I’ve Been Misgendered So Many Times: Comparing the Experiences of Chronic Misgendering among Transgender Graduate Students in the Social and Natural Sciences

Abstract

Chronic misgendering is the process of being repeatedly misgendered (referred to as another gender) after informing an individual of gender pronouns (e.g., “she,” “he,” “they”). Chronic misgendering is symbolic of larger institutional and disciplinary adherence to a paradigm that privileges cisgender people, referred to as a gender essentialist paradigm. In order to understand which disciplines in higher education have more pervasive chronic misgendering, we analyze results from the National Survey of Transgender Graduate Students (n = 245). Graduate students in the natural sciences experience more chronic misgendering compared to graduate students in the social sciences. Those in health and biological science fields (in and closely related to medicine) reported the highest level of chronic misgendering, accounting for the majority of all chronic misgendering in the natural sciences. We argue that not only do these incidents negatively impact transgender graduate students, but they also reflect and reproduce field‐specific expectations for what is considered acceptable misgendering practice in post‐graduate professional environments, such as community health and medicine. As such, chronic misgendering in graduate school functions as unofficial curricula and thus, training for workplace cultures that, to different degrees, devalue transgender people and contribute to structural inequalities.

Sexual and gender minority undergraduates’ relationships and strategies for managing fit in STEM

“…Specifically, SGM students often deal with discrimination and exclusion due to others’ perceptions, biases, and stereotyping of their minoritized sexual and gender identities [ 5 , 9 , 10 ]. This treatment is frequently in the form of microaggressions—covert, indirect, restrained, and ambiguous demonstrations of discrimination and prejudice against minoritized groups [ 6 , 11 , 12 ], such as cis-normative language use by faculty [ 13 ], including their resistance to trans or non-binary students’ pronouns [ 14 , 15 ]. This environment affects the lower STEM major declaration rates, degree persistence trends, and workforce representation of SGM people in comparison to their non-SGM counterparts [ 8 , 16 – 23 ].…”

Name-Based Demographic Inference and the Unequal Distribution of Misrecognition

“…30 Misgendering (both intentional and otherwise) is especially common and harmful for trans people, for whom it carries added dimensions of existential weight and access to institutional resources like medical care or toilets. 31 When people learn they have inadvertently misgendered someone, they tend to rely less on ascribed gender in the future. 32 We hope that the same will be true of people using name-based gender imputation.…”

Gender diversity in heliophysics

“…When major support structures are lacking, affected individuals must prioritize safety and security over research, course work, proposal writing, and other tasks Cech and Waidzunas (2022). Further, exorbitant amounts of time are often needed to carve out space within one's community in order to feel accepted and safe at work; this time commitment can manifest as conversations with colleagues, informational presentations, trainings, and more, all of which fall outside of the scope of work as a heliophysicist [e.g., Whitley et al (2022)]. The process of educating cisgender colleagues about one's identity and experience is perpetual and requires time, effort, vulnerability, and intentionality.…”

“…Reputation is instrumental to a scientist's career and will inevitably be affected by coming out, often in ways which are decidedly negative. For many genderexpansive scientists coming out invites marginalization, harassment, and discrimination Whitley et al (2022); Cech and Waidzunas (2022); Barthelemy et al (2022). This affects a scientist's relationship with all of their colleagues, including their mentor who may also experience retaliation if the mentor chooses to support their gender-expansive mentee Hughes (2018).…”

“…The use of a trans person's prior name after they have socially changed their name is referred to as "deadnaming. " Deadnaming is disrespectful, and can have lasting negative ramifications for trans people, from systemically driving them out of academic disciplines Whitley et al (2022) to higher suicide rates in trans youth Project (2020a).…”