Nature News on queer experiences in science
We’re delighted to see that Nature News has included an in-depth piece on queer folks’ experiences in scientific workplaces as part of a special feature on diversity in science. Reporter M Mitchell Waldrop even provides good discussion of the diversity of identities within the queer community, including issues specific to trans* folks, and the intersection of sexual, racial, and ethnic identities—all issues that we’ve tried to grapple with in the Queer in STEM survey.
“Every time I’d start a course I would have to have a very personal discussion with the professor about things like male pronouns,” says Lucas Cheadle, a neuroscience postdoc at Harvard University in Cambridge, Massachusetts. Making the situation doubly difficult was that he transitioned while he was an undergraduate at Smith College — a women’s university in Northampton, Massachusetts. “I missed out on a lot of mentorship relations because of the difficulty of explaining,” he says.
Appropriately for a Nature News piece, the article also has some good international perspective. You should definitely go read the whole thing.