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Comment by libraryofbabel | Hacker News Reader

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.

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> Autism-spectrum traits correlate to being trans (why? nobody knows)

Here are some reasons:

- Autists tend to be uncoordinated which makes them feel uncomfortable in their own bodies, which is a feeling used to diagnose transgenderism.

- Autists are often outcasts, which can make men feel less masculine, which they may accidentally equate to being more feminine.

- It’s accepted in the literature that autists tend to be naive as they can’t read social cues properly. Compared to their more socially sensitive neurotypical peers, they are more likely to trust that others will genuinely perceive them as the opposite gender based on cues from social media alone.

- Autists tend to over-rationalize which can lead to thought spirals that cause them to convince themselves of something that a neurotypical person would think is unrealistic.

- Autists tend to lack social sensitivity which includes the absence of the ability to sense the subtle discomfort that people feel in their presence.

This is why trans women who are lesbians are extremely over represented compared to cis women.

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.

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.

Well the running joke is that if you’re a trans woman your options are IT or sex work.

“Tech worker, sex worker, Starbucks barista — which of the three official trans girl professions are you?”

(Starbucks has famously good trans healthcare.)

Dang it! How could I forget Starbucks?

One of my friends legit quit her well paying tech job to work for Starbucks for like a year and a half because it saved her money

Thank you for your reply. All of the reasons you provided make sense, but number three was one I hadn't even considered. It seems so obvious once you pointed it out lol.

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