I worked for / with Lynn at Xerox PARC from 1980 - 1982. She will be missed.
created in 2014 with 54 karma?? You should be posting much more - I am sure you have some great ideas to share with all of us.
Lynn Conway has died
301–310 of 429 posts
Re: Lynn Conway has died
#302Let this thread be a lesson that no matter how nice you are and no matter your achievements, as long as you are trans you can't even die in peace.
Re: Lynn Conway has died
#303Let this thread be a lesson that no matter how nice you are and no matter your achievements, as long as you are trans you can't even die in peace.
"Although she had hoped to be allowed to transition on the job, IBM fired Conway in 1968 after she revealed her intention to transition.[20] IBM apologized for this in 2020."
Good grief. Took them long enough.
Re: Lynn Conway has died
#304Earlier quoted context omitted.
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Trying to be serious and then post those as your sources is pretty funny.
The sources are dodgy. But so is the premise.
Gaolers are sadists, is well established. The large amount of rape in prisons is due to guards sadism, (not all guards, not all gaols). Trans prisoners are no harder to deal with than any other class, but bigotry...
Ditto for refuges. There are a lot of troubles around refuges, trouble from trans women is just another set of troubles.
Professional sports, and record keeping in sports does seem to have a reasonable objection, if you accept the premise of competitive sport. (I could hardly care less about competitive sport, but I recognise it is a problem for them). A small part of our society, and a special case. So what.
But bigotry, and a totally bizarre interference in other people's personal lives.
I really do not get it.
What fabulous work trans men and women are doing breaking down the arcane tyranny of gender that is a major fault line through our whole society.
Re: Lynn Conway has died
#305For those of you who are inclined to say "HackerNews doesn't deal with politics", I hope that Lynn's story reminds you that any work you do is intertwined with politics. While I appreciate that it's a difficult line to walk, to have productive and relevant political discussion in a forum like this, politics and social acceptance are a part of every aspect of our lives. Brilliant, kind, impactful people are kept from…
Anybody who conflates human rights as "politics" are someone I simply cannot respect A persons right to exist is not political (This isn't a dig at OP but it's worth restating)
A persons right to exist is not political.
There are however a bunch of things which is political like: Laws governing universal health care, laws governing minors rights to make decisions as minors, laws that makes distinctions between genders, cultural norms around bathrooms (which is mostly a stupid cost-cutting measure), and norms around cultural sports (which are fairly arbitrary).
Out of those, the first two should likely remain being political, while the two last ones should be resolved, and the middle one should just not exist.
Re: Lynn Conway has died
#306I worked for / with Lynn at Xerox PARC from 1980 - 1982. She will be missed.
Hi, Martin? I saw you speak at Ted Selker's NPUC conference at IBM Almaden while you were working at Netscape, and I'm old friends with your brother Paul from when he was at SGI, and I love the cool Graphica Obscura and data flow visual programming stuff he did. I remember Ted Nelson was kind of brusk with you at NPUC because he didn't approve of Netscape's approach to Hypertext of course, but it didn't seem personal, just his usual ranting about how he got it right and everybody else got it wrong. ;) So did both you and Paul work with Lynn Conway's student James Clark at PARC, Netscape and SGI, who Lynn taught VLSI design and who made the Geometry Engine, right? I'd love to hear any of your and Paul's stories from those amazing times of PARC, SGI, and Netscape, too!
Re: Lynn Conway has died
#307> Although she had hoped to be allowed to transition on the job, IBM fired Conway in 1968 after she revealed her intention to transition.[19] IBM apologized for this in 2020. Given that in 2012 there was an entire IEEE magazine issue dedicated to her career and contributions to the field which really brought awareness of all her contributions...it's disappointing it took IBM so long to apologize, especially given the…
Have worked with several trans folks at major legacy corps like IBM and while I'm sure there may have been rank-and-file issues, discrimination was not tolerated by mgmt in the latter 90s. My memory is IBM and HP added non-discrimination policies around that time.
>discrimination was not tolerated by mgmt in the latter 90s
Talk is cheap.
Re: Lynn Conway has died
#308Earlier quoted context omitted.
Incredible "The fact that I started a new career all over again, at the bottom of the ladder, after being fired by IBM and rejected by family and friends . . . may also give hope to others trapped in similar situations."
Thanks for calling that out, I'd like to read more about how that went. I'm considering what the best move for me is now, obviously with the terrible market and obscene competition, whether to try and leverage the amalgamation of skills I've built up and just push harder as a contractor, or pivot entirely down the meme path of trying trades. Being in her situation would perhaps be more wildly more difficult, but for…
If you’re changing your name and identity, don’t have a network, and can’t put any previous experience on your CV, I think that would absolutely qualify as a career restart today, even if you’re in the same broad industry and using many of the same skills.
Re: Lynn Conway has died
#309[deleted]
Re: Lynn Conway has died
#310RIP. A great reminder that great achievers tend to be idiosyncratic people, not necessarily "by the book, SAT 1600, GPA 4.0, Ivy League Plus" people.
We should all be thankful for her contributions and for those who preceded her who were similarly "abnormal" by the standards of their time.