Thread by @TaliaRinger

For real though, happy lesbian visibility day. A while back I did a blog interview series about LGBT computer science researchers. Eventually my life got too hard to continue it. But here's an interview with Deb Agarwal from back in the day.

theidentityfunction.wordpress.com/2016/12/09/deb…

If anyone wants to take over this project and start it up again, I'd be happy to pass along the knowledge I gained in the process, and give you access and so on.

Back then I really felt that there was a Don't Ask, Don't Tell culture in CS research. When I got the NSF Fellowship, suddenly people knew I existed, and I immediately decided to use this to try to fight that culture. I don't know how much it helped, but I really hope it did.

I do feel that now as I'm about to graduate, the culture has shifted, whether or not I had any involvement in that. I am very happy that is true, and people no longer seem to see being LGBT as a "personal thing" we shouldn't ever talk about in professional contexts

The design of this blog was pretty intentional: fighting taboos by mixing discussion of research with discussion of what it's like to be LGBT as a CS researcher. This idea ought to generalize to other taboos worth smashing, like those around mental health and other disabilities.

So if you want to smash a taboo that harms the community, I hope this blog also serves as a model for one way to go about doing that. I'm happy to help you get started on an interview series about whatever taboo you want to smash (if I agree with smashing the taboo).

The intro post talks a bit about the importance of visibility, though do note that it uses some outdated language and notions from a very different time (which is in itself wonderful to be able to say): theidentityfunction.wordpress.com/2016/04/11/wha…

Oh I should note my life eventually got less hard, just I went through two really painful years that made it impossible to do something like this. Now it feels like digging up bad memories to resume. But I'd really love other people to take over, or learn from my efforts.

Also, at every point in my career at which I've gained some privilege or visibility, I've been extremely deliberate about using it to improve the community in a way I would have been afraid or unable to before. This was the first such effort---I hope to continue that pattern.

In the end, not everyone has the privilege to be able to be visible. But that just makes it extra important for those of us who do and who feel comfortable to be as visible as possible. (Hi, I'm still bi.) 🏳️‍🌈🏳️‍🌈🏳️‍🌈