Girl + Computer = ?

One of the first meetings of my automata theory classes, my professor made a weird gender reference. This is the actually second time this has happened during my college career.

Without getting too math-y on you, we were discussing set theory - imagine Venn diagrams with numbers from mathematical functions in them. As an example of two separate sets that wouldn’t overlap, he used “girls” and “boys.” He awkwardly mumbled that they wouldn’t overlap, except for hermaphrodites.

What?? Okay, so I may not be the queerest of the queer, but I still thought that concept was extremely incorrect, and sort of offensive! I feel like in today’s world it is incredibly obvious that things aren’t just heterosexual male and heterosexual female. There’s so much gray area.

However, at least he uncomfortably waved his hands to the class and said “hey, we’re computer geeks, we don’t know social stuff!”

You got that right, mister. But is that even an appropriate excuse? Claiming ignorance for something doesn’t mean you can opt-out of social awareness. If you say something rude about a certain race but say you just “don’t know about it,” people are still gonna call your ass racist.
So why can that still fly with gender?

When stuff like that happens, I just can’t help but wonder about that person who happens to be in these classes who doesn’t fit in with the norm, who now suddenly feels totally isolated and invisible.
I am privileged to be a mostly femme cis-gendered girl - this means I am lucky enough to fit into pretty much every expectation for women today except for my short hair and apparently odd career interests.
I am just one of a bunch of people in my department. Chances are, at least one person isn’t so lucky, and they deserve a safe space free of judgement or misrepresentation just like all the people like me. Although it sucks that people need to rely on others to foster a safe space for them, I think at the very least professors should be sensitive to this type of thing.

Thoughts? 

There was a really surprising moment that happened in my Statistics 270 class.

We were discussing the calculation of proportions of a sample population while given information on the parent population and the number in the sample (irrelevant to this post!). The example in the book was a study comparing the sex of students in particular programs on a certain college campus.

The only thing that was kindof wacky about the example was it used the term “gender” to mean “sex.” I noticed this from the get-go, but it didn’t really bother me that much as the point of the lecture was about the statistics calculations, not gender theory.

It wasn’t a big deal, except then my professor went on a small rant about how in a previous semester a student of his had a big blow-up to him about it saying “sex is biological, gender is a choice!” He said all of it so mockingly, and even went on to say sarcastically, “I’m a dude because I chose to be.”

From all that I’ve studied, it seems like it would actually be more accurate to express that gender is an inherent form of expression, rather than a choice. Choice implies that you don’t have to do it if you don’t want to. Some people do express a variety of genders as part of a role they prefer to play regardless of the sex they are or gender they identify as. However, for some people their gender expression is more than just an role to play, but something that they personally identify as.

It seems as if a lot of the people in technical fields - at least from what I could see from my Stats teacher and the guys in my Computer Science classes - don’t ever consider their gender and sex or why they are that way.

Its a privilege that cisgendered people (myself included) have where they don’t even have to THINK about their gender expression, because how they chose to express gender happens to fit right into society’s standards. It doesn’t really feel like a choice at that point, because we are unconscious of it. There’s a box society sets out for them, but they fit quite snugly and think nothing of it.
It’s then harder for them to relate to those who do struggle with aligning their gender(s) and sex(es) simply because it’s not socially acceptable to not be cisgendered.

This is something that really needs to change, and in a lot of places it seems like progress is being made. I see people everywhere who are aware of and accepting of this kind of transgender or transexual experience, regardless of their own identity. Considering what your gender and sex really mean to you can be a really enlightening experience if you aren’t afraid to do it.

I found it rather inappropriate for a math professor to be speaking this way to a room full of students. I wonder if he considered the fact that he might have seriously alienated some students by his comment?
Math students don’t need any other reasons to feel alienated, chances are we feel pretty abnormal already.

Should I even have to ask for some gender-kindness in my classrooms??
Thoughts?!