Today, 31 March, 2021 is Transgender Day of Visibility (TDoV). TDoV is an annual event dedicated to celebrating, and making visible, transgender people and raising awareness of the discrimination faced by transgender people world-wide.
TDoV this year rings particularly loudly for Spectrum, as since 2021 has begun, multiple states’ legislatures have proposed or enacted legislation that directly effects the transgender community. Whether this takes the form of excluding trans individuals from sports participation, restricting sanitary facility access, or denying healthcare, these efforts not only directly undermine the safety of transgender people, but through secondary effect, indirectly do incalculable harm by signaling to people that transgender people are less-than – an aberration that must be legislatively controlled.
Transgender individuals have a long history of scientific and cultural contribution, from Lynn Conway’s development of generalized instruction handling and VLSI (Very Large Scale Integration) semiconductors in the 1970s, to Lana and Lilly Wachowski’s development of novel cinematography techniques most famously employed in The Matrix. At Argonne, transgender scientists like Carissa Holohan (ALCF) are enabling the future of high-performance computing to empower the next generation of research and collaboration.
In alignment with our core values of Impact, Safety, Respect, Integrity, and Teamwork, it is our responsibility to learn about the transgender community and ensure we are continuously creating a Laboratory environment where we can all live authentically and contribute our best work.
To Join the Conversation, check out Spectrum’s page on MyArgonne