The RSS Celebrating Diversity SIG are partnering with rainbowR to host free online talks on identities and challenges in lived experiences of trans and gender diverse people, through contemporary data and statistical analyses.

Our event will take place on Wednesday 19th Nov from 17.30 – 18.30 and will be broadcasted live via the RSS Celebrating Diversity SIG’s official YouTube channel at https://www.youtube.com/@RSSDiversity. Access will be open, although we encourage attendees to register for the event to receive reminders.

This event coincides with Trans Awareness Week, an international week dedicated to sharing information about and advocating for transgender people amidst the continued prejudice and violence they often face. This culminates in Trans Day of Remembrance on 20th November, which was founded to commemorate the life of Rita Hester who was murdered in 1998 and has since expanded to honour and remember all trans people who have suffered violence because of who they are.

Dr Matthew Voigt (Michigan State University) – ‘Solving for X: The Unknowns of Gender and Sexuality in Tertiary STEM Education’

In this talk I will broadly share my research focus that investigates the impact of gender and sexuality in tertiary STEM education within the United States, including the experiences of transgender, non-binary, and gender diverse students in postsecondary mathematics education. This work documents the significant cognitive burden on these students as they navigate exclusionary environments. Key challenges include the psychological load of navigating misgendering, the pressure of managing gender performance, and exclusion from binary-gendered support structures, such as "women in engineering" programs. Narrative research has detailed the shift in academic-social privilege reported by students post-transition. Trans men, for example, reported gaining privilege and respect from peers. Conversely, trans women reported experiencing increased sexism and lower expectations after transitioning. However, these students described this as a positive trade-off, as the psychological relief from gender dysphoria vastly outweighed this new social friction.
 
Dr Lexi Webster (University of Southampton) – 'Let’s Talk About Sex (Data)’

A toxic combination of regressive politicking, performative (quasi-)legislative cruelty, and unsubstantiated claims to scientific expertise have embroiled us in a seemingly interminable conflict over what counts as ‘sex’ or ‘gender’. This is as much a conflict about data as it is about language. Indeed, data and its accuracy are used as a justification for campaigns to use – or not use – specific language to categorise identities, bodies, and people. In this talk, I’ll discuss how this relationship between language and data has become inextricable in the current context of state-sanctioned transphobia – and how we might co-opt this inextricability in the pursuit of trans flourishing.

 

Liam Brierley (RSS Celebrating Diversity SIG) & rainbowR members