June 14, 2024 • 25 mins
It’s Pride Month, which is a great time to be thinking about the LGBTQ people who have been beacons of the vastness of what is possible for our communities. In this episode, Bridget highlights the incredible achievements of Lynn Conway, a trans woman who invented a lot of the tech we take for granted today. Despite a successful track record at IBM, her contributions were credited to others for almost 50 years until IBM formally apologized and recognized her in 2020. She was a bad ass innovator, and a pioneer for trans people trying to navigate a hostile world. She passed away this week at the age of 86, but her legacy and many contributions will be with us forever.
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Speaker 1 (00:04):
There Are No Girls on the Internet, as a production
of iHeartRadio and Unbossed Creative. I'm Bridget Toad and this
is there Are No Girls on the Internet. This is
There No Girls on the Internet, where we explore the
intersection of identity, technology and the Internet and Happy Pride Months.
(00:25):
Pride is a great time to be thinking about all
the different LGBTQ people, past, present, and future who have
been beacons of the vastness of what is possible for
our communities. And that is one of the reasons why
I really wanted to spend this time honoring computer scientist
Lynn Conway. To me, Lynn Conway really represents all three past, present,
(00:47):
and the future. Now. I have talked about Lynn's story
across various podcasts over the last few years, and what
strikes me is that a lot of those conversations were
about her past, but we also got to celebrate her
present and she was still alive. And I am a
big believer in giving people their flowers while they are
still here to smell them. And so now I am
(01:08):
left wondering about what her legacy means for the future.
And that's because Lynn Conway passed away this week from
a heart condition. At the age of eighty six, Lynn
Conway literally changed the world. All of us owe her
a debt. If you've ever used a smartphone or an iPhone,
you literally have Linn Conway to thank for that, and
her contributions were almost overlooked and were devalued. Specifically because
(01:32):
of her identity. Lynn Conway had a big hand in
contributing to the modern day internet and smartphones, and honestly
because of good old fashioned transphobia, her contributions were almost
overlooked completely even though she changed the world. Conway was
born in nineteen thirty eight and assigned male at birth,
but from a very early age, Lynn Conway knew that
(01:54):
there was more to her story as it pertains to gender.
Her mom was studying anthropology at Columbia, and Lynn, as
a child would flip through her mom's textbooks looking for
answers telling Michigan engineering news. In a really lovely profile
of her life that Will linked to in the show
notes quote, it seemed like people in other cultures had
found different ways to deal with what I knew I
(02:14):
was feeling, But then that became scrambled with the thought
that what I was feeling was that I was gay,
but nobody ever talked about those things. When Lynn was fourteen,
she read a news story about former Army private Christine Jorgensen,
who was known for being the first person in the
United States to publicly announce a gender transition. When Conway
saw this, she knew immediately what she wanted to do. Now,
(02:38):
keep in mind it was the fifties, and given what
we know about how narrowly society was dealing with and
talking about gender and identity in the fifties and sixties,
you have to wonder, you know, what was Conway's coming
of age and her journey really like, Conway initially tried
to transition while studying at MIT in the nineteen fifties.
She began taking hormones on her own and asked a
(03:00):
friend in the medical school at MIT if he could
help her find a doctor who could actually help her transition. Unfortunately,
that friend kind of sold her out. That friend took
her to a dean who told her that if she
did not stop taking hormones, she could be put in
a mental institution. Fear of being institutionalized or arrested was
(03:21):
a huge concern for Lynn Conway because being trans was
commonly strongly associated with being mentally ill or criminal behavior.
If you were openly trans you could end up institutionalized
or even arrested in some places, which looking forward to today,
it's one of the reasons why when people try to
equate transness with being mentally ill or criminal behavior, you know,
(03:44):
it's just more of the same, and it's just that
much more sad and infuriating that those are still things
that transphobes evoke to this day. So after this disappointing
turn of events for Lynn at MIT, she kind of
put transitioning at the back of her mind. She got married,
she became a parent, and she started working at IBM.
At this time in her life, she kind of seemed
(04:05):
to have a picture perfect life from the outside. That is,
you know, she was making major professional moves and innovations
and computing design at IBM, which at the time was
the seventh largest corporation in the entire world. While she
was at IBM, by all accounts, she was kicking ass.
She invented a hardware protocol that enabled the out of
(04:26):
order command processing that most computers still rely on to
this day. But all of this was put in jeopardy
because of transphobia. That would alter the trajectory of her life.
Speaker 2 (04:41):
Let's take a quick break.
Speaker 1 (04:53):
At her back. So, even though Conway had kind of
put the idea of transitioning the back of her mind
during this phase of her life, she kept learning about it.
She learned about the pioneering gender transition work of doctor
Harry Benjamin, an endocrinologist and sexologist known for his clinical
work with trans people, and decided I have to work
(05:14):
with him. So what's kind of heartbreaking about all of
this is that, according to this profile in Michigan Engineering,
Conway and her then spouse had worked out like a
pretty solid plan together for how conway transitioning would work.
Their plan was that they would get a divorce and
that Conway would start working with doctor Benjamin to transition.
Conway would pay for child support from her IBM salary
(05:36):
and stay in the children's lives. They actually even worked
out what the children would call her, which was they
would call her aunt. And according to a really compelling
Forbes piece by Jeremy Alessandri, Conway's immediate family and IBM's
divisional management were actually pretty accepting and supportive of this
at first. However, when IBM's corporate medical director learned that
(05:59):
Conway was planning to try transition in nineteen sixty eight.
He told CEO Thomas J. Watson Junior, who fired Conway,
to avoid the public embarrassment of employing a trans woman.
So this moment, you know, getting fired from your big
important job that you are kicking ass at and losing
the support of your employer began a downward spiral in
(06:19):
Conway's life that was completely destabilizing. She had a divorce
from her spouse while also losing her source of income,
which made it that much more difficult. California's social services
even tried to keep her away from her children, and
Conway's ex spouse decided that she could not have any
contact with the children because she was worried that if
Conway was actually in the kid's life, they would be
(06:42):
risking having those kids removed by the state. At the time,
Conway's kids were just babies, two years old and four
years old. This was absolutely devastating for Lynn Conway. She
recalls that poured me up. Let me tell you, the
hardest part of the whole thing was that I felt
like mom to them, She told Michigan Engineering. Lynn knew
(07:03):
this was going to be a tough process, and she
relied on lessons that she had learned from a lifetime
love of the outdoors and outdoor adventures like canoeing and
rock climbing to steady herself for the challenges to come.
As she described it, now, I had a plan to
get across the river. I could see the steps I'd
have to take to make it. I could see the
dangers and how to protect against them. The only problem
was I didn't know where I'd end up on the
(07:25):
other side. So even though it cost her her family,
her career, and her kids, she continued to work with
doctor Benjamin to transition. It was not an easy road,
as a lot of trans folks will tell you. The logistics,
you know, things like changing your name, getting new identification
and paperwork can be a big part of navigating trans identity,
(07:47):
you know, just establishing yourself so that you can work
and earn an income, have a bank account, and get
a place to live. Conway was dealing with all of
this decades ago. But even today this process is complicated
and sometimes prohibitively expensive, and sadly, today a lot of
trans folks do not have the support or resources to
navigate it. According to the National Transgender Discrimination Survey, only
(08:09):
one fifth of trans people who have transitioned have been
able to update all of their IDs and records, and
one third haven't been able to update any of their
ideas and records. So it is a real problem with
a lot of barriers. Luckily, Lynn was able to use
connections that doctor Benjamin had in Oakland to get this
navigated quickly, which was really important for her because she's
(08:31):
written that she wanted to avoid suspicion because that suspicion
could quickly turn unsafe. Conway wrote, you were an undocumented
alien from Mars. You don't have a birth certificate. How
are you going to get a job? This was the sixties.
You could think of it like being a spy in
a foreign country. If you were found out, you'd be
dealt with immediately, if not by the police, then by
people on the streets. So it's probably pretty clear that
(08:55):
why after transitioning, Conway would go into what she has
called the stealth phase of her career. So it's nineteen
sixty nine. Conway has changed her name and she's hiding
her gender identity and starting to look for work and computing,
eventually finding a job as a contract programmer and later
working at Memorrecks. But then she landed what is sort
(09:16):
of like the big job, like nailing the big account
in her life, which is getting a job at Xerox
pallow Alto Research Center, which was a massively huge deal. Again,
like she does, Lynn Conway just starts kicking ass professionally,
just like she had done at IBM before being fired
for being trans. During this time, she had many of
(09:37):
her biggest accomplishments. Her work completely revolutionized how microchips were designed.
Lynn Conway is sometimes called the hidden Hand for her
work because so much of her work led to the
tech revolution in the nineteen eighties and again is the
reason why we had things like personal computers and smartphones.
But even while accomplishing all of these massively important and
(09:58):
lasting innovations, she could didn't really own them because of
her identity. In a piece that she wrote for The
Huffington Post, Conway describes her stealth mode phase in life,
where she just kind of purposely stayed behind the scenes
despite creating these big innovations that literally changed the world.
During this time, Lynn Conway's trans identity was not public knowledge.
(10:18):
She only disclosed this to close friends, HR administrators and
security clearance administrators. She purposely kind of made herself scarce
and always was sure to stay behind the scenes, hence
that nickname the hidden Hand, and that meant that a
lot of her accomplishments and innovations, even while they were huge,
also went unnoticed. She has talked about this time in
(10:39):
her life as kind of feeling like a Cold War spy, saying,
you have to operate at a pretty high level pretty quickly,
or else you'll get exposed and then you're a traitor
to the whole institution, she told The Independent. But at
the same time, you have to be kind of affable
and not attract attention. You can't get angry or show fear.
So she wasn't really able to be her full self
(11:00):
at work, even as she was contributing to all of
these historic, lasting innovations and technological developments. But she couldn't
even really be herself and own those developments. And honestly,
this is a dynamic that is bad for all of
us because we end up truly not knowing our own history,
you know. Transphobia almost kept us from having a full
(11:20):
accounting of this important tech history Conway's contribution started becoming
made public almost by accident. So in nineteen ninety nine,
a computer historian began investigating her early innovations at IBM,
which tipped her off that other people were actually taking
credit for her work at IBM, and she wanted to
correct the record, but in order to do so, she
(11:42):
would need to open up about her identity and explain
why somebody with a different name had made all of
these big contributions and that they were out there saying
that they were actually hers. She wanted to clear up
this confusion, so she ended up telling this computer historian
and then quietly adding a section to her website with
the headline gender Transition. And this decision is what really
(12:03):
sparked the next chapter of her life as an advocate
for trans rights. So something that I love about Lyn
Conway's legacy is that after this point in her life,
she becomes this vocal advocate for other trans people in tech.
She has given financial support and assistance to many transwomen
going through transition, and she also has been an advocate
(12:24):
for employment protections for trans folks. And she was doing this,
you know, continuing this legacy of trying to make improvements
for other trans folks in tech pretty shortly before she died.
The kind of advocacy that she's done for trans folks
in tech has a lasting impact even today. In twenty thirteen,
Conway and Leandravicki of the University of North Carolina successfully
(12:46):
lobbied the Board of Directors at the Institute of Electrical
and Electronics Engineers, which is essentially like a code of
ethics for the engineering profession to include trans folks, which
impacts the world's largest engineering professional society. Conway's website also
served as a beacon for trans folks. According to The Independent,
for years her personal website was one of the few
(13:07):
places you could find clear, detailed, unprejudiced information about the
experience of being trans and the process of transition, as
well as striking examples of how trans people could find
lasting happiness and success. The Independent spoke to a woman
named Rebecca, a fifty one year old government worker in Colorado,
who was quoted as saying, it was the early two thousands.
(13:27):
My relationship with my girlfriend was falling apart. I was
having a hard time containing the feelings I had when
I was younger about the need to transition. Her site
wasn't the first one I found, but when I did
find it, it opened up a whole new world to me,
and I knew I wasn't alone. So Lynn Conway is
basically this world changing technological badass. So I think we
(13:48):
can all agree that IBM really messed up by firing
her because she was trans and after fifty years of
silence on this issue, in twenty twenty October, IBM invited
staff to an event that they called tech Trailblazer and
transgender pioneery Lynn Conway in conversation with Diane Gearson. Gearson
(14:09):
was IBM's senior vice president of Human Resources. The event
starts with a formal apology to Lynn Conway for her
transphobic firing fifty two years earlier. Conway was struggling to
hold back tears. Not only did IBM apologize, but they
also recognized her immense contributions to IBM's work that had
gone unattributed. Darie O'Gill, director of IBM Research, presented Lynn
(14:33):
Conway with a Lifetime Achievement Award, given to individuals who
have changed the world through tech innovations, and gil noted
that Lynn's extraordinary technical achievements helped define the modern computing industry,
and that she paid the way for how we design
and make computing ships today, and that she forever changed
microelectronic devices and people's lives. This is really important. IBM
(14:55):
acknowledged that after Conway was fired back in nineteen sixty eight,
that her research still aided IBM successes. In nineteen sixty five,
Lynn created the architectural Level Advanced Computing System one simulator
and invented a method that led to the development of
a superscalar computer. This dynamic instruction schedule invention was later
used at computer chips, greatly improving their performance. And none
(15:18):
of this would be possible without Lynn Conway, and these
continued contributions just went unacknowledged for decades because of bias.
More after a.
Speaker 2 (15:31):
Quick break, let's get right back into it.
Speaker 1 (15:46):
So when I first read about this ceremony that IBM
had acknowledging her contributions and apologizing for her firing, you know,
it's easy to read this and be kind of cynical
and be like, well, they're just doing that to get
good press. Like this was back in twenty twenty when
we were having a lot of those kinds of conversations,
But it sounds like to Lynn, this really meant a lot.
(16:07):
So I don't want to take anything away from that
of the event, Lynn Conway said, instead of just being
a resolution of what had happened to me in nineteen
sixty eight, it became a heartfelt group celebration of how
far we've come since then. And I guess I'm just
really happy that Lynn Conway got to have that official
apology on their record, have it be acknowledged by the
(16:30):
company that did her dirty decades earlier, that she was
an innovator that helped them to have future success, even
after they fired her so cruelly because of her identity. Like,
I'm so happy that they did not wait to do
that after her death, that they did that in a
way that could really include her while she was here,
you know. Of the apology, Conway said that it brought
(16:51):
closure to a really dark period in her life that
being fired kicked off. She said, quote even better, as
I've made friend after friend among today's ibmers, It's felt
like I was coming home home to an IBM that's
also come very far since nineteen sixty eight. In lin
Conway's later years, she did a two year stint working
(17:11):
on machine intelligence at the Department of Defense. After that,
she retired from working in tech and went into teaching.
She became an Associate dean for instruction and Instructional Technology
at the University of Michigan in nineteen eighty five, where
she worked until retiring in nineteen ninety eight. So after
retiring from teaching in ninety eight, it honestly sounds like
she spent her time after that just enjoying a really
(17:35):
beautiful life. She was married to Charlie Rodgers. She had
two children, four grandchildren, and six great grandchildren. Before her death,
she lived on twenty four beautiful acres of meadow marsh
and woodlands and rural Michigan, where her and her husband
spent their time exploring and playing in the outdoors. And
she was still engaging in activism around trans writes right
(17:55):
up until her death. And I'm so pleased that she
got to enjoy such a full, rich life, because trans
people deserve to live full lives that account for their
contributions and brilliance, regardless of where they are on that journey.
A big part of Lynn Conway's personal journey was about
her transition and trans folks deserve to live full lives
(18:15):
that account for their contributions and brilliant regardless of where
they are on a personal journey of transition. You know,
transition means many different things to many different people. It
can mean personal or medical or legal steps, things like
just telling one's friends or families or coworkers using a
different name, establishing pronouns, dressing a certain way, or changing
(18:38):
your name on a legal documents, which, as we've discussed,
can be prohibitively expensive for many people, and trans folks
deserve to live full lives even if they are not
able to take those steps the way that Lynn Conway did.
I'm really happy and grateful that Conway had that connection
to doctor Benjamin who could help her navigate transition. But
(18:58):
not everyone has the resources, access or support. And I
think Lynn Conway's story is a good example of how
living history it's all around us, and that we can't
let sexist, racist, and transphobic systems erase the accomplishments of
marginalized people. Because there's a version of this story where
we don't know about Lynn Conway's legacy and how she
(19:22):
contributed to all of our lives. So when I found
out about Lyn Conway and her story. I almost felt
kind of personally negligent that this was somebody who had
accomplished so much, who had basically given us technology that
I use every day today, whose name and story I
didn't even know about. And it really allowed me to
see the ways that bias can obscure the stories of
(19:44):
traditionally marginalized people, even if you're someone who was actively
trying to see those stories like undertold or overlooked stories
and technology are obviously my jam and I didn't know
her story, so part of me wanted to really write
this personal wrong by doing everything I could to make
sure that more people knew Lynn Conway's name and knew
(20:08):
her story and knew what she had given all of us.
And I wanted people to know that while she was
still alive. So I have talked about Lynn Conway's story
on several different podcasts. Maybe you've heard some of them.
And something that I loved about making those podcasts about
her life was getting to the end where I feel
like in a lot of stories, who hear about her
(20:28):
death or something like that, and getting to instead say
Lynn Conway is still very much alive. You can follow
Lynn Conway on Twitter, where she's very active, you know,
getting to really honor her while she was here. And
a funny thing is is that I know that she
actually got to hear some of those podcasts because she
got in touch with me before her death. In April
(20:49):
of twenty twenty three, after one of those podcasts aired,
she sent me a LinkedIn message saying, a friend just
shared the wonderful podcast you posted in January twenty twenty two. Wow,
you captured it ever so coolly. I'd really enjoy connecting
on LinkedIn for the long term so I can follow
your adventures as you and all your friends work to
tune up this messed up world. All the best, Linn.
(21:10):
It was such a sweet, affirming message of hope and resilience.
And again, I think it shows that LGBTQ history isn't
just something happening long ago. It's happening right now, right here,
all around us. And if there's someone whose legacy you
want to honor, you don't have to wait until they're
no longer here to do that. You can honor their present.
(21:33):
In what is believed to be her last interview with
The Independent, Lynn looked back on her legacy, saying I
think a lot of us trans people are living more interesting,
more fun lives than most people. It's our secret. We're
highly empowered in ways that people may not understand because
of the joyfulness we feel in having been able to
do what we do in spite of the difficulties and
(21:54):
find a place in society where we actually have joy
in just living. Conway's death was announced on Tuesday by
the University of Michigan, which said that she passed away
on June ninth, twenty twenty four. Michael Hiltick, a columnist
for the Los Angeles Times who was a friend of
Lynn for twenty five years, said that she was the
bravest person that he ever knew. IBM also honored her
(22:15):
legacy after death, saying, during a truly impressive life, Lynn
Conway broke down barriers for the trans community and pushed
the limits of technology through revolutionary work that is still
impacting our lives to this day. IBM Chief Human Resources
Officer Nicol Lamreau said this in a statement to Axios.
We are humbled by her continuous examples of grace and
her advocacy for others. Honestly thinking about IBM, I am
(22:40):
so glad that they righted their historic wrong in firing
Conway for being trans. I mean, there's a reality where
they never took accountability and probably would not have been
able to acknowledge that they had this brilliant mind making
all of these historic contributions for them, you know. Or
maybe they would have announced it in a statement after
she died. And if they had not apologized in twenty
(23:01):
twenty and acknowledged this, what would that have looked like?
I imagine either they would have to keep quiet or
risk people really calling them out on social media being like, yeah,
don't try to give her flowers now, and y'all fired
her and never apologized for it. So I am glad
that they made that apology because it sounds like that
allowed for them to adequately honor her legacy in her
(23:23):
death in a way that I don't think they would
have been able to do had they never apologized. Lynn
Conway's story is one of resilience and also a story
of how things like transphobia harm trans people and stifle
tech innovation. You know how many trans technologists are being
shut out of education and jobs because of bias today,
and how many generations of role models in tech are
(23:45):
we missing out on I'm so glad that Lynn Conway
was a light that other folks could look to in
terms of being able to imagine the kinds of lives
and futures that are possible. Lynn Conway didn't just have
the ability to imagine new technologies that didn't yet exist,
but new realities and new futures too. Lynn lived to
be eighty six and there were probably times where she
(24:07):
thought she would not get to have a full, rich
future that she got to enjoy. And I want that
for everybody, all of our trans siblings, to get to
be able to dream about a full color future that
you also get to experience. As Lynn put it herself
in her piece for huff Post. Bottom line, if you
want to change the future, start living like you're already there.
(24:34):
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Hello at tengodi dot com. You can also find transcripts
for today's episode at teng goody dot com. There Are
No Girls on the Internet was created by me bridget Come.
It's a production of iHeartRadio and Unbossed Creative edited by
(24:55):
Joey Pat Jonathan Strickland as our executive producer. Tari Harrison
is our producer and sound engineer. Michael Almado is our
contributing producer. I'm your host, bridget Todd. If you want
to help us grow, rate and review us on Apple Podcasts.
For more podcasts from iHeartRadio, check out the iHeartRadio app,
Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts
There Are No Girls on the Internet, as a production
of iHeartRadio and Unbossed Creative. I'm Bridget Toad and this
is there Are No Girls on the Internet. This is
There No Girls on the Internet, where we explore the
intersection of identity, technology and the Internet and Happy Pride Months.
(00:25):
Pride is a great time to be thinking about all
the different LGBTQ people, past, present, and future who have
been beacons of the vastness of what is possible for
our communities. And that is one of the reasons why
I really wanted to spend this time honoring computer scientist
Lynn Conway. To me, Lynn Conway really represents all three past, present,
(00:47):
and the future. Now. I have talked about Lynn's story
across various podcasts over the last few years, and what
strikes me is that a lot of those conversations were
about her past, but we also got to celebrate her
present and she was still alive. And I am a
big believer in giving people their flowers while they are
still here to smell them. And so now I am
(01:08):
left wondering about what her legacy means for the future.
And that's because Lynn Conway passed away this week from
a heart condition. At the age of eighty six, Lynn
Conway literally changed the world. All of us owe her
a debt. If you've ever used a smartphone or an iPhone,
you literally have Linn Conway to thank for that, and
her contributions were almost overlooked and were devalued. Specifically because
(01:32):
of her identity. Lynn Conway had a big hand in
contributing to the modern day internet and smartphones, and honestly
because of good old fashioned transphobia, her contributions were almost
overlooked completely even though she changed the world. Conway was
born in nineteen thirty eight and assigned male at birth,
but from a very early age, Lynn Conway knew that
(01:54):
there was more to her story as it pertains to gender.
Her mom was studying anthropology at Columbia, and Lynn, as
a child would flip through her mom's textbooks looking for
answers telling Michigan engineering news. In a really lovely profile
of her life that Will linked to in the show
notes quote, it seemed like people in other cultures had
found different ways to deal with what I knew I
(02:14):
was feeling, But then that became scrambled with the thought
that what I was feeling was that I was gay,
but nobody ever talked about those things. When Lynn was fourteen,
she read a news story about former Army private Christine Jorgensen,
who was known for being the first person in the
United States to publicly announce a gender transition. When Conway
saw this, she knew immediately what she wanted to do. Now,
(02:38):
keep in mind it was the fifties, and given what
we know about how narrowly society was dealing with and
talking about gender and identity in the fifties and sixties,
you have to wonder, you know, what was Conway's coming
of age and her journey really like, Conway initially tried
to transition while studying at MIT in the nineteen fifties.
She began taking hormones on her own and asked a
(03:00):
friend in the medical school at MIT if he could
help her find a doctor who could actually help her transition. Unfortunately,
that friend kind of sold her out. That friend took
her to a dean who told her that if she
did not stop taking hormones, she could be put in
a mental institution. Fear of being institutionalized or arrested was
(03:21):
a huge concern for Lynn Conway because being trans was
commonly strongly associated with being mentally ill or criminal behavior.
If you were openly trans you could end up institutionalized
or even arrested in some places, which looking forward to today,
it's one of the reasons why when people try to
equate transness with being mentally ill or criminal behavior, you know,
(03:44):
it's just more of the same, and it's just that
much more sad and infuriating that those are still things
that transphobes evoke to this day. So after this disappointing
turn of events for Lynn at MIT, she kind of
put transitioning at the back of her mind. She got married,
she became a parent, and she started working at IBM.
At this time in her life, she kind of seemed
(04:05):
to have a picture perfect life from the outside. That is,
you know, she was making major professional moves and innovations
and computing design at IBM, which at the time was
the seventh largest corporation in the entire world. While she
was at IBM, by all accounts, she was kicking ass.
She invented a hardware protocol that enabled the out of
(04:26):
order command processing that most computers still rely on to
this day. But all of this was put in jeopardy
because of transphobia. That would alter the trajectory of her life.
Speaker 2 (04:41):
Let's take a quick break.
Speaker 1 (04:53):
At her back. So, even though Conway had kind of
put the idea of transitioning the back of her mind
during this phase of her life, she kept learning about it.
She learned about the pioneering gender transition work of doctor
Harry Benjamin, an endocrinologist and sexologist known for his clinical
work with trans people, and decided I have to work
(05:14):
with him. So what's kind of heartbreaking about all of
this is that, according to this profile in Michigan Engineering,
Conway and her then spouse had worked out like a
pretty solid plan together for how conway transitioning would work.
Their plan was that they would get a divorce and
that Conway would start working with doctor Benjamin to transition.
Conway would pay for child support from her IBM salary
(05:36):
and stay in the children's lives. They actually even worked
out what the children would call her, which was they
would call her aunt. And according to a really compelling
Forbes piece by Jeremy Alessandri, Conway's immediate family and IBM's
divisional management were actually pretty accepting and supportive of this
at first. However, when IBM's corporate medical director learned that
(05:59):
Conway was planning to try transition in nineteen sixty eight.
He told CEO Thomas J. Watson Junior, who fired Conway,
to avoid the public embarrassment of employing a trans woman.
So this moment, you know, getting fired from your big
important job that you are kicking ass at and losing
the support of your employer began a downward spiral in
(06:19):
Conway's life that was completely destabilizing. She had a divorce
from her spouse while also losing her source of income,
which made it that much more difficult. California's social services
even tried to keep her away from her children, and
Conway's ex spouse decided that she could not have any
contact with the children because she was worried that if
Conway was actually in the kid's life, they would be
(06:42):
risking having those kids removed by the state. At the time,
Conway's kids were just babies, two years old and four
years old. This was absolutely devastating for Lynn Conway. She
recalls that poured me up. Let me tell you, the
hardest part of the whole thing was that I felt
like mom to them, She told Michigan Engineering. Lynn knew
(07:03):
this was going to be a tough process, and she
relied on lessons that she had learned from a lifetime
love of the outdoors and outdoor adventures like canoeing and
rock climbing to steady herself for the challenges to come.
As she described it, now, I had a plan to
get across the river. I could see the steps I'd
have to take to make it. I could see the
dangers and how to protect against them. The only problem
was I didn't know where I'd end up on the
(07:25):
other side. So even though it cost her her family,
her career, and her kids, she continued to work with
doctor Benjamin to transition. It was not an easy road,
as a lot of trans folks will tell you. The logistics,
you know, things like changing your name, getting new identification
and paperwork can be a big part of navigating trans identity,
(07:47):
you know, just establishing yourself so that you can work
and earn an income, have a bank account, and get
a place to live. Conway was dealing with all of
this decades ago. But even today this process is complicated
and sometimes prohibitively expensive, and sadly, today a lot of
trans folks do not have the support or resources to
navigate it. According to the National Transgender Discrimination Survey, only
(08:09):
one fifth of trans people who have transitioned have been
able to update all of their IDs and records, and
one third haven't been able to update any of their
ideas and records. So it is a real problem with
a lot of barriers. Luckily, Lynn was able to use
connections that doctor Benjamin had in Oakland to get this
navigated quickly, which was really important for her because she's
(08:31):
written that she wanted to avoid suspicion because that suspicion
could quickly turn unsafe. Conway wrote, you were an undocumented
alien from Mars. You don't have a birth certificate. How
are you going to get a job? This was the sixties.
You could think of it like being a spy in
a foreign country. If you were found out, you'd be
dealt with immediately, if not by the police, then by
people on the streets. So it's probably pretty clear that
(08:55):
why after transitioning, Conway would go into what she has
called the stealth phase of her career. So it's nineteen
sixty nine. Conway has changed her name and she's hiding
her gender identity and starting to look for work and computing,
eventually finding a job as a contract programmer and later
working at Memorrecks. But then she landed what is sort
(09:16):
of like the big job, like nailing the big account
in her life, which is getting a job at Xerox
pallow Alto Research Center, which was a massively huge deal. Again,
like she does, Lynn Conway just starts kicking ass professionally,
just like she had done at IBM before being fired
for being trans. During this time, she had many of
(09:37):
her biggest accomplishments. Her work completely revolutionized how microchips were designed.
Lynn Conway is sometimes called the hidden Hand for her
work because so much of her work led to the
tech revolution in the nineteen eighties and again is the
reason why we had things like personal computers and smartphones.
But even while accomplishing all of these massively important and
(09:58):
lasting innovations, she could didn't really own them because of
her identity. In a piece that she wrote for The
Huffington Post, Conway describes her stealth mode phase in life,
where she just kind of purposely stayed behind the scenes
despite creating these big innovations that literally changed the world.
During this time, Lynn Conway's trans identity was not public knowledge.
(10:18):
She only disclosed this to close friends, HR administrators and
security clearance administrators. She purposely kind of made herself scarce
and always was sure to stay behind the scenes, hence
that nickname the hidden Hand, and that meant that a
lot of her accomplishments and innovations, even while they were huge,
also went unnoticed. She has talked about this time in
(10:39):
her life as kind of feeling like a Cold War spy, saying,
you have to operate at a pretty high level pretty quickly,
or else you'll get exposed and then you're a traitor
to the whole institution, she told The Independent. But at
the same time, you have to be kind of affable
and not attract attention. You can't get angry or show fear.
So she wasn't really able to be her full self
(11:00):
at work, even as she was contributing to all of
these historic, lasting innovations and technological developments. But she couldn't
even really be herself and own those developments. And honestly,
this is a dynamic that is bad for all of
us because we end up truly not knowing our own history,
you know. Transphobia almost kept us from having a full
(11:20):
accounting of this important tech history Conway's contribution started becoming
made public almost by accident. So in nineteen ninety nine,
a computer historian began investigating her early innovations at IBM,
which tipped her off that other people were actually taking
credit for her work at IBM, and she wanted to
correct the record, but in order to do so, she
(11:42):
would need to open up about her identity and explain
why somebody with a different name had made all of
these big contributions and that they were out there saying
that they were actually hers. She wanted to clear up
this confusion, so she ended up telling this computer historian
and then quietly adding a section to her website with
the headline gender Transition. And this decision is what really
(12:03):
sparked the next chapter of her life as an advocate
for trans rights. So something that I love about Lyn
Conway's legacy is that after this point in her life,
she becomes this vocal advocate for other trans people in tech.
She has given financial support and assistance to many transwomen
going through transition, and she also has been an advocate
(12:24):
for employment protections for trans folks. And she was doing this,
you know, continuing this legacy of trying to make improvements
for other trans folks in tech pretty shortly before she died.
The kind of advocacy that she's done for trans folks
in tech has a lasting impact even today. In twenty thirteen,
Conway and Leandravicki of the University of North Carolina successfully
(12:46):
lobbied the Board of Directors at the Institute of Electrical
and Electronics Engineers, which is essentially like a code of
ethics for the engineering profession to include trans folks, which
impacts the world's largest engineering professional society. Conway's website also
served as a beacon for trans folks. According to The Independent,
for years her personal website was one of the few
(13:07):
places you could find clear, detailed, unprejudiced information about the
experience of being trans and the process of transition, as
well as striking examples of how trans people could find
lasting happiness and success. The Independent spoke to a woman
named Rebecca, a fifty one year old government worker in Colorado,
who was quoted as saying, it was the early two thousands.
(13:27):
My relationship with my girlfriend was falling apart. I was
having a hard time containing the feelings I had when
I was younger about the need to transition. Her site
wasn't the first one I found, but when I did
find it, it opened up a whole new world to me,
and I knew I wasn't alone. So Lynn Conway is
basically this world changing technological badass. So I think we
(13:48):
can all agree that IBM really messed up by firing
her because she was trans and after fifty years of
silence on this issue, in twenty twenty October, IBM invited
staff to an event that they called tech Trailblazer and
transgender pioneery Lynn Conway in conversation with Diane Gearson. Gearson
(14:09):
was IBM's senior vice president of Human Resources. The event
starts with a formal apology to Lynn Conway for her
transphobic firing fifty two years earlier. Conway was struggling to
hold back tears. Not only did IBM apologize, but they
also recognized her immense contributions to IBM's work that had
gone unattributed. Darie O'Gill, director of IBM Research, presented Lynn
(14:33):
Conway with a Lifetime Achievement Award, given to individuals who
have changed the world through tech innovations, and gil noted
that Lynn's extraordinary technical achievements helped define the modern computing industry,
and that she paid the way for how we design
and make computing ships today, and that she forever changed
microelectronic devices and people's lives. This is really important. IBM
(14:55):
acknowledged that after Conway was fired back in nineteen sixty eight,
that her research still aided IBM successes. In nineteen sixty five,
Lynn created the architectural Level Advanced Computing System one simulator
and invented a method that led to the development of
a superscalar computer. This dynamic instruction schedule invention was later
used at computer chips, greatly improving their performance. And none
(15:18):
of this would be possible without Lynn Conway, and these
continued contributions just went unacknowledged for decades because of bias.
More after a.
Speaker 2 (15:31):
Quick break, let's get right back into it.
Speaker 1 (15:46):
So when I first read about this ceremony that IBM
had acknowledging her contributions and apologizing for her firing, you know,
it's easy to read this and be kind of cynical
and be like, well, they're just doing that to get
good press. Like this was back in twenty twenty when
we were having a lot of those kinds of conversations,
But it sounds like to Lynn, this really meant a lot.
(16:07):
So I don't want to take anything away from that
of the event, Lynn Conway said, instead of just being
a resolution of what had happened to me in nineteen
sixty eight, it became a heartfelt group celebration of how
far we've come since then. And I guess I'm just
really happy that Lynn Conway got to have that official
apology on their record, have it be acknowledged by the
(16:30):
company that did her dirty decades earlier, that she was
an innovator that helped them to have future success, even
after they fired her so cruelly because of her identity. Like,
I'm so happy that they did not wait to do
that after her death, that they did that in a
way that could really include her while she was here,
you know. Of the apology, Conway said that it brought
(16:51):
closure to a really dark period in her life that
being fired kicked off. She said, quote even better, as
I've made friend after friend among today's ibmers, It's felt
like I was coming home home to an IBM that's
also come very far since nineteen sixty eight. In lin
Conway's later years, she did a two year stint working
(17:11):
on machine intelligence at the Department of Defense. After that,
she retired from working in tech and went into teaching.
She became an Associate dean for instruction and Instructional Technology
at the University of Michigan in nineteen eighty five, where
she worked until retiring in nineteen ninety eight. So after
retiring from teaching in ninety eight, it honestly sounds like
she spent her time after that just enjoying a really
(17:35):
beautiful life. She was married to Charlie Rodgers. She had
two children, four grandchildren, and six great grandchildren. Before her death,
she lived on twenty four beautiful acres of meadow marsh
and woodlands and rural Michigan, where her and her husband
spent their time exploring and playing in the outdoors. And
she was still engaging in activism around trans writes right
(17:55):
up until her death. And I'm so pleased that she
got to enjoy such a full, rich life, because trans
people deserve to live full lives that account for their
contributions and brilliance, regardless of where they are on that journey.
A big part of Lynn Conway's personal journey was about
her transition and trans folks deserve to live full lives
(18:15):
that account for their contributions and brilliant regardless of where
they are on a personal journey of transition. You know,
transition means many different things to many different people. It
can mean personal or medical or legal steps, things like
just telling one's friends or families or coworkers using a
different name, establishing pronouns, dressing a certain way, or changing
(18:38):
your name on a legal documents, which, as we've discussed,
can be prohibitively expensive for many people, and trans folks
deserve to live full lives even if they are not
able to take those steps the way that Lynn Conway did.
I'm really happy and grateful that Conway had that connection
to doctor Benjamin who could help her navigate transition. But
(18:58):
not everyone has the resources, access or support. And I
think Lynn Conway's story is a good example of how
living history it's all around us, and that we can't
let sexist, racist, and transphobic systems erase the accomplishments of
marginalized people. Because there's a version of this story where
we don't know about Lynn Conway's legacy and how she
(19:22):
contributed to all of our lives. So when I found
out about Lyn Conway and her story. I almost felt
kind of personally negligent that this was somebody who had
accomplished so much, who had basically given us technology that
I use every day today, whose name and story I
didn't even know about. And it really allowed me to
see the ways that bias can obscure the stories of
(19:44):
traditionally marginalized people, even if you're someone who was actively
trying to see those stories like undertold or overlooked stories
and technology are obviously my jam and I didn't know
her story, so part of me wanted to really write
this personal wrong by doing everything I could to make
sure that more people knew Lynn Conway's name and knew
(20:08):
her story and knew what she had given all of us.
And I wanted people to know that while she was
still alive. So I have talked about Lynn Conway's story
on several different podcasts. Maybe you've heard some of them.
And something that I loved about making those podcasts about
her life was getting to the end where I feel
like in a lot of stories, who hear about her
(20:28):
death or something like that, and getting to instead say
Lynn Conway is still very much alive. You can follow
Lynn Conway on Twitter, where she's very active, you know,
getting to really honor her while she was here. And
a funny thing is is that I know that she
actually got to hear some of those podcasts because she
got in touch with me before her death. In April
(20:49):
of twenty twenty three, after one of those podcasts aired,
she sent me a LinkedIn message saying, a friend just
shared the wonderful podcast you posted in January twenty twenty two. Wow,
you captured it ever so coolly. I'd really enjoy connecting
on LinkedIn for the long term so I can follow
your adventures as you and all your friends work to
tune up this messed up world. All the best, Linn.
(21:10):
It was such a sweet, affirming message of hope and resilience.
And again, I think it shows that LGBTQ history isn't
just something happening long ago. It's happening right now, right here,
all around us. And if there's someone whose legacy you
want to honor, you don't have to wait until they're
no longer here to do that. You can honor their present.
(21:33):
In what is believed to be her last interview with
The Independent, Lynn looked back on her legacy, saying I
think a lot of us trans people are living more interesting,
more fun lives than most people. It's our secret. We're
highly empowered in ways that people may not understand because
of the joyfulness we feel in having been able to
do what we do in spite of the difficulties and
(21:54):
find a place in society where we actually have joy
in just living. Conway's death was announced on Tuesday by
the University of Michigan, which said that she passed away
on June ninth, twenty twenty four. Michael Hiltick, a columnist
for the Los Angeles Times who was a friend of
Lynn for twenty five years, said that she was the
bravest person that he ever knew. IBM also honored her
(22:15):
legacy after death, saying, during a truly impressive life, Lynn
Conway broke down barriers for the trans community and pushed
the limits of technology through revolutionary work that is still
impacting our lives to this day. IBM Chief Human Resources
Officer Nicol Lamreau said this in a statement to Axios.
We are humbled by her continuous examples of grace and
her advocacy for others. Honestly thinking about IBM, I am
(22:40):
so glad that they righted their historic wrong in firing
Conway for being trans. I mean, there's a reality where
they never took accountability and probably would not have been
able to acknowledge that they had this brilliant mind making
all of these historic contributions for them, you know. Or
maybe they would have announced it in a statement after
she died. And if they had not apologized in twenty
(23:01):
twenty and acknowledged this, what would that have looked like?
I imagine either they would have to keep quiet or
risk people really calling them out on social media being like, yeah,
don't try to give her flowers now, and y'all fired
her and never apologized for it. So I am glad
that they made that apology because it sounds like that
allowed for them to adequately honor her legacy in her
(23:23):
death in a way that I don't think they would
have been able to do had they never apologized. Lynn
Conway's story is one of resilience and also a story
of how things like transphobia harm trans people and stifle
tech innovation. You know how many trans technologists are being
shut out of education and jobs because of bias today,
and how many generations of role models in tech are
(23:45):
we missing out on I'm so glad that Lynn Conway
was a light that other folks could look to in
terms of being able to imagine the kinds of lives
and futures that are possible. Lynn Conway didn't just have
the ability to imagine new technologies that didn't yet exist,
but new realities and new futures too. Lynn lived to
be eighty six and there were probably times where she
(24:07):
thought she would not get to have a full, rich
future that she got to enjoy. And I want that
for everybody, all of our trans siblings, to get to
be able to dream about a full color future that
you also get to experience. As Lynn put it herself
in her piece for huff Post. Bottom line, if you
want to change the future, start living like you're already there.
(24:34):
If you're looking for ways to support the show, check
out our March store at tenggodi dot com slash store.
Got a story about an interesting thing in tech, or
just want to say hi, You can reach us at
Hello at tengodi dot com. You can also find transcripts
for today's episode at teng goody dot com. There Are
No Girls on the Internet was created by me bridget Come.
It's a production of iHeartRadio and Unbossed Creative edited by
(24:55):
Joey Pat Jonathan Strickland as our executive producer. Tari Harrison
is our producer and sound engineer. Michael Almado is our
contributing producer. I'm your host, bridget Todd. If you want
to help us grow, rate and review us on Apple Podcasts.
For more podcasts from iHeartRadio, check out the iHeartRadio app,
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