Steve Silberman is gay. I’m bi. Together, we realized that we’d never seen a Coming Out Day feature dedicated to the experiences of lesbians, gay men, bisexuals and transgendered persons in the sciences and engineering. Science journalist powers: Activate! We hope today’s two-part celebration will add to the diversity of stories and help science-minded young queer folks everywhere know that it does, indeed, get better—both through the course of history, and the course of an individual’s life.
In Part I, endocrinologist Neena Schwartz told Steve Silberman about the struggles she faced being a female, and closeted lesbian, scientist. Schwartz’ career began in the 1940s, and we guessed that her experiences might be very different from those of modern GLBT scientists and engineers.
With the help of science blogger/Ph.D. student Jeremy Yoder and great organizations like the National Organization of Gay and Lesbian Scientists and Technical Professionals, we put out a call for personal stories about what it’s like to be queer and in the sciences today. We got some great responses from several amazing gay men, and you can read their stories in this post. But I know this doesn’t begin to capture the full breadth of experience. That’s why I’d like you to think of this comment thread as an open place to tell us about your life.
Are you a gay, lesbian, bisexual or transgendered scientist or engineer? Are you a queer Happy Mutant who loves science? Add your story to the comments. I’ll be checking, and adding direct links to this main page, over the course of the next couple days. I’d like to end up with a collection of stories from all over. Hopefully, it’ll help young, science-minded GLBT kids feel less alone.
Who is Speaking Out?
•Eric Patridge, Ph.D., pharmacologist at Yale University School of Medicine and President of Out in Science, Technology, Engineering and Mathematics
•Tomlinson Holman, Inventor of the THX Sound System
•Ron Buckmire, Ph.D., math professor at Occidental College
•Steven Jacquier, retired professor, University of Alaska
•Douglas Futuyma, professor of ecology and evolution, State University of New York
•James Nowick, professor of chemistry, University of California Irvine
•BasilGanglia, on being a lesbian, genderqueer neuroscience grad student
&bull:Anonymous, on being out … outside academia
•michael, “your personal life is inconsequential”
•eek talks about transitioning in the world of information security. “I fear, that no matter how good you are at what you do, or your accomplishments as male or female (or even in between) are able to be disregarded just because of somebody’s stupid and ignorant bias towards you.”
Forced to Choose Between Science and Change
Eric Patridge, Ph.D., pharmacologist at Yale University School of Medicine and President of Out in Science, Technology, Engineering and Mathematics
Some time ago, I dedicated myself to exploring Change—both in my professional life and in my personal life as a scientist and as a gay male (or queer, in the academic vernacular).
Professional experience has taught me that exploring Change is the essence of Science. Yet, I also know that scientists must market themselves to the public and to funding sources as being altogether dedicated, insightful, and innovative. To this end, and perhaps along with the fear of losing funding or credibility, scientists strive to be impeccable—we strive to be elite.
I, too, endeavor to be a top academic researcher with innovative ideas—in the past, I have conducted research at Penn State, Skidmore College, the Idaho National Laboratories, and the Kemicentrum in Lund—and my current research at Yale University focuses on developing anticancer agents that have potential both to increase the success of chemotherapeutic treatments and to serve as fluorescent, diagnostic indicators that doctors can use to personalize chemotherapeutic regimens.
However—as I continue to develop as a scientist, I feel like my professional life is strikingly juxtaposed with my personal life as a community builder, despite both of them being remarkably complimentary. In my co-curricular life, I serve as President of a fledgling non-profit organization, called “Out in Science, Technology, Engineering & Mathematics, Incorporated” or oSTEM. Established in 2005 and incorporated in 2009, oSTEM seeks to “broaden participation of underrepresented groups” in the STEM fields. I often see this goal incorporated into grant opportunities made available by the National Science Foundation and the National Institutes of Health—it is clear that the government is dedicated to enhancing diversity both in thought and in research practices. Unfortunately, grant opportunities that benefit underrepresented groups currently exclude
lesbian, gay, bisexual, and transgender communities—as delineated by the Congressionally mandated policies for the “Committee on Equal Opportunities in Science and Engineering” with the National Science Foundation.As a result of the lacking commitment to LGBT researchers, my personal efforts to enrich diversity in the STEM fields have begun to limit my professional opportunities as a scientist. Any effort put towards underrepresented groups intrinsically takes away from time I have to conduct research and furnish manuscripts, and ultimately detracts from my ability to appear as an elite, innovative researcher. And this is extraordinarily detrimental to my career—grant reviewers will criticize my resume, since publications and mentor lineages seem to be the sole indicators for scientists to appear elite and successful.
This is the nature of my current conflict as a scientist—while my heart is equally dedicated to scientific achievements and to improving research environments for LGBT communities, I feel increasingly forced to put aside any and all community building so that I can embody the elite nature that seems obligatory for funding. There is no forgiveness for any delay in producing manuscripts. This seems to be a major weakness
for Science today—there is no value or incentive for a scientist to Change the research environment. Rather, efforts not supporting basic research are met with incredulity. Further, while verbiage to benefit non-LGBT underrepresented groups does occasionally appear in grant opportunities, the strict peer review and resume standards held by the impenetrable scientific community creates a perpetual cycle that seems to benefit the privileged—but my perception is that it discourages collaborations and eliminates diversity both in thought and in research practice.In conclusion, there are substantial inequities for LGBT researchers, and efforts to improve the research environment for any undervalued community do not appear to be professionally supported by the scientific community. In my humble opinion, something must Change or Science could very well become a workforce of elite clones, where diversities of thought and research practices are not encouraged.
From the Closet, to the Stars
Tomlinson Holman, chief scientist at Audyssey Laboratories and professor at University of Southern California School of Cinematic Arts and Viterbi School of Engineering. Inventor of the THX Sound System.
In the late 1950’s there was huge emphasis on “beating the Ruskies,” who had, after
all, put the first satellite in space—that was inconceivable before it happened and
I was in Jr. High School. And not just in any school system but rather in the main
bedroom suburb for Argonne National Laboratories, filled with atomic scientists.
So anybody with any brains in my school was going to be a scientist. This was long
before I could articulate that I was gay, even to myself.The early 60’s was a time of great repression for us: Thursday was Queer’s Day
in my high school, and beware wearing a yellow shirt then, as that was the telltale
sign. I kept my head down and did my work. Great repression, though, has a way of
producing great creativity: Witness Spain since Franco. Being gay and repressing
it helps us understand the world in a way—in the closet, we were always acting a
part. This gives us a quality of examining things in detail that others may miss. As
Maurice the astronaut on Northern Exposure says of the gay B&B operators on the
show, “You people are very fastidious.” It is this fastidiousness I think that led me
to make products like the Apt/Holman Preamplifier as a kind of summing up of the
work that had gone before it, and which has stood the test of time.In my career I lucked into a mentor in Henry Kloss, who changed the world and
let me in on it. I found out that he supported an entire whole factory floor of gay
people at KLH in Cambridge, MA, in the 1960’s! While “gay” wasn’t an issue with
him, it was with his successors, and I left their employment to do my own thing. A
few years later, the fact that I had come out to a professional friend, the first one to
whom I had confided, changed my life again when he introduced me to Lucasfilm.
As it turned out George Lucas had had an out gay college roommate long before that
was fashionable and he made a safe place to be gay, and thrive. So when I came to
participate in a new startup, I made sure it was as gay friendly as those workplaces
had been to me.“Coming out” for me did not happen in a single eureka moment, or even a short
period of time, but was a process that occurred over a long time, first with gay
friends, then straight friends, then straight colleagues, then with family. While the
incremental steps get harder, they are nonetheless incrementally freeing. It helps
do science when your life is stable and happy, and that may be harder for us to
achieve, but it is possible—I just celebrated 30 years with my spouse. It really does
get better.
Race, Sexual Orientation, Academia—Bringing It All Together
Ron Buckmire, Ph.D., activist, blogger, math professor at Occidental College
Since lesbian, gay, bisexual and transgender (LGBT) youth are targeted by bullies, Dan Savage created the It Gets Better YouTube project to spread the message that life does get better after high school. In the same spirit, I am writing this piece to let LGBT and other under-represented people in STEM (science, technology, engineering and mathematics) fields know that things are getting better.
I am a Black, gay, tenured associate professor of mathematics at a prestigious liberal arts college in Los Angeles where I get everyday real-world experience with intersectionality, analyzing society simultaneously using multiple overlapping frames of race, gender, sexual orientation, class, et cetera. My contributions to building a queer presence on the Internet as a Ph.D. student in the early 1990s led to such a level of notoriety in gay circles that, when the openly gay chairman of the Occidental College mathematics department knew I was graduating, he asked me to apply to his school. I entered a 12-person department which was uniformly white, although with three gay members. Over time, the racial diversity has markedly increased while sexual-orientation diversity has fluctuated, from three up to five and back down to two. When things get better for one group, there are sometimes ups and downs for others.
Many people say the risks of being openly gay in academia outweigh the benefits, but my experience has been positive. I don’t think it’s coincidental that soon after my arrival on campus, the college’s first African-American president finally agreed to offer full benefits to same-sex domestic partners of employees. Despite concerned remarks from academic mentors about taking risks before tenure, I co-created and team-taught a freshman college writing seminar called Race, Gender and Justice in 1997 with two other faculty members outside of my field of expertise. The course fully integrated internet technology such as student web publishing and online discussion boards while teaching “sensitive” topics such as intersectionality and same-sex marriage, one of the first humanities courses in the country to do so, which led to publication opportunities and academic acclaim. Building upon my experience as a longtime LGBT activist and daily blogger at MadProfessah.com, I am currently teaching an updated version of the class called LGBT Rights in the Era of Obama and Google.
Beyond my teaching, being Black and gay has also benefited my research. I was studying non-standard finite difference equations, when I discovered the world’s leading expert in the field was Ronald Mickens, a Clark Atlanta University physics professor who had published almost 200 articles, an astounding number. I was delighted when I found out we not only shared a love of applied mathematics but also a similar racial identity; we have since collaborated on multiple papers together. Another research interest of mine has been the mathematical modeling of “cinematic box office dynamics,” in other words how and why movies make money. What gay boy doesn’t like watching movies? My academic interests have dovetailed with my identity-based interests, to the benefit of both.
Early Oppression Led to a Happy Life in the Sciences
Steven Jacquier, retired professor, University of Alaska. Trained teachers and science educators
Becoming a minister was my first career goal but the clash between being gay and the church killed that intention. At the same time—age 16—being gay also got me kicked out of my parent’s house. In high school I had won science fair awards, prompting the military to persistently recruit me, so with the seminary door closed I decided to become an officer. Military college tuition and benefits were a tantalizing opportunity for a teenager on his own with no money … but while actually filling out the induction papers at the recruiting station I discovered I had the option to either lie about being gay and be in, or be honest and be out. I chose to be out—in more ways than one. The remaining career path on my list? Science. I worked my way through university in part by serving food to military-funded students and washing their dirty dishes, yet am still glad I did not lie. A life in the sciences has worked out so much better!
Internships and field studies with the Institute for Southeast Asian Studies, Indonesian Institutes of Ecology and Parasitology, and in industry led to decades of work on a diverse range of fascinating and rewarding projects. Human ecology in Java, mariculture in Ecuador, agricultural research in New Jersey and California, health science education and disease prevention projects in Alaska and Nepal. At some junctures being gay in the sciences has meant hitting a glass ceiling, no doubt about it; for example, the same year I ultimately won a national award I was conspicuously passed over at the state level in Alaska. There has been definite progress over the years, though, thanks in large part to the efforts of NOGLSTP working with AAAS and other professional associations.
As with being LGBTIQ, being a scientist is as much—if not more—a privileged perspective and invaluable approach to perceiving and understanding the world than how one is defined by professional employment or simply by the nominal fact of for whom one feels affection. Whenever I work with students I have them draw a scientist; they usually draw a man in a lab coat pouring chemicals or peering through a microscope. Especially with LGBTIQ youth, I know I have been successful when at the end of the course I ask them again to draw a scientist and they draw a smiling self-portrait. Out and proud career role models for LGBTIQ youth have too long been restricted to hairdressers, dog groomers, and positions in the arts.
Our youngest recently graduated from high school and flew the nest for university; with her away my partner and I decided to retire. We moved from Alaska to Hawaii, where I am beginning work with some local efforts on rat lungworm, dengue fever, and other emergent and resurgent tropical diseases as well as with FASD (Fetal Alcohol Spectrum Disorders). Overall, life as a gay man in the sciences these past decades has been good; thanks to folks like you being out and proud I expect the outlook for our children and students to be even better.
A Scientist Considers the Evolutionary Basis of Sexuality
Douglas J. Futuyma, professor of ecology and evolution at the State University of New York
Having gone through adolescence at a thoroughly homophobic time (1950’s), and in
the thoroughly homophobic Catholic Church, I was so traumatized that I didn’t come
to terms with my sexual orientation until much too late (after Stonewall). When I did, I
decided that I would no longer live a lie, and since then have been out in my professional
life and almost all other contexts. I don’t usually go out of my way to advertise, but
neither do I attempt to hide who I am.For some years I was surprised that I seemed to suffer no negative repercussions of
being out, in my professional context. I think I’ve been fortunate that many of the other
faculty members in my department have been socially committed liberals, but as far as
I can tell, there haven’t been any negatives from the broader community of biologists
with whom I interact. (Of course, I could be unaware of many things, such as potential
graduate students’ deciding not to study with a gay professor.) I have become rather well
known in my field and I think my being gay is quite widely known, but throughout my
career I have felt that what has mattered are my research and educational contributions to
evolutionary biology, and my efforts to be fair, honest, and civil.I strongly believe that progress on LGBT rights has stemmed largely from individuals’
being out and visible. Certainly some of my students have discerned that I’m gay, if only
because I have often discussed variation in sexual orientation in my classes on evolution.
I’ve also included the topic in some editions of my textbook on evolution. I would like to
think, and in a few cases I know, that I’ve affected some individuals’ attitudes and that
my visibility has helped some gay students to come out.Variation in sexual orientation is interesting in an evolutionary context because if it
is based even partly on genetic differences, we want to explain how genes that incline
individuals toward a non-reproductive life could persist and attain fairly highly abundance
in a population. For them to do so seems exactly opposite to natural selection. But the
question then is, does this variation have a genetic basis—and you don’t have to be a biologist to consider that an interesting and important question.When I was younger and considerably more leftist than I am now, I had a very negative view of “genetic determinism” of human behavior, as I believed the sociobiologists advocated, and I coauthored a paper critical (and rightly so) of the existing evidence for a genetic component in sexual orientation (Futuyma and Risch, Journal of Homosexuality 9:157-168; 1984). Interestingly, when evidence for such a genetic basis was published in 1993 (since questioned), it was enthusiastically received by much of the LGBT community. I now think that any proposed “cause” of same-sex orientation, whether based on genes, experience (“environment”), or both, can potentially be used as a weapon in the wrong hands (Freudian theories didn’t prevent electroshock “therapy, and “gay genes” raise the specter of preemptive abortion).
In any case, our emotional and social predilections shouldn’t affect our efforts at scientific objectivity. (See massive public rejection of evolution and human-induced climate change, both based on solid science.) I think that some recent research rather strongly supports a role for genetic variation in sexual orientation, but I also think that the causes of such variation should not bear on the issue of equal rights and dignity.
Science and Activism Led to Romance
James Nowick, professor of chemistry, University of California, Irvine
Twenty-five years ago when I was a graduate student at MIT, I was disappointed that the MIT GLBT student group, GAMIT, focused primarily on the needs and interests of undergraduates. The students there were younger and at a different point in their professional lives, and I figured I would never meet anybody to whom I could relate. I obtained funds from the graduate student council to start a graduate student GLBT group, which I am proud to say continues to run to this day, albeit under a different name.
As I attended the last meeting of GAMIT that that I went to before starting the graduate student group, I met John, who is now my partner of almost 25 years. Six years ago, we returned to Massachusetts to marry, less than a mile from where we met.
For more personal insights from GLBT people in the sciences, check out
•Closeted Discoverers, a story by Jacqueline Ruttimann Oberst in Science Careers magazine.
•Navigating the Heteronormativity of Engineering: The Experiences of Lesbian, Gay, and Bisexual Students, a research paper, forthcoming in the journal Engineering Studies, by Erin Cech and Tom Waidzunas
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