As a trans woman; semi-professional musician, producer; audio engineer, and for whom Stanley Kubrick is my favourite artist of any medium, Wendy Carlos is one of the single greatest inspirations of my life.
I can’t personally imagine the struggle she went through all that time ago; having the courage to be herself when even today it’s been a personal struggle.
Gems like her really only come around every once in a while.
Lynn Conway is another woman I look up to. The trans women who lived between 1950 and 1980 and still managed to advance their careers impress me, and I do my best to emulate them.
> Upon completing her transition in 1968, Conway took a new name and identity, and restarted her career in what she called "stealth-mode". (From https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lynn_Conway)
She managed to have groundbreaking impact in two disconnected careers after restarting from scratch!
Achieving something while struggling with gender dysphoria (as many trans people do) is overcoming adversity, which is the exact opposite of privilege.
If you've never experienced the sort of depersonalization and disconnection from our embodied selves that many of us trans people have, you have no clue how difficult it can be to do anything at all.
"Transgender workers report unemployment at twice the rate of the population as a whole (14% vs. 7% at the time the workers were surveyed)." "More than four in 10 transgender people (44%) who are currently working are underemployed." "Transgender workers are nearly four times more likely than the population as a whole to have a household income of under $10,000 (15% vs. 4% at the time the workers were surveyed)." https://www.thetaskforce.org/transgender-workers-at-greater-...
"Almost half of transgender people are unemployed, a survey by the Think-tank for Action on Social Change has found. Among the 51 per cent cent who had jobs, many settled for dismal salaries, the group’s research showed." https://www.thetimes.co.uk/article/half-of-transgender-peopl...
"Trans Pulse Canada found that 24 percent of trans people have an annual income under $15,000, while 24 percent have an income between $15,000 and $30,000. With a poverty line of individual income at $25,920, almost half of trans people live either below the poverty line, or very close to it." https://xtramagazine.com/health/trans-health-canada-health-i...
I can’t personally imagine the struggle she went through all that time ago; having the courage to be herself when even today it’s been a personal struggle.
Gems like her really only come around every once in a while.