Artwork by Sandbox Studio, Chicago

Out in physics
0 7 / 0 5 / 1 8 | By Amanda Solliday

LGBT+ scientists o er advice for promoting inclusivity in a guide written for the
physics and astronomy community.
Traveling to an important research conference or collaboration meeting is the kind
of experience that can help launch a scientist’s career. It’s also the kind of
experience that can be uniquely tense for someone from the lesbian, gay, bisexual,
transgender and queer community.

“These types of opportunities are central to a person’s development as a

scientist,” says Diana Parno, an assistant professor of physics at Carnegie Mellon
University. “But it can be especially stressful and fraught when you aren’t certain if
your identity is welcomed in a place.”

For years, Parno has witnessed people struggling for guidance on dealing with
these types of situations through an LGBT+ physicists email listserv. A
transgender graduate student is accepted to a summer school and wonders what
to do about a rooming situation: Are they expected to put down their birth gender?
If they put down their actual lived gender, will there be a problem if it is not listed on
their driver’s license? Will their identity cause a problem with roommates?

“If there is an issue, and they bring it up with the organizers, maybe they’ll be very
supportive, or maybe it will start a very poisonous gossip mill,” Parno says.

To make their fellow physicists aware of these situations and give them the tools
they need to prevent or manage them, a group of LGBT+ physicists came together
in 2014 to create a guidebook for the eld. An updated version
(https://arxiv.org/abs/1804.08406) was published in April. Parno worked on both
iterations.

The document includes best practices for physics institutions, as well as

individuals, interested in creating an inclusive environment for their LGBT+ co-
workers and students.

Monica Plisch, the director of education and diversity at the American Physical
Society, says she is unaware of any other resource like this guide at the
intersection of physics and the LGBT+ community.
One of the obstacles to LGBT+ inclusivity that Plisch sees in physics is a mindset
that physics research exists in a realm of objectivity, separate from other human
concerns. It doesn’t.

“Physics is fundamentally a human endeavor,” Plisch says. “Individuals need to be

well supported, or the physics won’t be as strong. We need to talk about inclusivity,
or we risk losing some of the best minds.”

A grassroots movement
The beginnings of the guide go back to 2010, when Elena Long, a graduate
student in physics, noticed there were no LGBT+ resources available within the
discipline. She began organizing informal gatherings of LGBT+ physicists at APS
meetings in search of community and support.

This grew into an LGBT+ physicists website (http://lgbtphysicists.org), launched in

2012. That same year, APS invited speakers and participants to share their
experiences as LGBT+ physicists at a session during their March meeting. More
than 100 people attended. (A summary of the session, “Gender and Sexual
Diversity Issues in Physics: The Audience Speaks
(https://arxiv.org/pdf/1206.4112.pdf),” is available on arXiv.)

The high level of participation underscored the critical need for these types of
discussions in physics, says Tanmoy Laskar, a Jansky postdoctoral fellow of
the National Radio Astronomy Observatory at the University of California, Berkeley
and co-editor of the guide. “Human beings are messy, nonlinear entities with
experiences accumulated over a lifetime,” he says. When complex people get
together to do complex science, which has its own demands, “then sometimes
things clash.”

Parno notes that one of the main takeaways from the APS session was that people
were hungry for support and inclusion within their academic departments. This
informed the initial planning for the guide. “We decided that the text would target
people at the department level, speci cally department chairs, who would like to
make sure that people are included but aren’t quite sure what the issues are or
what they should do.”

Meanwhile, APS organized a task force to gain a better understanding of barriers

to LGBT+ inclusion in the broader physics community. The group authored the
2016 “LGBT Climate in Physics Report
(https://www.aps.org/programs/lgbt/upload/LGBTClimateinPhysicsReport.pdf)”
based on a survey of more than 300 individuals.

When the APS posted its report to Facebook, the majority of the comments they
received expressed support, Plisch says. The negative comments sprinkled
among them had two general messages: “Why should certain people get special
attention?” and “Physics should only be about physics.”

But building a career in physics is about more than just understanding physics, as
the report documented, Plisch says. According to the report, feelings of exclusion
led one in three LGBT+ physicists surveyed to consider leaving a position.

APS has continued to host roundtable discussions at professional meetings

moderated by LGBT+ physicists to o er space to talk about these issues. Allies in
the physics community attend these discussions, as well.

“I’ve talked to many physicists who identify as straight or cisgender throughout

this process, and who really want to try and do right by their LGBT+ colleagues,”
Parno says. “I’ve been very impressed and heartened by that.”

Plisch says, “These e orts show what self-organized groups can do to change the
culture and practice of physics.”

A living guide
In 2016 Caltech undergraduate Adrian Ray Avalani went searching on the internet
for resources for LGBT+ academics like Elena Long had. Thanks to Long and the
others responsible for the APS guide, he found what he was looking for.
Ray Avalani decided to join the e ort. He took part in the update of the guide,
working primarily on sections about issues that transgender students face, such
as the best way to handle the need for a name or pronoun change. He gave advice
on how to notify a department and handle classroom dynamics.

“It surprised me how much better some departments can be at addressing these
concerns compared to others,” Ray Avalani says. “Some physics departments at
universities rely on some pretty outdated information.”

But the team of authors understands that guides like these can become outdated
fast. The year after the original APS LGBT+ guide was published, the Supreme
Court of the United States ruled that same-sex couples have a constitutional right
to marry.

“One of the most exciting things we were able to include in the second edition, or
rather exclude, was that we could strike everything about marriage laws being
di erent in di erent states,” Parno says. “That was tremendously exciting.”

In the next iteration of the guide, the authors would like to add the perspectives of
physicists working outside of academia—including those in industry and at
national labs—as well as physicists who are based outside of the United States.

“A guide like this is a living document,” Laskar says. “Culture changes, people
change, and laws change. Someday the resulting transformation will make guides
like this obsolete. The faster that happens, the better.”

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