Comment by sambeau | Hacker News Reader

Comment by sambeau | Hacker News Reader

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The Tech industry has many male asian speakers, I suspect there is still a strong white-male majority (I can't find any reliable figures) but asian (men) are the other race who seem to be well established in the world of IT .

We do have incredibly talented transgendered speakers:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sophie_Wilson

and at least one very talented asian transgendered speaker:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Audrey_Tang

It is notable that both these are transgendered women I don't know of any transgendered men.

I find it interesting that you didn't add black speakers to your list. Our industry has a very notable deficit of anyone from an African, Afro-Carribean & African-American background. Personally I have worked with many more women programmers than I have with black programmers (although I have worked with two very talented black men, both ex-programmers in a senior management role, one military trained). I wonder why?

But you are right. Equality is equality. We'll get there in the end!

> It is notable that both these are transgendered women I don't know of any transgendered men.

Tim Chevalier, of Rust - http://catamorphism.org

Thanks. I assumed it was ignorance on my part and I was right.

His "The Male Programmer Privilege Checklist" is a depressing, informative read.

http://geekfeminism.wikia.com/wiki/Male_Programmer_Privilege...

> It is notable that both these are transgendered women I don't know of any transgendered men.

Might be because trans men in tech are men and thus "the norm"? Further, maybe most of them weren't in tech or high-profile before transition? Both Tang and Wilson were high-profile before transitioning.

(no evidence or anything, just providing possible working hypothesis).

I am so confused, now. When we speak of a trans[$], is the noun used supposed to be the source-sex or the target-sex? I know it is common courtesy to refer to a person as their current preferred/identified gender, so does that apply to this terminology, too?

That is, a transgender man would not be a man who became a woman, but a woman who is now a man?

Hint: if you leave off the word transgender, it should still describe who they are; Audrey's a woman. Audrey's transgender. Audrey's a transgender woman.

As I understand it (an I may be wrong here) transgender is the movement of gender so you are transgender only when you are in flux. Once you have arrived in your preferred gender you are no longer transgender so would normally be described solely by your new gender but may for reasons of clarity be referred to as transgendered (like I needed to above).

Audrey & Sophie are women. A transgendered man was,usually, once, physically, a woman. A transgendered woman was, usually, once, physically, a man.

I say 'usually' because as society becomes more open about this stuff it is becoming increasingly clear that gender is a sliding scale, not a binary state. A surprisingly large percentage of the population people are born somewhere on the scale between male and female physically (and/or mentally).

Hopefully we'll just get over gender. It's essentially an unhelpful social construct that is too rigid for nature.

Usually, "transgendered" is not preferred by trans* people themselves. It sounds awkward.

For a transgender person, one's gender is always what it is; it's just the body that might need adjustment. Also, it's hard to say when one's "arrived" anyway; there's not really a point when you just say "tada!" and you're all done. It's a very gradual process.

Some trans* people will still rrefer to themselves as trans* even "after" transition (inasmuch as you can pinpoint an 'after') because they internalise that as part of their identity; others don't.

You refer to them by their preferred sex. A transgender man is (usually) female-to-male or FTM, and would be referred to with male pronouns. Using the pronouns of their birth gender is considered rude.

Yes:

> a transsexual man is a person who was assigned the female sex at birth [but] identifies as a man and is transitioning or has transitioned to a male gender role and has or will have a masculine body.

They're separate components of the person's identity: a transgender man is a man and transgender. From [it is common courtesy to refer to a person as their current preferred/identified gender] it follows that a transgender man is transitioning, has transitioned or will transition to masculinity.

Sophie Wilson is amazing. For those who don't know, she designed the Acorn Micro-Computer, the Firepath processor and biggest of all the Arm chip.

She appears briefly towards the end of BBC's 'Micro Men' as the barmaid in the Baron of Beef:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?feature=player_detailpage&v=9MM...

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