Greetings. You have reached one of the webpages of Prof. A.W. Peet. I have directed you here because I wanted to let you know why I look and sound a bit different than I used to. The general idea is to help avoid confusion and alienation amongst valued colleagues. The content is designed to be read when you are not in a flaring hurry, so if you are, please bookmark it and come back later with a cup of your favourite beverage in hand when you have five or ten minutes to spare. Cheers.
If you knew me at all before 2015, you were already aware that I never really fit the Standard Model of Femininity. Gender conformism is not my thing. As a child I did boyish things as well as girlish things, as a youth I got bullied at school for then-mysterious reasons, and in early adulthood I did not marry a man or raise kids. It turns out that these and a bunch of other odd facts about me can be explained by one unifying hypothesis. It is a little bit radical, but as a grownup you have enough imagination to be able to handle it, regardless of your gravitational string theory expertise.
In 2000 I moved to Toronto, Canada for a tenure-track faculty job at the University of Toronto's downtown campus. One of the first things that struck me as welcoming about the city was the presence of a vibrant LGBT community. One day in June 2013, I attended the Trans March as part of Pride, to support a trans friend. At the rally before the march, I heard speeches that resonated so deeply I suddenly realized that I may also be transgender (and queer)! Wait, what?!? As I learned more and more about gender in the days, weeks, and months following, the loudest sound I heard in my head was dominoes falling -- so many puzzling facts about my past suddenly made sense. I had just discovered the Grand Unifying Theory of Me.
So am I a trans man, kind of like the opposite of Chelsea Manning or Janet Mock? No. I am actually a nonbinary transgender person, which means two things. First, about the transgender part. This term means that I transgress gender boundaries assigned by family and society in general. If you never questioned the gender you were assigned at birth, then you are the opposite of transgender: cisgender, or cis for short. (Note: cis has no linguistic connection to sissy.) The cis and trans usages come directly from Latin. You will have seen them used in molecular naming in chemistry, in roughly the same sense, meaning same side and opposite side respectively.
Second, about the nonbinary part. For me, this term means that I am not wholly feminine, nor am I wholly masculine. To recruit a physics analogy: I am a bit like a quantum with both wave-like and particle-like behaviour -- which behaviour you see depends on the type of experiment you perform. I do not fit neatly into the gender binary, or even on a simple linear spectrum between female and male. Instead, I have essential strands of femininity and essential strands of masculinity, woven together into a higher-dimensional gender. You cannot remove either type of thread: the fabric of me would unravel. More generally, I like to conceptualize gender as a whole universe of possibilities. ✨
One thing that many (but certainly not all) trans people share is gender dysphoria, a sense that aspects of our body do not correspond with our internal sense of gender. In Fall 2015, I finally got access to the medical care I had needed over three decades earlier but could not access. As a result, I am smiling spontaneously a lot more than I used to, and my chronic pain has even improved a bit (yay!). So what is different, outwardly? The pitch of my voice is deeper. But my accent remains the same, so you should still be able to recognize me. Also, my chest is flatter, and I have a bit of facial hair. Inside, though, I am pretty much the same person, just a lot happier. I feel more settled than I have done in ages. I am also even less willing to put up with obnoxious gender behaviour from others than I used to be, because I know myself better and because I know more about discrimination from direct experience.
Cis (non-trans) people tend to make some pretty big blunders when they find out someone is trans. The main rule of thumb for preventing awkwardness is super simple: never ask a trans person something that you wouldn't dream of asking a cis person, like what's in our pants. That stuff is absolutely none of your business. Trans people are not here on earth to be objects of cis spectacle, harassment, or gossip behind our backs -- or even to teach cis people things about gender. We are here on this planet to live and work and thrive just like any other human being. Please don't make our lives any harder than they already are. Here are two ways you can be supportive of me right off the bat.
A.W., pronounced
eh double you. I have been using this name consistently at work and with friends since at least 2015. If it helps you remember, you can imagine that my first name is like the code name
Min James Bond movies. Or you can think of the burger chain
A & W, haha. (Please don't call me by my old name -- this is known as deadnaming, and it is a shitty thing to do to a trans person.)
they. This English gender-neutral pronoun is not a neologism: it has been in use for centuries, e.g. by Shakespeare. If you are ever in doubt about what verb to use with the singular
they/them/their/themself, just use exactly the same verb you would use with the singular
you/you/your/yourself. There are no exceptions to this handy rule, even for irregular verbs. For more details, see this handy guide. (Please don't refer to me as
she-- this is known as misgendering, and it is a shitty thing to do to a trans person.)
For safety reasons, never reveal someone's transgender status to a third party. First and foremost, it is not your story to tell. In particular, the existence of this web essay does not constitute permission to the reader to disclose my trans status to anyone else. My gender story is not currency for you to spend. More generally, you might seriously endanger a trans person by outing them. Trans people are routinely denied jobs, housing, and medical care, and are assaulted more often than cis people are. Every year in North America, two digits of trans people are murdered by cis people just for being trans. The vast majority of the victims are trans women, and disproportionately many of them are Black and Indigenous. I have chosen to be out about my trans and queer status as a calculated (small) risk, to show support for younger trans/genderqueer/queer mathematical scientists. I list myself on the lgbtphysicists.org Out List
.
The average physicist did not undertake much of a social justice education as an undergraduate. We tended to be busy cramming our schedules with physics and math courses, rather than taking courses in the humanities and social sciences. So I would encourage readers not to overestimate their progressiveness on gender issues. One thing that is important is to not mix up gender identity with sexual orientation. In a nutshell: while gender and sexuality are related, they are separate variables, with tremendous variegation. If you would like to educate yourself more about how to support your trans and nonbinary friends and colleagues, please peruse the links listed on this handy page.
Discrimination on the basis of gender identity or gender expression has been illegal in the Canadian province of Ontario since 19.Jun.2012, and across Canada since 19.Jun.2017. Unfortunately, transphobia (antagonism towards trans people) is extremely common and widespread, even in relatively progressive countries. Needing to use a public toilet while trans can be particularly awful. It would be a great help if you could make an effort not to add to my transphobia burden. For example, if you are a cis man and you spot me in the men's room, please do not make a surprised face at me or verbally challenge my right to be there. A lot of buildings do not have gender-neutral toilets, and if I am forced to choose between a men's and a women's, I get yelled at less if I use the men's.
The best thing you can do right now as a friend is to just accept me as I am, in as welcoming a way as you can manage -- not to suddenly pull away from me because you know something new about my gender. It is natural that your feelings about me may change as I look and sound a bit different than before, but I urge you to consider the following important ethical points as you reorient yourself within the scope of our friendship.
You may struggle to figure out how to relate to me differently now that you know I am trans and nonbinary and queer. Regardless of what you assumed about my gender or sexuality in the past, I think we are both sufficiently grown up that we can find a new mutually satisfactory equilibrium now and in the future. If you are a cis woman who valued the sense of shared womanhood you felt we had in the past, am I now a traitor to the sisterhood? No. I have made a very deliberate decision not to repudiate femininity. It is super important to me to not contribute to sexism even though I look and sound more like a man (which I am still not!) than I used to.
I encourage you not to make assumptions about how sex hormones affect a person's emotional or intellectual life. If you have not lived under both estrogen and androgen dominance, you are unqualified to comment. The only real difference between me now and me before Fall 2015 is that I am living more authentically and happily. I am standing 2cm taller, but that is simply because I am no longer slouching to hide unwanted twin chest aliens; the growth plates on my long bones fused decades ago. Transphobia can be very isolating, and I ask you not to contribute to it by conflating bodily characteristics with the foundations of a professional friendship.
Please also note that if you see a trans person (e.g. me) wearing clothes that you think are too young
for us, bear in mind that we were denied the opportunity to wear those clothes at the age you have in mind. Cut us some slack, and don't try to enforce cis-centric dress codes. For trans people who undertake hormonal transition, it takes about five years for the new regimen to take hold fully. In the interim, it makes no sense to buy a bunch of nice
clothes while our body shape is still changing significantly. By now my new shape is pretty stable. You will know if I want your advice on clothing or aspects of fashion by whether or not I actively ask for it.
I should add one further note for cis men wanting to openly welcome me to the brotherhood. The inclusiveness impulse is appreciated. However, please note that I will not be suddenly joining in on any form of sexist behaviour merely because I have a deeper voice, a flatter chest, and more facial hair. Misogyny is still fundamentally unwelcome in my cosmology, and if you try to encourage me to join in on sexist behaviour then I will refuse, in a way that is likely to embarrass you. Better for everyone if you keep such tendencies to yourself.
OK. So now you know that I am trans and nonbinary (and queer), and how to avoid a few common mistakes. What next? How awesome you choose to be about all this is up to you. A few of your colleagues -- of markedly different age groups -- have already set a high standard by being wonderfully inclusive. Some students and postdocs have blown my socks off with their awesomeness. On the other hand, a surprising number of colleagues have committed major blunders as well. So, I invite you to go ahead and impress me with your own gender inclusiveness skills. If you do not have any, Google is a place to start, or you can peruse the resources linked to below.
Here's to being ourselves. Cheers! ☺️
There are many good educational resources about trans and gender nonconforming people available online. Here are a few.