Editorial: Supporting trans chemists for a stronger chemistry community

In this issue you’ll find two pieces that discuss what have become politicized topics: gender and sex. One describes scientists’ understanding of sex and genetics, while an opinion piece from R. Lee Penn and Argo Farlin argues that the American Chemical Society and wider chemistry community should do more to fully include transgender and nonbinary constituents.

As C&EN’s inbox often reflects, not everyone believes that a science publication should discuss gender. But if we are to report on the entire global chemistry enterprise, we need to reflect that in all its complexity. So matters of inclusion need to be discussed.

At the “WCC Celebrates Chemistry Beyond the Binary” symposium at the American Chemical Society Fall 2024 meeting, Paulette Vincent-Ruz from New Mexico State University presented a recent preprint—a study that has not yet been peer-reviewed—describing how transgender and nonbinary chemists have to balance their ambitions as chemists with their needs for safety and belonging.

The study describes how 10 trans scientists make decisions about how out in their professional lives they can be. They also decide where to attend graduate programs on the basis of factors that many cisgender people don’t need to consider as much, such as LGBTQ+ policies and the presence of a trans community. Balancing these considerations with their scientific careers forces trans scientists to make what the authors describe as “calculated tradeoffs.”

Trans scientists often have to make hard decisions when society doesn’t accommodate their identity as both a trans person and a scientist. In 2023, C&EN reporter Krystal Vasquez wrote about how scientific societies, including ACS, have to consider where they hold their conferences. Do they hold them in locations considering or passing anti-trans legislation? What would that mean for the safety of trans chemists? And if societies hold conferences in only locations that haven’t passed anti-trans laws, would that make the conference inaccessible for people who can’t travel?

When students choose not to attend college in a location that has proposed or passed anti-queer, including anti-trans, legislation, that institution misses out on their contributions, and the students already there miss out on having a colleague or even friend they can relate to. Factors as far reaching and authoritative as legislation aren’t the only considerations that trans and nonbinary chemists have to make. Some participants in Vincent-Ruz’s study said a lack of support for gender diversity played into their choice of graduate program. And very few of them had experience with a chemistry department actively supporting them.

Chemistry is not done in a vacuum. It’s done by people who are not just chemists but are part of a broader social context. When the chemistry community does not respect and fully include individual chemists, they may decide to leave the field, and all chemistry suffers from their absence. We lose out on valuable insight that trans and nonbinary scientists are uniquely positioned to provide, like the complicated and fascinating relationships between genetics, sex, and gender.

We should support trans and nonbinary chemists not just because of the science they do but because everybody deserves to be treated with dignity. At the “Beyond the Binary” symposium, the message was clear: the scientific community has a responsibility to do right by our trans colleagues. Support of and respect for gender diversity are requirements for a robust chemistry enterprise. It’s just obvious.

This editorial is the result of collective deliberation in C&EN. For this week’s editorial, the lead contributor is Sarah Braner.

Views expressed on this page are not necessarily those of ACS.