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2 KATE FORBES “Do These Earrings Make Me Look Dumb?” Diversity, Privilege, and Heteronormative Perceptions of Competence within the Academy P ower and credibility are not evenly distributed in societies, and this includes the academy. I am a transsexual woman, an academic, and a scientist ; the disconnect between many of my personal and professional experiences is jarring. On the one hand, I’m a scientist—people are very willing to trust me as an expert on many topics. On the other, I don’t have the academic credentials to speak as an “expert” on gender, even when that gender is my own. The fields of women’s and gender studies are not universally open to trans perspectives on gender. However, cissexual gender theorists are not even the ultimate keepers of the gender orthodoxy. In many respects, that honor goes to medical professionals and, ironically for me, scientists. It is important to remember that not all scientists are equal; in my experience in the academy, there is an idealized vision of what a scientist should look like. Although this vision potentially puts me at a professional disadvantage, transsexuality is not necessarily the lone, or even largest, strike against me. Rather, like people in most professions, scientists perceive various personal traits (such as masculinity, to name one example) as signs of competence. Although the academy needs to progress in how it treats trans- and gender-nonconforming (henceforth, simply “trans*”) people, it simultaneously needs to address how it views feminine people and all individuals who do not mirror the dominant paradigm. That is, the academy needs to develop a critical lens into the ways that culturally grounded perceptions of competence create pressures to “cover.” My fellow ecologists spend a great deal of time addressing diversity as it applies to flora and fauna. I suggest that were the academy to devote similar amounts of thoughtful consideration to human diversity, it would be a different and better place. Gender in the Academy Like many trans* scholars, I have plenty to say about how the academy deals with gender. However, unlike many (perhaps most) of this volume’s contributors and readers, I am not trained as a social scientist or a humanist. For the past “Do These Earrings Make Me Look Dumb?” 35 decade, I have been a student and now a faculty member in the natural sciences. I even had a lab coat in my last office (although I have no idea how it got there). Knowledge of gender is not part of my professional credentials but a byproduct of my life. Because I am not a “gender professional,” I worry that, much like people outside higher education, I have very little say about how the academy deals with me and many of my friends. Mainstream social arenas extend a certain amount of privilege to me and other members of the academy, and we are glad to accept it. Professors get to lead discussions related to their expertise and, in some cases, indulge in telling the world “the way things are.” However, talent and motivation are not the only determinants of who accesses, completes, and facilitates higher education. Although it is hardly revolutionary to contemplate the connection between the academy and power, as an insecure thirty-something faculty member who just completed her Ph.D. dissertation, I find society’s sudden deference to my shiny new credentials disconcerting. I work at a diffuse, unorthodox institution where most students seek degrees in areas that have nothing to do with theoretical ecology, population biology, agriculture, entomology, or any other subject tangentially related to my thesis. I am the only faculty member in my building with credentials in science. Although my colleagues (many of whom are in similar situations) understand that I do not possess knowledge equivalent to dozens of departments at land-grant universities, the experience can still be a bit unnerving . Colleagues turn to me as someone with expertise in “science.” Students look to me as someone with an advanced degree, a professorship, and all the answers. Certainly, I do know something, just not as much as others might assume. The social life of a young scientist can be just as bizarre. Casual acquaintances expect me to be able to identify bird species I have never seen. Life-long gardeners ask for my advice on how to improve their harvests. I suppose I could make them a model, but I don’t think that’s what they are going for. In short, like many young faculty...

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