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[gemini://republic.circumlunar.space/users/flexibeast/gemlog/2020-10-03.gmi](Response to thread that started here.)
CW r___ and r___ culture.
I love y'all AMAB ladies & enbies but I see strictly fewer, numerically, AFAB women on Gemini and Fedi and IRC. Non-zero, but fewer. Given the proportion of the population, that's saying a lot.
In most contexts the T population is among the most oppressed and it has become more so, the past few years, not less, as hating on TGD has become the new wedge issue that conservatives use to scaremonger against to get votes for their rich-get-richer politics, now that gay is finally legal.
I'm not trying to deny the horrors of daily life, how scary just going shopping or whatever can be for some of you peeps. Keep on keeping on, my darlings!
When it comes to nerdy stuff specifically (games, programming, Unix stuff), including the hobbyist part of STEM which is where I hang around (defined as neither academia nor workplace), however, that's like the last place I think this is a problem compared to AFAB women.
Men, yes, whether they are AMAB or AFAB guys, have it way easier in there than women (talking about all women). Mom taught me and my sister programming when we were young and it's still rough to be in these male-dominated spaces. Guys, I love you, but, sometimes it's not fun to be the only woman in a roomful of men.
Like, in Magic: the Gathering, an enby won a MQ/PT before a woman did!
As you yourself point out:
Research has shown that women and girls have to navigate a social
tension between being interested in STEM (Science, Technology,
Engineering and Mathematics) and being 'feminine', because STEM
fields are coded 'masculine'.
It seems to me that many (but not all!) AMAB women a have to a greater degree overcome this tension than (in general population much more numerous) AFAB women have. That's not to make light of any one individual's struggle with their gender identity or expression, with their role in society, with neurodiversity, or the interplay of any of the three.
Do NOT take this as me being aligned with the TERF or GC assholes, I'm not saying "go away". I'm saying please stay, please stay! But also bring in even more women, of all kinds of stripes, including AFAB, because it's rough to be AFAB in the world of nerdy things.
Feeling safe in hacker spaces, workshops, online communities while being ground down by patriarchy daily. I recognize TGD women and enbies as allies, not rivals, in this struggle, but it seems to me that your journeys are sometimes different (with the caveat that every individual is different). Going from having a nerdy identity/coding to adding a feminine identity, vs having a feminine identity/coding and adding a nerdy identity is different.
The friction is to a large degree from interfacing with men — for every 19 super nice guys there is this one guy who does rape jokes or defends rapists — and secondarily from other women, or maybe from losing connection to them. Going down into the dungeon of nerdery is… Not a self-evident step to take. ("Whaddayamean you don't want to be Instagram anymore? Aren't we friends?")
TL;DR:
Again, I realize that this struggle is an area where ALL women & enbies can ally up rather than fight each other, don't get me wrong.