Our science does not exist in a vacuum.

Image description and context: Ruby Bridges—at the age of 6 years old—integrates a white-only school in 1960. She was the first African American to integrate a white-only school in the south—an act that required four U.S. Marshalls and additional protection from angry white mobs who protested the end of apartheid in the USA. Scientists at the time—predominantly white people due to legal apartheid and restrictions on which races could pursue education and certain jobs—would sooner send a satellite to space (1958) than see an end to Jim Crow/apartheid, which would continue for another 7 years until 1965. Even today, our society is still bound by the same racist structures, policies, and cultures that renders Black and Native Americans disproportionately vulnerable to racism, ableism, homophobia, transphobia, imperialism, colonialism, and gender discrimination.

Our collective history and present impacts who can afford to choose a career like science, who sees themselves reflected in science daily, and how science is conceptualized and carried out in predominantly white, western institutions. As scientists, this should be on the forefront of our minds while working in a field that has historically and currently abused the trust of many marginalized populations.

Manuscript Statement Affirming Transgender and Gender Non-conforming (TGNC) Identities, The Need to Not Conflate Sex and Gender, and Ethical Considerations for Scientists.

In an effort to be more explicit in my work, here is a sample statement from one of my manuscripts (in prep) about steroid hormones. Knowing the history of how science has been weaponized against many marginalized populations—in particular, Black and/or Native populations on a global scale—I am inspired by many others who have listed statements affirming that their science should not be used to exploit, marginalize, or deny human rights to anyone. Since I study steroid hormones, I wanted to be explicit about the ways in which far-right groups weaponize science against transgender and gender non-conforming (TGNC) people. Even though I am a neuroscientist, I have the capacity to read and digest information across fields and use critical thinking to integrate them into my work. Please read below for one example statement and consider adding your own to your work—especially if your field has dehumanized or denied rights to others (e.g., medical research and Tuskegee experiments, or gender affirming healthcare).

Statement Affirming TGNC Communities—a Black Queer Feminist Perspective

Our scientific endeavors and research do not exist in a vacuum. Historically, science and medicine have betrayed the trust of many—in particular, Black and/or Native people who faced forced sterilizations, illegal experimentation, stolen cells (e.g., HeLa cells), and other grotesque forms of scientific and medical abuse (e.g., Tuskegee experiments on African Americans) (Bajaj and Stanford, 2021; Green et al., 1997).

Currently, in the United States of America, our scientific work is routinely weaponized by foreign governments and/or far-right groups to vilify, target, and deny human rights to transgender and gender non-conforming (TGNC) people among many others. This is evident by the 557+ bills introduced in 2024 to limit healthcare, rights, and education for TGNC people (https://translegislation.com/). This is especially concerning given that the vast majority of TGNC violence most heavily burdens Black and/or Native TGNC individuals (Burke and Collins, 2023; Westbrook, 2023). We affirm that TGNC people exist, have always existed across many cultures, and we affirm that their identities are valid, period. We also argue that Black and Native TGNC people should be centered in our efforts for collective liberation due to historical and ongoing racial oppression that also does not exist separate from gender identity(s). From Black Queer Feminists scholars to religious prophets like Bahá’u’lláh, we affirm that centering our most marginalized—those who are “the pupil of the eye”—will ensure collective liberation for everyone by recognizing the interlocking systems of oppression that cannot be fought in isolation (Buck, 2018; Etter-Lewis & Thomas, 2006; Taylor, 2017).

We reject far right goals to politicize identities that have existed for thousands of years. We reject any science which serves to further eugenics research and intentionally or unintentionally limits the freedoms of our most marginalized populations—especially Black and/or Native TGNC people on a global scale. We affirm that sex and gender are not synonymous and that our field(s) sorely need additional education to prevent these costly mistakes, such as the use of gender—a human-specific construct—when discussing animal research (Garcia-Sifuentes and Maney, 2021; McLaughlin et al., 2023).

We acknowledge the barriers that disproportionately burden Black and Brown TGNC people and center them in our advocacy for collective liberation and a more socially just scientific field. We also reject that sex is binary; we instead follow the work of TGNC scientists and others who identify multiple sexual traits (e.g., chromosomal organization, hormone levels, gametes, gonads, etc.) that influence sex differences within and across species and sexes (Aghi et al., 2024; McLaughlin et al., 2023). These improvements to the way we conceptualize sex—a nonbinary, multivariate phenomenon—will serve to improve the precision of our scientific questions and medical discoveries.

Our perspectives are formed from a Black Queer Feminist perspective which posits that centering our most marginalized in any given society—in particular, Black and Native TGNC people—is one valuable method for ensuring everyone has improved outcomes rather than seeing improved outcomes primarily for those who are white, upper-caste, lighter-skinned, wealthy, and/or from global north countries. We condemn trickle-down justice or trickle-down economics—an antiquated, racist, and classist relic of the Reagan administration—which inevitably centers and serves white and lighter skinned individuals and/or class privileged people above Black and Brown working class, gender marginalized, disabled, queer, transgender, and/or poor people on a global scale.

References

  1. Aghi, K., Anderson, B. M., Castellano, B. M., Cunningham, A., Delano, M., Dickinson, E. S., ... & Weinberg, Z. Y. (2024). Rigorous science demands support of transgender scientists. Cell, 187(6), 1327-1334.

  2. Bajaj, S. S., & Stanford, F. C. (2021). Beyond Tuskegee - Vaccine Distrust and Everyday Racism. The New England journal of medicine, 384(5), e12. https://doi.org/10.1056/NEJMpv2035827

  3. Buck, C. (2018). The Bahá’í “Pupil of the Eye” Metaphor. The Bahá’í Faith and African American History: Creating Racial and Religious Diversity.

  4. Etter-Lewis, G., & Thomas, R. W. (Eds.). (2006). Lights of the Spirit: Historical Portraits of Black Bahá'ís in North America, 1898-2004. Baha'i Publishing Trust.

  5. Green, B. L., Maisiak, R., Wang, M. Q., Britt, M. F., & Ebeling, N. (1997). Participation in Health Education, Health Promotion, and Health Research by African Americans: Effects of the Tuskegee Syphilis Experiment. Journal of Health Education, 28(4), 196–201. https://doi.org/10.1080/10556699.1997.10603270

  6. McLaughlin, J. F., Brock, K. M., Gates, I., Pethkar, A., Piattoni, M., Rossi, A., & Lipshutz, S. E. (2023). Multivariate Models of Animal Sex: Breaking Binaries Leads to a Better Understanding of Ecology and Evolution. Integrative and comparative biology, 63(4), 891–906. https://doi.org/10.1093/icb/icad027

  7. Garcia-Sifuentes, Y., & Maney, D. L. (2021). Reporting and misreporting of sex differences in the biological sciences. eLife, 10, e70817. https://doi.org/10.7554/eLife.70817

  8. Taylor, K. Y. (Ed.). (2017). How we get free: Black feminism and the Combahee River Collective. Haymarket Books.

Additional Reading

  1. PERLA — an effort to better understand skin tone differences throughout the U.S. and Latinidad. Racism is both unique and similar across North and South America. Finally, researchers are beginning to ask questions about colorism throughout Latinidad and who is able to immigrate, get access to resources, and obtain positions of influence and power. Whiteness can be seen as a global social construct that exists everywhere there are Black or darker skinned people—from Asia to South America. https://perla.soc.ucsb.edu/about-perla

  2. “When Margins Become Centered: Black Queer Women in Front and Outside of the Classroom” PDF HERE.

McLaughlin et al., 2023

Massa, Aghi, and Hill, 2023

Garcia-Sifuentes and Maney, 2021

Other Great Statement Examples

An amazing example from McLaughlin et al. (2023) with an entire section in the manuscript titled, “The interplay of science and society”. Here is a powerful part of this section below in quotations:

“We recognize that TGNC and intersex people are valid regardless of the sexual diversity we find in nature. Human rights cannot be defined solely by biology—this is a prime example of the appeal to nature fallacy. However, opposition to the inclusion of TGNC and intersex people in society is often based in the language of biology. Especially in the United States, legislation targeting TGNC people is increasingly undergirded with the simplistic binary model of “biological” sex (such as OH HB454 §3129.02 2021, WV HB3293 §18–2-25d.b1 2021, MO SB22 §191.1720 2022, and TX HB672 88R §71.004.1A 2022). There is pressure for scientists to avoid making the politics of our work explicit, especially those of us who do not directly study social issues. However, our science is being weaponized to discriminate against marginalized groups (Ha et al. 2014). It is imperative that we biologists challenge the misuse and abuse of this language (Miyagi et al. 2021) and confront how our scientific models impact society (Bazzul and Sykes 2011). As biologists, it is our responsibility to dispel misconceptions and recognize the rich tapestry of diversity in nature.”

Another great example from the piece: “Deconstructing sex: Strategies for undoing binary thinking in neuroendocrinology and behavior”. A small but powerful snippet is below in quotations, and you can also read the full article here: DOI: https://doi.org/10.1016/j.yhbeh.2023.105441.

  1. “Where and how do gendered assumptions show up in my research?

Living in a deeply gendered social context means that we rely on gendered assumptions to make sense of our everyday world (West and Zimmerman, 1987). These gendered assumptions show up in our research as well. Consciously or otherwise, they inform decisions we make about how to design our studies, how we interpret data, and even what questions we think to ask in the first place (Almeling, 2020; Bleier, 1986; Epstein, 2009; Martin, 1991; Pape, 2020). For example, ideas that cast women (and, by extension, other female subjects) as distinctly “hormonal” or “hysterical” – and therefore more variable – undergird decisions to use only “male” subjects/specimens in experiments leaving “female” (and other) physiologies understudied (Shansky, 2019).

While it is impossible to completely eliminate bias from science (see, e.g., (Longino, 1990), we can minimize and mitigate the effects of gendered assumptions in our research through careful reflection and self-examination.”

Continued Reading

A fantastic read on the reporting and misreporting of sex differences in science literature. “Reporting and misreporting of sex differences in the biological sciences”. DOI: 10.7554/eLife.70817