@fakerapper tells it like it is about the tech world, but this extends to the business world and academia more broadly. The assumption is that if you look like a dude, all the female socialization you got somehow vanishes miraculously. 1/
Feminisms have brought a lot of change to the working world, but one thing they haven’t brought is an awareness that trans people of all gender expressions need as much or more support as cis women. 2/
In academia, there are programs that support women and underrepresented minorities toward tenure (if you’re lucky enough to snag a tenure track gig), but just try walking into those spaces as a transmasculine person of any race. 3/
And they’re built primarily to support cis women through the hostility and sexism around reproductive choices that’s still structurally part of academia. Which is important, but the gender issues transmasculine folks face in the workplace are more complicated. 4/
Being a transmasculine person returning to tech from academia, I can’t not feel alienated by the fact that my workplace is at least 75% cis men. And the officially sponsored “women’s leadership network” does nothing to support people outside the gender binary. 5/
The tech industry has a gender problem and a boys’ culture. But for transmasculine people, our workplace gender problems don’t just magically disappear if/when we can pass as cis. We can’t access the “women’s leadership” programs without being perceived to be That Guy. 6/
I’m reluctant just to slide into workplace trans-invisibility as a coping mechanism for the structural sexism all around me. I want to be visible as not-a-cis-man, for the benefit of any of my not-out LGBTQ colleagues. But where’s the support for that? 7/
My new tech employer has an LGBTQ+ employee resource group, and my university employer didn’t even have that. But ERGs and “diversity” programs are not the same thing as robust support for pipelining and hiring more women and trans people. 8/
Transmasculine and nonbinary folks in tech and academia need structural support too. “Women also know ___” is important, but it reinforces the myth that everyone is either a man or a woman. 9/
It’s a hell of a thing when even the institutional programs designed to support gender minorities (“women”) feel like microaggressions and reinforcements of the gender binary, and you can’t speak up for fear of being That Guy. 10/
I don’t oppose programs that support women in the workplace— especially tech workplaces— but I am Done with people and institutions who act like supporting cis women’s career advancement is the definition of a gender-liberatory project. 11/end
