#lgbtstem

When Miles Ott was in high school, he had a love-hate relationship with math. Sometimes, he enjoyed his classes. At other times, he felt confused. “I did not understand what the point was,” he says. “I just thought I wasn’t good at it.”

But that changed in college when he took a calculus class. The teacher explained the concepts very clearly. “‘Oh, this makes sense now,’” Ott recalls thinking at the time. “It was a great feeling to finally understand this thing that was so profoundly confusing to me. And I just never wanted to stop.”

He didn’t. Later, he went to graduate school and studied biostatistics. That field combines math and statistics to understand how to improve the health of large groups of people. Ott now works at Smith College in Northampton, Mass. He has done research on topics such as HIV in South Africa and alcohol use among college students.

He also has explored mental health issues in transgender people. This area has special meaning to Ott because he is a transgender man.

What does being transgender mean? Imagine that when a baby is born, the doctor looks at their body parts and proclaims, “It’s a girl!” But at some point, that person comes to realize that they don’t feel like a girl at all. In fact, they knowthey’re supposed to be a boy. Put another way, their “gender identity” is male, making that person a transgender boy or man.

This can go the other way around, too. Doctors could say that a child is a boy at birth. But that person grows up knowing they are female. This is a transgender girl or woman.

Many transgender people then go through a process called a “transition.” Often, they start wearing clothes that match their gender identity. They may change their name. A transgender man named Andrea at birth, for instance, might start going by Alexander. And they can change their pronouns. Pronouns are words such as “he,” “she”, “him” and “her.” A transgender woman would ask people to refer to her as “she” and “her.”

Some people take medications or have surgery to change their bodies. A transgender man could undergo these treatments to develop male features. A transgender woman could go through other treatments to develop female features.

For Ott, being a transgender scientist has come with challenges. He was going through his transition when he applied to graduate school. He wasn’t sure which name to use on his applications. He decided to list his old name, even though it didn’t feel right.

In grad school, some people asked him overly personal questions. He slowly learned how to deal with these situations. “It took me a while to figure out that I don’t have to answer anybody’s questions,” he says. “I get to decide what I’m comfortable with.”

Becoming a scientist takes years of hard work and dedication. Transgender scientists and engineers, though, face extra hurdles. Sometimes they feel alone because they don’t know other transgender researchers. When they transition, colleagues may treat them rudely and disrespectfully. And transgender researchers can be in greater physical danger when they travel to other countries for fieldwork.

But these scientists and engineers are gaining support. Universities and organizations are working to make them feel included in science, technology, engineering and math (STEM) fields. More researchers are talking openly about being transgender (often abbreviated as “trans”). And they are finding other trans people through meetings and social media.

“It is slowly — maybe slowly, but surely — changing for the better,” says Daniel Cruz-Ramírez de Arellano. “I genuinely feel like that is the case.” He is a chemist at the University of South Florida in Tampa. Cruz-Ramírez de Arellano also has studied transgender scientists’ experiences.

Arthropod Pride

I’ve been working on these over the month- pride coloured arthropods! All are actual colours. In order of row, left-to-right:

LGBT: Cuckoo wasp (Chrysis equestris)

Bisexual: Flower beetle (Smaragdesthes africana), Lesbian: Crab spider (Thomisus onustus), Pansexual: Red-banded leafhopper (Graphocephala coccinea)

Nonbinary: Great carpenter bee (Xylocopa lieftincki), Trans: Tiger moth (Cosmosoma regia), Asexual: Western blue beauty (Protogoniomorpha cytora)

I've noticed a lot of posts going around as of late that perpetuate the idea that LGBTQ people can't do math, or LGBTQ people dont like science. While this is a joke and clearly not meant to be taken seriously, I think everyone should know that plenty of queer people have been successful in scientific fields. It's especially important for younger queer people to see that you dont need to suppress your love of STEM fields just to fit in with your community.

Some Queer STEM folks:

Sir Issac Newton

Sir Francis Bacon

Leonardo da Vinci

Florence Nightingale

Sara Josephine Baker

Louise Pearce

Alan Turing

Sally Ride

Angela Clayton

Ben Barres

Allan Cox

Niel Divine

Alexander Von Humboldt

Sonja Kovalevsky

Margaret Mead

Jim Pollack

Bruce Voeller

Clyde Wahrhaftig

Caitlín R. Kiernan

Uzi Even

Gavin Arthur

Ron Buckmire

Mary Ann Horton

Kate Hutton

That's just a few. Here's a website listing a bunch of living queer scientists.

Here's another

*I didn't not hardcore fact check anything here. A basic Google search will give you the same results I got. Feel free to research more and prove me wrong.

It's finally here! The Volgaynoes leftover sale will launch on February 13th at 8 pm GMT!!! 🌈🗻

This leftover sale is perfect for all of you who missed the Kickstarer crowdfunding or if you're one of our backers who loved your Volgaynoes so much you want more! This will be their one last run and they won't be available for purchase after this one last sale, so make sure to plan ahead if you were thinking of getting them.

Mark your calendars and set the alarms because we have an extremely low stock of some items, so make sure you don't miss them.

“Volgaynoes” is a science-art collaboration between us, Palaeoiris, and volcanologist and artist @alias_in_ink (Instagram) that shows off the beauty and diversity of volcanism on our planet, while simultaneously celebrating the diversity of humans too.

Our myriad magmatic creations illustrate the beauty and majesty of volcanic processes across the world in a series of colours that champion members of the queer population.

The wait is almost over - Volgaynoes takeover is shortly upon us.

More info soon~

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