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I have no control over those ads that appear at this web-site. The sponsored visual presentations are not mine. Thus, I am reluctant to post pictures, memes, or images here at this page, they can become lost amongst the advertising.
Here’s how you can read this Post without unwanted ads: Select All, Copy, then Paste to Notepad or other text application.
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DRAFT … in progress … done.
‘Lynn Conway’
(15 Jun 2024)
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Dear Reader:
Go to the home page of this web-site. There at the top of that page is the listing of Trans Pioneers – true Pioneers and Heroes of Our Trans Community. Not some celebrity who came along five or 10 years ago to make an egotistical splash and then insult us with their anti-Trans political ideology. Nope. Honest Trans people who clearly made a positive effect for all – the Trans Community, the nation, the world.
People of the Trans Community who could be your friend.
I feel fortunate to have been a contemporary since the 1950s of those Pioneers of the Trans Community.
Our Trans Community lost a major Pioneer last week.
My first sense of Lynn was 2007. I came upon her web-site and read the various Trans experience personal accounts:
(https://ai.eecs.umich.edu/people/conway/conway.html).
Looking back, my initial knowledge was her Trans work, it was not til 2016 when my Baan Siri friend Madi brought me aware of Lynn’s computer and electronics expertise.
I feel honoured that she welcomed me amongst her social media ‘friends’, well, about 3500 social media ‘Friends”.
– Sharon
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You don’t need my blathering.
Allow me to share these items written by Lynn herself and by people who actually knew her personally.
– Sharon
Immediate Resources:
1.
Lynn’s web-site. I hope that the university will continue to operate this.
– Sharon
(https://ai.eecs.umich.edu/people/conway/conway.html)
Lynn Conway
Computer Scientist
Electrical Engineer
Innovator
Systems Architect
Research Leader
Engineering Educator
Adventurer & Visioneer
About This Website
This webpage embeds an evolving visual ‘hash-tableau’ in which linked-text/images dive-down into the ‘Entangled’ lattices, labyrinths, and vortices of techno-social-tracks left by the explorer-adventurers involved. Entering anywhere, you can find and follow their tracks and reverse-visioneer and meta-explore their techno-social space-time journeys. Occasionally resurfacing, you can rest/leave for a while, then return and look for other interesting places to dive down into. Once you get the gist of diving into and then surfing the outsides of these waves, you’ll begin noticing the embedded tracks that you yourself have been leaving out there in techno-social space-time. Before long, you’ll be looking for team-mates to train with, gear-up with, explore and trail-blaze new routes upon incoming techno-social waves on your own! Such is life, eh? – LC
My initial goal for this website was to illuminate and normalize the issues of gender identity and the processes of gender transition. This project began in the year 2000, as I struggled to “come out” about my past to my research colleagues. I wanted to tell in my own words the story of my gender transition from male to female three decades earlier, in 1968, and then of being outed by circumstances 31 years later, in 1999, while living quietly and successfully in ‘stealth mode’.
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(https://youtu.be/7kJ-N54cQu4)
Michigan Engineering
8 Oct 2014
Lynn Conway reflects on her gender Transition
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(https://www.facebook.com/groups/transgenderhealth/permalink/8118990211478667/)
International Transgender Health
Kelley Winters
11 Jun 2024
I’m heartbroken to share that our communities have lost one of our most brilliant minds and courageous champions in the struggle for Trans and Gender Diverse civil justice and health care access. Professor Lynn Conway passed last Sunday afternoon, with her husband Charles by her side. For a quarter-century, Lynn has been my friend, mentor, advisor, and community sister. And for twenty years before that, before we met and before I knew that she was my sister, Lynn’s example and body of work had an enormous influence on my career. I was in the second generation of “very large scale integration” microelectronics researchers and designers. Lynn was the only woman of the pioneering first generation. Her work was foundational to computer and communication technologies that we rely on every day. My life is far richer for having known her and been inspired by her.
Here is a photo from happier days in 2007, behind my old home in the Colorado Rockies. Sending hugs and condolences to Charles, her wide circle of friends and colleagues, and all whose lives were touched by her work and example.
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A lovely remembrance by our mutual friend Dallas Denny.
Copied from Dallas Denny via Sophie Lynne
I’m sad to relay this news.
Lynn Conway has passed.
Lynn Ann Conway
January 2, 1938 – June 9, 2024
Prepared by Dallas Denny
June 10, 2024
An Obituary
Lynn Ann Conway was an electrical engineer, computer scientist, and an activist on behalf of transgender people. She died in Jackson, Michigan on Sunday, June 9, 2024 of heart trouble.
Lynn was born in Mount Vernon, New York on January 2, 1938. She was a reserved but exceptionally bright student who attended MIT but did not graduate due a difficult and ultimately unsuccessful gender transition. She continuing her education at Columbia University, where she earned B.S. and M.S.E.E. degrees in 1962 and 1963, respectively. In 1994, she accepted a position as a researcher at IBM’s facility in Yorktown Heights, New York. There, she worked with others on an advanced supercomputer project. She was fired in 1968 when it became known that she intended to transition. IBM later apologized for that action.
That same year, Lynn consulted Dr. Harry Benjamin and became a patient. She completed her gender transition, also in 1968. In a divorce, she was denied the right to visit with her minor children.
Using her new name, Lynn continued work as a computer research scientist, working at Computer Applications, Inc., Memorex, and, Xerox PARC, and DARPA. In 1985, she became a professor of electrical engineering and computer science at the University of Michigan and, simultaneously, Associate Dean of Engineering.
Lynn’s post-transition accomplishments were foundational in the develop of computers, but her pre-transition work was not credited to her until 1998, when a researcher who was examining IBM’s three decades old supercomputer project discovered that a scientist he had been unable to identity had become known as Lynn Conway. For Lynn, this resulted in a difficult decision to come out as transgender. She has since been hailed not only for her myriad post-transition accomplishments, but for her earlier work. She is famous for, among many other things, launching the Mead-Conway VLSI chip design revolution.
Lynn was well-known in transgender circles for her accomplishments and for her website, on which she told her personal story and worked to advance the rights of transgender people. She is perhaps best known in this regard for her criticism of Ray Blanchard’s theory of autogynephilia and a failed lawsuit, with Dierdre McCloskey, against J. Michael Bailey author of The Man Who Would be Queen.
In 2002, Lynn married her long-time boyfriend Charles Rogers. They lived on a 24-acre wooded property in rural Michigan.
Sandra Samons, a therapist in Ann Arbor and a long-time friend of Lynn’s, asked me tonight to share the following information:
Lynn Conway died yesterday, June 9, 2024
Her husband Charlie Rogers can be contacted at cwrogers@voyager.net
Arrangements are still incomplete, but Lynn Conway’s funeral will be held at: Sherwood Funeral Home, 1109 Norvell Rd., Grass Lake, MI 49240 (Tel. 517-522-3000, URL http://www.sherwoodfh.com.
Service will be at 1 pm Saturday, June 22 with visitation the night before from 4-7 pm.
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JUNE 11, 2024
The legacy of Lynn Conway, chip design pioneer and transgender-rights advocate
Conway, professor emerita of electrical engineering and computer science, has died.
NICOLE CASAL MOORE
Lynn Conway, who quietly revolutionized microchip design and boldly blazed a trail for transgender individuals, died on June 9. She was 86 years old.
“Why not question everything?” was one of her guiding philosophies, the professor emerita of electrical engineering and computer science told The Michigan Engineer magazine in 2014.
Conway has been called the hidden hand in the 1970s chip design movement that made today’s consumer electronics and personal computing devices possible.
She joined Michigan Engineering’s faculty in 1985 as associate dean for instruction and instructional technology. While she retired from U-M in 1998, Conway remained an influential part of the community—advising faculty members, speaking at events and even having lunch with students on occasion.
As a young adult, Conway was one of the first Americans to undergo a modern gender transition, and in her retirement she became an outspoken advocate for transgender rights and women in STEM fields.
“Lynn Conway’s example of engineering impact and personal courage has been a great source of inspiration for me and countless others. I was privileged to know her as a colleague, and honored to hold a collegiate professorship in her name,” said Michael Wellman, the Lynn A. Conway Collegiate Professor and the Richard H. Orenstein Division Chair of Computer Science & Engineering.
Faculty members remember her “friendly, sage advice in difficult times,” her positive outlook, warm encouragement, creativity and “singular vision.” Conway described herself in 2014 as a perennial beginner, never afraid to take on learning how to do new things.
She had no experience with microchips before she developed a simpler, scalable method for designing them with Cal Tech Professor Carver Mead at the renowned Xerox Palo Alto Research Center (PARC) in the mid 1970s. Their textbook and the courses it spawned standardized and democratized a process that was once the sole purview of specialists at large, private semiconductor firms. Thousands of students were soon trained during what came to be known as the Mead-Conway revolution in Very Large Scale Integration (VLSI). VLSI refers to the process of arranging increasingly smaller and more plentiful transistors on an integrated circuit.
Conway’s work also provided an important framework to advance the field of Electronic Design Automation, which develops tools and software to design and verify VLSI circuits.
“My field would not exist without Lynn Conway,” said Valeria Bertacco, the Mary Lou Dorf Collegiate Professor of Computer Science and Engineering and U-M Vice Provost for Engaged Learning. “Chips used to be designed by drawing them with paper and pencil like an architect’s blueprints in the pre-digital era. Conway’s work developed algorithms that enabled our field to use software to arrange millions, and later billions, of transistors on a chip.”
© 2024 The Regents of the University of Michigan Ann Arbor, MI 48109 USA
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(https://www.forbes.com/sites/jeremyalicandri/2020/11/18/ibm-apologizes-for-firing-computer-pioneer/)
Forbes
IBM apologises for firing computer pioneer for being Trans … 52 years later
FORBES
IBM Apologizes For Firing Computer Pioneer For Being Transgender…52 Years Later
Jeremy Alicandri
Contributor
Auto industry consultant, consumer advocate, partner @ Alicandri LLP
Nov 18, 2020, 02:08pm EST
Updated Nov 20, 2020, 02:19pm EST
Lynn Conway receives an honorary doctorate and gives the Winter
DARYL MARSHKE, MICHIGAN PHOTOGRAPHY
You’ve likely never heard of 82-year-old computer scientist Lynn Conway, but her discoveries power your smartphones and computers. Her research led to successful startups in Silicon Valley, supported national defense, and powered the internet.
Long before becoming a highly respected professor at the University of Michigan, Conway was a young researcher with IBM. It was there, on August 29, 1968, that IBM’s CEO fired her for reasons that are illegal today. Nearly 52 years later, in an act that defines its present-day culture, IBM apologized and sought forgiveness.
On January 2, 1938, Lynn Conway’s life began in Mount Vernon, NY. With a reported IQ of 155, Conway was an exceptional and inquisitive child who loved math and science during her teens. She went on to study physics at MIT and earned her bachelor’s and master’s degrees in electrical engineering at Columbia University’s Engineering School.
In 1964, Conway joined IBM Research, where she made major innovations in computer design, ensuring a promising career in the international conglomerate (IBM was the 7th largest corporation in the world at the time). Recently married and with two young daughters, she lived a seemingly perfect life. But Conway faced a profound existential challenge: she had been born as a boy.
Having struggled with her gender identity since childhood, Conway had made a failed attempt at transition in the late 1950s while a student at MIT. In 1967, she learned of the pioneering gender-transition work of Manhattan-based doctor Harry Benjamin (a partner of famed sexologist Alfred Kinsey). Conway sought Dr. Benjamin’s help and began the life-changing transition from male to female.
Despite cultural clichés at that time, both her immediate family and IBM’s divisional management were accepting and supportive. However, when IBM’s Corporate Medical Director learned of her plans in 1968, he alerted CEO Thomas J. Watson, Jr., who fired Conway to avoid the public embarrassment of employing a transwoman.
The termination turned Conway’s life upside down. The loss of income and looming inability to support her family shattered their plans for a quiet divorce with visitation rights. To worsen matters, California’s Social Services threatened her with a restraining order if she ever attempted to see her children.
Conway was devastated by these unexpected events. While she was coherent and decisive in recognizing that she was born into the wrong gender, society and the government were treating her as if she were a mentally deranged outlaw. “I’d begun a deeply dangerous traverse and wasn’t sure I’d ever get across,” says Conway.
Even so, she pressed on with her social, hormonal, and surgical transition, and began seeking employment as a woman in a secret new identity in early 1969. First finding work as a contract programmer, Conway rapidly ascended the career ladder. By 1971, she was working as a computer architect at Memorex Corporation. Her rising reputation led to her recruitment by the (soon to become famous) Xerox Palo Alto Research Center (PARC) in 1973.
In 1977, while leading PARC research into enhanced methods for computer chip design, Conway began co-authoring a book on the methods with Carver Mead, a professor at Caltech. On sabbatical from PARC as a visiting professor at MIT, she created and taught an experimental course on Very Large Scale Integrated (VLSI) chip design based on the draft of her textbook with Mead.
Lynn Conway at Xerox PARC, 1977LYNN CONWAY
Published in 1980, Introduction to VLSI Systems set down fundamental principles for future microprocessor chip design in the era of Moore’s Law. Conway’s VLSI research at Xerox PARC and her textbook and teachings at MIT created standards that fueled many of the Silicon Valley startups in the 1980s.
“. . . Among [Conway’s] many foundational contributions to computer architecture are the scalable digital design rules she invented for silicon chip design and the ARPANET e-commerce infrastructure she developed for rapid chip prototyping – thereby launching a paradigmatic revolution in microchip design and manufacturing . . .,” explains John L. Anderson, President of the National Academy of Engineering (NAE).
In 1983, the Department of Defense recruited Conway to join the Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency (DARPA) as Assistant Director for Strategic Computing. Spearheading DoD research into machine intelligence technology, she received the Secretary of Defense’s Meritorious Achievement Award from Secretary Caspar Weinberger for her work.
1997: Lynn Conway converses with Brig. Gen. [+]
LYNN CONWAY / USAF
Conway then brought her skills and insatiable intellectual curiosity to academia. In 1985, the University of Michigan hired her as a professor of computer science and electrical engineering and associate dean of its engineering school. She spent 15 years with the university, helping its engineering college become one of the foremost in the nation, retiring in 1999 as professor emerita of electrical engineering and computer science.
For over 30 years, from 1968 onward, Conway never revealed she was transgender (excepting close friends, relatives, HR offices, and security-clearance agencies). However, in 1999, when computer historians began investigating her early innovations at IBM, she foresaw the inevitability of public outing. With the support of her husband Charlie (they’ve been together since 1987) she chose to reveal her gender history online, including the reason she had left IBM.
Many of Conway’s colleagues were amazed by the disclosure, never suspecting Conway was transgender. In 2000, her former Michigan colleague Charles Vest, by then President of MIT and a member of IBM’s board of directors, relayed the story to Louis V. Gerstner, IBM’s CEO at the time. Gerstner was appalled at what IBM had done but was unable to bring about a resolution. IBM avoided the issue for the next two decades.
Freed from fear of exposure, Conway gained a strong voice in transgender activism, regularly sharing the story of overcoming adversity after IBM’s firing. She jokingly says, “From the 1970s to 1999, I was recognized as breaking the gender barrier in the computer science field as a woman, but in 2000, it became the transgender barrier I was breaking.”
Since then, she has won awards from many advocacy organizations, including being named one of the “Stonewall 40 trans heroes” by the ICS and NGLTF in 2009. She was also recognized by Time Magazine in 2014 as one of the most influential LGBTQ figures in American Culture.
In recent years, the scope of Conway’s scientific and engineering contributions also began gaining wider retrospective attention. “Since I didn’t #LookLikeAnEngineer, few people caught on to what I was really doing back in the 70s and 80s,” says Conway.
As NAE President John L. Anderson says, “NAE member Lynn Conway is not only a revolutionary pioneer in the design of VLSI systems . . . But just as important, Lynn has been very brave in telling her own story, and her perseverance has been a reminder to society that it should not be blind to the innovations of women, people of color, or others who don’t fit long outdated – but unfortunately, persistent – perceptions of what an engineer looks like.”
As awareness spread, so did recognition. Conway received the prestigious James Clerk Maxwell Medal of the IEEE and the Royal Society of Edinburgh in 2015 and was awarded honorary doctorates from Illinois Institute of Technology (2014), University of Victoria (2016), and the University of Michigan, Ann Arbor (2018), where she also gave the Winter 2018 Commencement Address.
But while IBM knew of its key role in the Conway saga, the company remained silent. That all changed in August 2020.
When writing an article on LGBTQ diversity in the automotive industry, I included Conway’s story as an example of the costly consequences to employers that fail to promote an inclusive culture. I then reached out to IBM to learn if its stance had changed after 52 years.
To my surprise, IBM admitted regrets and responsibility for Conway’s firing, stating, “We deeply regret the hardship Lynn encountered.” The company also explained that it was in communication with Conway for a formal resolution, which came two months later.
In early October, IBM emailed its employees an invitation to attend a virtual event titled “Tech Trailblazer and Transgender Pioneer Lynn Conway in conversation with Diane Gherson.” Gherson was IBM’s Senior Vice President of Human Resources and reported directly to its CEO. The details were sparse, with many IBM employees believing the event would be a discussion of Conway’s discoveries in computer science. Over 1,200 IBM employees attended online.
The event began with a heartfelt apology from Gherson for Conway’s firing. “Diane delivered the apology with such grace, sincerity, and humility. Lynn was visibly moved,” explained Anna Nguyen, an Advisory Software Engineer with IBM who attended the session but does not speak on behalf of IBM. “I struggled to hold back tears,” says Conway.
Arvind Krishna, IBM’s CEO, and other senior executives had determined that Conway should be recognized and awarded “for her lifetime body of technical achievements, both during her time at IBM and throughout her career.”
Dario Gil, Director of IBM Research, who revealed the award during the online event, says, “Lynn was recently awarded the rare IBM Lifetime Achievement Award, given to individuals who have changed the world through technology inventions. Lynn’s extraordinary technical achievements helped define the modern computing industry. She paved the way for how we design and make computing chips today — and forever changed microelectronics, devices, and people’s lives.”
The company also acknowledged that after Conway’s departure in 1968, her research aided its own success. “In 1965 Lynn created the architectural level Advanced Computing System-1 simulator and invented a method that led to the development of a superscalar computer. This dynamic instruction scheduling invention was later used in computer chips, greatly improving their performance,” a spokesperson stated.
The virtual event, along with the accompanying apology and award, was widely acclaimed by those in attendance. “Instead of just being a resolution of what had happened in 1968, it became a heartfelt group celebration of how far we’ve all come since then,” says Conway.
Lynn Conway rechanneled discrimination, hatred, and ignorance into a positive force that benefited others. She advanced technology, protected our country, and most notably made our society more inclusive. Conway admits IBM’s firing forced her to become a stronger person than she thought was possible. And its apology, while 52 years in the making, provided her with closure to an event that shaped her life.
As for IBM, its apology to Conway is a testament to its current culture. IBM engineer Anna Nguyen explains, “I was already proud of present-day IBM…The very public apology to Lynn made me even prouder.”
As for everyone else, Conway’s impact on society and technology makes her a hero for us all.
Check out my website.
IBM apologizes for firing computer pioneer over 50 years ago.
© 2020 Forbes Media LLC.
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Lynn Conway
10 Apr 2018
Smashing Stigmas and Becoming Real!
“The transgender models making stock photos more human”
(https://mashable.com/feature/transgender-stock-photos-adobe#jOv0vpq8Eaq2)
The transgender models making stock photos more human
by Rachel Thompson
A woman stands in her bra and knickers with a tube of mascara clasped between her hands. At first glance, this photo looks like a snapshot of an average morning routine. But, look closely, and you’ll see the words “HUMAN BEING” tattooed across her knuckles.
These two words are how the subject, along with 10 other models, want the world to see them in a brand new collection of stock imagery that’s just been made available on Adobe Stock.
This human being’s name is Lulu Love. She’s 23. She’s transgender. She’s transitioning. And, she’s now a stock photo model.
Love’s photo was taken by photographer Bex Day as part of a project to capture the UK’s transgender community in an effort to smash stereotypes and stigmas.
Stephanie Griffiths, 57.
ADOBE STOCK
Michaela Robertson, 54.
ADOBE STOCK
Day doesn’t believe there is enough online imagery of the trans community, and, the little imagery that does exist doesn’t show them as human beings, she says.
“I don’t think trans stock imagery is varied enough, and it doesn’t represent them as people, really. It’s quite narrow-minded,” says Day.
The majority of the photos in the project(opens in a new tab) feature trans women with the exception of one male model. But, despite this, Adobe says the project aims to celebrate all trans people.
Her concerns are echoed by LGBTQ organisation Stonewall. A spokesperson told Mashable that the organisation has “faced real challenges when looking for stock pictures of trans and non-binary people.”
“Most image sites fall back on photos of the trans flag or of general Pride pictures, and there’s only a handful of images of actual people,” the spokesperson said. Faced with a dearth of representative imagery, Stonewall recently commissioned a photoshoot to ensure its resources and guides “reflect and represent” trans and non-binary people.
Alyha Love, 25.
Adobe Stock
Day’s close-up portraits show the subjects in their natural habitats—be that inside their own homes, or outside in the towns in which they live.
Day says she wanted the models to feel “at home and at ease.” Day says she worked in a collaborative way with the models, showing them the photos as she went along, and confirming they were happy with the photos before she sent them to Adobe.
Day hopes that the photos will challenge stereotypes that people might have about the trans community, and encourage them to view trans people as human beings. “I hope that the images will reduce social stigma and just really show them as people,” says Day.
Alexander Norton, 27.
ADOBE STOCK
Misti, 49 ½.
ADOBE STOCK
Model Alexander Norton, who’s currently transitioning, hopes the photographs will give visibility to trans people in all stages of their transitions. “I never really found a representation of myself in the community I grew up in,” she says. “By showing people who I am, I show others that you can be yourself if you feel this way.”
“I want to shine light on the dark days of people who are lost within their gender issues and find no way out,” says Norton.
Norton says that stock imagery currently focuses on just one aspect of transgender people’s experience—their “lost youth.” She says that given that “trans women and girls never had the chance to be girls,” some images tend to focus on this notion of trans people’s lost youth.
“I never really found a representation of myself in the community I grew up in.”
ALEXANDER NORTON
“The representation of trans people in stock images is based on women who could never express the woman inside. The boy who could never be, until they felt safe enough to be themselves,” says Norton. She says this is a totally valid experience to represent in images, but it’s also far from the only aspect of trans people’s experience.
“We have an opportunity to show trans people in all forms, and stock images can help push this idea out to more people without needing personal contact,” says Norton.
Dani St James, 25.
Adobe Stock.
Dani St James, 25, was apprehensive about having her photo taken because she knew Day’s work is “very stripped back and honest.” “I always like to see myself fully glammed up and posing, but I’ve been shot in a similar style before and I think it’s healthy to see yourself without the editing sometimes,” she says.
St James says representing trans people in stock images is a “tricky one,” because if you’re a ‘passable’ trans person, you might not necessarily be “distinctly trans looking.” “Trans people are literally everywhere, and very often we are unassuming, and we go unnoticed,” she says. Her hope is that when people look at her photo, they view her as “normal.” “I hope they have an inner monologue of “oh, she looks normal!”” she says. “It’s fun to be fabulous on occasion, but given the journey that I (and all trans people) have been on, normal is an achievement.”
“I can only hope they see a girl, and a girl who fought hard to be who she is.”
ALEXANDER NORTON(OPENS IN A NEW TAB)
Norton hopes people looking at her photo can see her as she sees herself. She says it’s hard for her to truly gauge how people see her. “I can leave the house and feel cute but the hope I have is not the representation people see. People see what they want to see when they digest your image,” says Norton.
“I can only hope they see a girl, and a girl who fought hard to be who she is,” says Norton. “I would love if people saw me and say, ‘aww, they look like a really nice person.’”
“That’s all we can hope for, being seen as we see ourselves.”
Author
Rachel Thompson
UK Editor
Anne-Marie Tomchak
Social Good Editor
Matt Petronzio
With special thanks to
Elisha Hartwig
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Immediate Resources:
1.
(https://www.erininthemorning.com/p/trans-woman-and-computer-pioneer)
Erin In The Morning
Read in the Substack app
Trans Woman And Computer Pioneer Lynn Conway Passed Away: Her Legacy Is Worth Knowing
If you are reading this on your mobile phone, you owe it to Lynn Conway, a transgender woman who pioneered the microchip technology that makes it possible. She passed away at age 86.
ERIN REED
JUN 12, 2024
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Left: Lynn Conway, Wikimedia Commons, Charles Rogers – Right: Lynn Conway – Margaret Moulton
Yesterday, news broke that transgender woman and computer pioneer Lynn Conway passed away at the age of 86. Her story is nothing short of remarkable. Conway helped pioneer early supercomputers at IBM but was fired after she transitioned. She went “stealth” and had to rebuild her career from the ground up, starting as a contract programmer at Xerox with “no experience.” Then, she did it all over again, pioneering VLSI—a groundbreaking technology that allowed for microchips to be made small enough to fit in your pocket, paving the way for smartphones and personal computers. In 1999, she broke stealth, becoming an outspoken advocate for transgender people.
Conway first attempted to transition at MIT in 1957 at the age of 19 years old. At the time, the environment was not accepting enough for transgender people to do so. She would have faced enormous barriers to medical transition, as few doctors were knowledgeable enough to prescribe hormone therapy a the time. Like many transgender people seeing enormous barriers to care, she spent the following years closeted.
Eventually, she was hired by IBM where she helped develop the world’s fastest supercomputer at the time on the Advanced Computing System (ACS) project. The computer would become the first to use a “superscalar” design, which made it capable of performing several tasks at once, dramatically improving its performance and making it much faster than previous computers. Despite her pivotal role in the project, she was fired when she informed her employer that she wanted to transition.
What she did next is nothing short of remarkable. Realizing that as an openly transgender woman in 1968, few companies would hire her, she went “stealth” and pretended she had no significant prior experience in computers. She quickly advanced through the ranks and was hired by Xerox, where she famously developed VLSI, or Very Large Scale Integration. This groundbreaking technology allowed for thousands of transistors to be packed onto a single chip, revolutionizing electronics by making cell phones and modern computers possible through miniaturization and increased processing power.
Conway didn’t stop there. After gaining fame for her computer innovations, she came out in 1999 to advocate for transgender people. She was among the early critics of Dr. Kenneth Zucker, an anti-trans researcher still cited today by those working to ban gender-affirming care. Conway slammed Zucker for practicing “reparative therapy,” a euphemism for conversion therapy. Notably, Zucker’s research continues to make false claims that “80% of transgender kids desist from being trans,” numbers based on his clinic’s practices, which closely mirrored gay conversion therapy. That clinic has since been shut down over those practices.
Often, those opposed to transgender people paint a picture of gender transition as something new, unique, or unsustainable. Similarly, many who transition are told they cannot be successful as transgender individuals. Such claims are often weaponized by anti-trans activists like Matt Walsh, who once mockingly asked, “What exactly have ‘transgender Americans’ contributed?” Conway’s life was a resounding rebuke to these attacks. She attempted to transition at a young age in the 1950s, revolutionized computing twice from scratch, and made the cell phone Walsh likely used to post such a question possible.
Perhaps more importantly, Conway’s life gave transgender people another gift: a visible example that we can grow old, and a reminder that we have always been here. In a world where so many of us have had to hide in silence or stealth, where representation has been denied, and where we are told that our lives will be too dangerous to live, Conway proved that one can be trans and live a long, fulfilling, and proud life.
325 Likes
31 Restacks
27 Comments
Write a comment…
Tanya Laird
Forest Reflections
6 hrs ago
Liked by Erin Reed
I had the opportunity to interview her as part of a class project while working on a degree of mine. She was an amazing person to talk to and truly an inspiration.
2 replies by Erin Reed and others
Mainer
6 hrs ago
Liked by Erin Reed
Thank you for sharing this story, Erin. Lynn was a remarkable, beautiful, strong woman and had you not written this post, many people may not have known about her.
I love the last paragraph—a fitting reminder and perfect context. ❤️❤️❤️
25 more comments…
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© 2024 Erin Reed
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(https://youtu.be/JBRCo1KDX_o)
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There are multiple articles of Lynn that I previously posted here at this web-site.
– Sharon
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(https://slimandme.wordpress.com/2024/04/09/facebook-memories-9-apr-2024-lynn-conways-web-site/)
‘Lynn Conway’s Web-site’
09 Apr 2024
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‘Facebook Memories: 6 May 2024 – Lynn Conway / The Conversation: Vital Affirmation Of Trans People Through The Story Of Catherine McGregor’
(6 May 2024)
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‘Facebook Memories: 7 May 2024 – Lynn Conway: Trans Rights at New Hampshire’
(7 May 2024)
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‘Facebook Memories: 30 Jan 2024 – Lynn Conway: Channel News Asia’
30 Jan 2024
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2b.
I make frequent reference to Lynn’s University of Michigan web-site at many of my posts, notably the Trans and Transition page.
– Sharon
(https://slimandme.wordpress.com/practical-issues-of-trans-and-transition/)
‘Practical Issues Of Trans and Transition’
(23 Dec 2019)
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This is Crooked Drumpf’s Amerika.
(https://www.facebook.com/414507242439358/posts/732780587278687/)
DNC War Room
1 Sep 2020
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