
    It's funny how these practices used to be (and in some places lucily still are) considered sexist and racist.
codefreeordie 4y ago
Yes, this is a thing, and there are very significant structural reasons for it.
captnFwiffo 4y ago
People used to say this about gay men and women in tech in the 1990s, so, ya know. The more things change the more they stay the same.
matheusmoreira 4y ago
I share your observations. I often find trans women behind very cool and interesting projects. I don't have any statistics or anything but it's certainly my personal experience.
verytrivial 4y ago
Females learn early that broadcasting your feminity comes with risks, largely from males. I think some trans people don't have that qualm, and on the contrary find clear use of female correlating names affirming. I also think I.T. has a larger proportion of the sort of neuro-divergence that correlates strongly with gender identity transition. I don't know why that is, and finding out why seems to have been made taboo, and don't expect any different on HN.
libraryofbabel 4y ago
I am a trans woman in tech. Yes, this is a thing. We joke about it all the time. (Even trans women who don’t work in tech constantly joke about the number of trans women who work in tech.) Certain fields and communities (security, Rust, other low-level stuff) have particularly strong representation. The main reasons I’ve heard thrown around for this are: 1) Autism-spectrum traits correlate to being trans (why? nobody knows) and also correlate to high technical ability, 2) tech is generally fairly accepting of alternative lifestyles and identities, 3) if you were brought up as a boy you probably had more access to computers and were encouraged to go into that field, 4) if you were brought up as a boy but were actually trans, you probably preferred nerdy stuff to sports and computers were a good distraction from hating your body, 5) tech jobs have good healthcare.
- angry_octet 4y ago
  I think we must give great weight to the fact there are prominent and proud trans techies -- it tells you that in tech you can be successful. In what other fields would you be as accepted? There's also the need to be part of a community online, a community which is not physically accessible in most places, so the level of social media engagement is higher, and maybe that leads to tech and tech-adjacent work.
  - randomsearch 4y ago
    I feel like that acceptance (and I’ve worked at a few places that have just been amazingly supportive and accommodating, long before it was widely discussed) is somehow vaguely related to the way us nerds don’t care about formal dress. “You do you” is the nerd individualistic way, and that seems to apply to a wide range of things, including lifestyle choices, fashion, being trans, and many other axes. So long as you can do the work, who cares how you choose to present? It’s a neat thing about nerdland.
  - Spivak 4y ago
    Well the running joke is that if you’re a trans woman your options are IT or sex work.
cumshitpiss 4y ago
323 4y ago
1. There's an overlap between T and the autistic spectrum. [1] 2. Autistic spectrum is over-represented in tech. 3. There are many more man in tech. 4. There are many more trans-woman than trans-man. Multiply all these together and you get the phenomenon you observed. [1] https://www.cam.ac.uk/research/news/transgender-and-gender-diverse-individuals-are-more-likely-to-be-autistic-and-report-higher-autistic https://www.cam.ac.uk/research/news/transgender-and-gender-d...
gaganyaan 4y ago
I now have a bet with myself whenever I see someone with a female name on the HN front page. The odds for woman vs trans woman are... not high.

smoldesu 4y ago

It's more that the tech industry is recovering from centuries of raising women to avoid engineering roles.

eganist 4y ago

> Does the tech field seem to be highly represented in the T part of LGBT? I can’t count how many times I’ve see a woman’s name as the maintainer of some software and thought, wow it’s awesome to see a woman working on something as low-level or esoteric or whatever and it almost always ends up being a trans woman. Absolutely nothing wrong with that, just an observation. Possibly, or also possibly likely that people are more likely to come out when they feel less constrained to societal expectations (i.e there may be more LGBTQIA+ who are closeted outside of tech because of nonconformity-related fears). Whether it's one or the other (or both), these populations have always gravitated towards tech because tech was always the outcast thing to do.

golemiprague 4y ago

alphabettsy 4y ago

That hasn’t been my experience, but possibly the over-representation of males in the industry means trans people in tech are more likely to be trans women.

detaro 4y ago

Tech has lots of places tolerant of people falling outside the "mainstream normal", pays well (which is quite useful for people who want to medically transition), and until quite a short time ago, niche online communities were probably one of the main avenues for people to understand what's going on with them and what they can do about it.

Gigachad 4y ago

You wouldn’t notice if the maintainer was in the LGB part.

TheNorthman 4y ago
That's not his point...?
ThrowawayTestr 4y ago
I wonder why that is.
- Gigachad 4y ago
  There is no visual component to sexuality. Given that GitHub profiles are mostly just a name and profile pic, you can’t tell someone’s sexuality while you can easily tell if someone is trans.
  - Spivak 4y ago
    Ehhhhh this swerves into a long discussion about the stereotypes trans people face, how we have really narrow ideas about what men and women look like that leads to cis folks getting misgendered and the weird world of people who deny that passing trans folks exist. HOWEVER, you can easily tell trans folks on github because their avatar will be an anime picrew.

Tsiklon 4y ago

The field seems to have comparatively visible representation, which is something I'm happy to see. An immediate question I have is how much of this change is because of society becoming thankfully more accepting of transpeople? Further by extension, in prior generations of tech workers how many are people who would have not felt able to present who they are?

JBits 4y ago

More boys being encouraged to go into tech is a potential reason. However, personally I think the biggest reason is that lots of people with ASD are in tech, and there is an overlap between ASD and trans. All of the times I can remember where I came a across a trans women in programming, they also had ASD traits.

dmix 4y ago
ASD = Autism Spectrum Disorder (for those who didn't know)

rajin444 4y ago

Don’t trans females tend to be autistic? Given how well autistic individuals do in programming it isn’t surprising.

truthwhisperer 4y ago

forty 4y ago

Your observation (which I noticed too) boils down to the under representation of biological women (both cis women and trans men) in the tech industry, due to cultural and societal reasons.

factsarelolz 4y ago

codefreeordie 4y ago
- ajsnigrutin 4y ago
  It's funny how these practices used to be (and in some places lucily still are) considered sexist and racist.

codefreeordie 4y ago

Yes, this is a thing, and there are very significant structural reasons for it.

captnFwiffo 4y ago

People used to say this about gay men and women in tech in the 1990s, so, ya know. The more things change the more they stay the same.

matheusmoreira 4y ago

I share your observations. I often find trans women behind very cool and interesting projects. I don't have any statistics or anything but it's certainly my personal experience.

verytrivial 4y ago

Females learn early that broadcasting your feminity comes with risks, largely from males. I think some trans people don't have that qualm, and on the contrary find clear use of female correlating names affirming. I also think I.T. has a larger proportion of the sort of neuro-divergence that correlates strongly with gender identity transition. I don't know why that is, and finding out why seems to have been made taboo, and don't expect any different on HN.

libraryofbabel 4y ago

I am a trans woman in tech. Yes, this is a thing. We joke about it all the time. (Even trans women who don’t work in tech constantly joke about the number of trans women who work in tech.) Certain fields and communities (security, Rust, other low-level stuff) have particularly strong representation. The main reasons I’ve heard thrown around for this are: 1) Autism-spectrum traits correlate to being trans (why? nobody knows) and also correlate to high technical ability, 2) tech is generally fairly accepting of alternative lifestyles and identities, 3) if you were brought up as a boy you probably had more access to computers and were encouraged to go into that field, 4) if you were brought up as a boy but were actually trans, you probably preferred nerdy stuff to sports and computers were a good distraction from hating your body, 5) tech jobs have good healthcare.

angry_octet 4y ago
I think we must give great weight to the fact there are prominent and proud trans techies -- it tells you that in tech you can be successful. In what other fields would you be as accepted? There's also the need to be part of a community online, a community which is not physically accessible in most places, so the level of social media engagement is higher, and maybe that leads to tech and tech-adjacent work.
- randomsearch 4y ago
  I feel like that acceptance (and I’ve worked at a few places that have just been amazingly supportive and accommodating, long before it was widely discussed) is somehow vaguely related to the way us nerds don’t care about formal dress. “You do you” is the nerd individualistic way, and that seems to apply to a wide range of things, including lifestyle choices, fashion, being trans, and many other axes. So long as you can do the work, who cares how you choose to present? It’s a neat thing about nerdland.
- Spivak 4y ago
  Well the running joke is that if you’re a trans woman your options are IT or sex work.

cumshitpiss 4y ago

323 4y ago

1. There's an overlap between T and the autistic spectrum. [1] 2. Autistic spectrum is over-represented in tech. 3. There are many more man in tech. 4. There are many more trans-woman than trans-man. Multiply all these together and you get the phenomenon you observed. [1] https://www.cam.ac.uk/research/news/transgender-and-gender-diverse-individuals-are-more-likely-to-be-autistic-and-report-higher-autistic https://www.cam.ac.uk/research/news/transgender-and-gender-d...

gaganyaan 4y ago

I now have a bet with myself whenever I see someone with a female name on the HN front page. The odds for woman vs trans woman are... not high.