Want to read Slashdot from your mobile device? Point it at m.slashdot.org and keep reading!

 


Forgot your password?
Close
typodupeerror
×
Businesses IBM

IBM Apologizes For Firing Computer Pioneer For Being Transgender... 52 Years Later (forbes.com) 164

Posted by BeauHD from the past-vs-current-culture dept.
On August 29, 1968, IBM's CEO fired computer scientist and transgender pioneer Lynn Conway to avoid the public embarrassment of employing a transwoman. Nearly 52 years later, in an act that defines its present-day culture, IBM is apologizing and seeking forgiveness. Jeremy Alicandri writes via Forbes reports: On January 2, 1938, Lynn Conway's life began in Mount Vernon, NY. With a reported IQ of 155, Conway was an exceptional and inquisitive child who loved math and science during her teens. She went on to study physics at MIT and earned her bachelor's and master's degrees in electrical engineering at Columbia University's Engineering School. In 1964, Conway joined IBM Research, where she made major innovations in computer design, ensuring a promising career in the international conglomerate (IBM was the 7th largest corporation in the world at the time). Recently married and with two young daughters, she lived a seemingly perfect life. But Conway faced a profound existential challenge: she had been born as a boy.
[...]
[W]hile IBM knew of its key role in the Conway saga, the company remained silent. That all changed in August 2020. When writing an article on LGBTQ diversity in the automotive industry, I included Conway's story as an example of the costly consequences to employers that fail to promote an inclusive culture. I then reached out to IBM to learn if its stance had changed after 52 years. To my surprise, IBM admitted regrets and responsibility for Conway's firing, stating, "We deeply regret the hardship Lynn encountered." The company also explained that it was in communication with Conway for a formal resolution, which came two months later. Arvind Krishna, IBM's CEO, and other senior executives had determined that Conway should be recognized and awarded "for her lifetime body of technical achievements, both during her time at IBM and throughout her career."

Dario Gil, Director of IBM Research, who revealed the award during the online event, says, "Lynn was recently awarded the rare IBM Lifetime Achievement Award, given to individuals who have changed the world through technology inventions. Lynn's extraordinary technical achievements helped define the modern computing industry. She paved the way for how we design and make computing chips today -- and forever changed microelectronics, devices, and people's lives." The company also acknowledged that after Conway's departure in 1968, her research aided its own success. "In 1965 Lynn created the architectural level Advanced Computing System-1 simulator and invented a method that led to the development of a superscalar computer. This dynamic instruction scheduling invention was later used in computer chips, greatly improving their performance," a spokesperson stated.
This discussion has been archived. No new comments can be posted.

IBM Apologizes For Firing Computer Pioneer For Being Transgender... 52 Years Later More

IBM Apologizes For Firing Computer Pioneer For Being Transgender... 52 Years Later

Comments Filter:

  • Record mea culpa span (Score:3, Interesting)

    by Tablizer ( 95088 ) on Friday November 20, 2020 @07:04PM (#60748772) Journal

    Sometimes wisdom and humility just takes a while to kick in. [newscientist.com]

  • Defining "present day culture"? (Score:5, Insightful)

    by shabble ( 90296 ) <metnysr_slashdot@shabble.co.uk> on Friday November 20, 2020 @07:08PM (#60748788)

    IBM is apologizing and seeking forgiveness

    Now they just have to sort out not sacking the old (sorry - expensive) people [silicon.co.uk]...

  • IBM (Score:5, Funny)

    by PPH ( 736903 ) on Friday November 20, 2020 @07:12PM (#60748798)

    The same company that gave us the Boy George [wikipedia.org] connector.

  • I know several trans people (Score:5)

    by Major_Disorder ( 5019363 ) on Friday November 20, 2020 @07:17PM (#60748810)
    As someone who has several friends who happen to be trans, It is rather nice of IBM to do, but what took so damn long?

    • As someone who has several friends who happen to be trans, It is rather nice of IBM to do, but what took so damn long?

      Perhaps you should be asking the same question of England who took 55 years to apologize [theguardian.com] for the barbarism it did to Alan Turing.

    • but what took so damn long?

      You mean admitting that the CEO at the time might have been an asshole? Around seventy million people in the US think that Trump makes a great president; you think it's going to be any easier for the nation in question to condemn other prominent sociopaths?

      • We have done nothing to convince people not to be assholes. Sadly war might be the end result, and nobody will win that. At least neither of the warring factions..

        • We have done nothing to convince people not to be assholes. Sadly war might be the end result, and nobody will win that. At least neither of the warring factions..

          You say that, but if it weren't for a black trans woman hitting a cop in the head kicking off the Stonewall Riots, I'd probably be in jail for being bisexual instead of married to my husband.

      • Was he an asshole, or did he not want to deal with the potential business impact of it? Today's cancel culture operates on the exact same principle, so I don't see the difference.

        I can almost guarantee you that nobody at IBM actually feels genuinely remorseful about what happened 52 years ago, but they're damn sure going to at least make it seem like they do for the exact same reasons that they did the firing to begin with.

        • You are very right.

          People seem to forget that corporations do not have souls, and that having a conscience is contrary to the profit motive.

          I'm glad the environment and culture immersing IBM has changed enough to enable the new behaviour to replace the old, however. IBM may not have made any progress, but at least society has.

        • Potential business impact of what? Retaining a decorated top engineer who significantly contributed to the invention of out-of-order execution in CPUs?

        • Was he an asshole, or did he not want to deal with the potential business impact of it?

          You asked if he was an asshole twice.

    • Re: (Score:2, Informative)

      by Anonymous Coward

      Apologies given by people who had no involvement in the wrongdoing they are apologizing for are hollow and meaningless. You cannot apologize for someone else's actions. Virtue signalling at best, and at worst, tantamount to fraud.

      Government twats are notorious for committing this sham.

  • > I included Conway's story as an example of the costly consequences to employers that fail to promote an inclusive culture.

    I've heard stories of Silicon Valley companies with some kind of "bro" culture that is damaging. People saying some really stupid shit. Certainly that should be avoided. I don't live and work in silicon valley, so I haven't experienced that.

    Over my career, only one company I've worked with has ever had a problem. Only in that company did I hear racist and sexist crap. That company

    • Re: (Score:2)

      by sphealey ( 2855 )

      - - - - - - That's the only place I ever saw an actual problem. - - - - - -

      Perhaps at other places your fellow employees did not believe they could speak freely about what they were experiencing.

      • Comment removed based on user account deletion

        • > People are the same wherever you go. Racists and gay bashers etc always exist everywhere, from the most liberal to the most rustic.

          I'm curious where you live.

          The only way I can rectify some of the stories I hear with my actual experience is to think things are different in different places. That the problems people complain about *do* exist where they say those problems exist.

          If people in Silicon Valley are like people in Texas, there are a bunch of people blowing the "bro culture" thing WAY, WAY, WAY

          • I think it's large company versus small company or startup. In a professional corporate environment such behavior would not be tolerated as the rules tend to be written down and adhered to. Also there are state and federal laws about this sort of stuff, so most HR departments aren't going to overlook this. But many small companies tend to run a looser ship, and a startup may not even have an HR person yet.

            • Oh, my. Have you ever worked in a large company? Many of them condone or support abusive behavior at their highest levels. Bill Clinton, as commander in chief of the USA, had armed guards keeping people out of his office as he sexually harassed an intern. Jeffrey Epstein had a private island where his sexual abuses were segregated from the general population and his under-age sex workers could serve the "private needs" of his powerful guests. The private mercenary company CACI provided "interrogation staff"

          • If people in Silicon Valley are like people in Texas, there are a bunch of people blowing the "bro culture" thing WAY, WAY, WAY out of proportion. Because it simply isn't like that where I'm from. The kind of racist, sexist, crap I hear is said "all the time", you'd never ever hear in a Texas workplace.

            You see "bro culture" a lot in game companies. Other than that, you'll see it more often in the sales team rather than the tech team. If people actually cared about fixing sexism they would start with the sales teams.

            Among programmers, a lot of times people who join expect the social structure to be like it was in high school or college. It's not at all, and if that is your expectation, you will be very confused, and might end up blaming sexism.

            • > Among programmers, a lot of times people who join expect the social structure to be like it was in high school or college.

              They expect to be ostracized and have to sit at the nerd table?
              You did say programmers. :)

              A funny thing happens between high school and work for programmers. From last to be picked for the tram to be actively recruited.

    • And yet trans-hate is directed almost exclusively towards Tran-women. It's like men regard us as "a traitor to our sex." It's pretty pervasive, which is why you don't really notice it when everyone is doing it.

      Same with racism.

      The "bro culture " isn't limited to tech - but it's pretty well ingrained in tech.

      This sounds more like an "apology because it's politically correct and we're being called out on it" than any genuine appreciation of the damage they're done. A decade ago they would have done zil

      • Right or wrong, a lot of people who've had to live with it have come to the conclusion that hated of trans women is simply hatred of women.

      • Re: (Score:2)

        by Bert64 ( 520050 )

        There are a lot more male->female than female->male trans, or at least they are more visible and/or prominent. It's quite rare to hear of or encounter a female->male and i've personally never encountered any that i'm aware of.

      • From observation: the trans-men aren't nearly as political and loud about being transgender. Transgender men have also entered a world where physical domination is part of the social language, and they tend to be noticeably smaller and lighter than their cis-male colleagues, even after physical training and hormones. The size and remaining physical strength of trans-women is an ongoing problem athletically and socially: One of the most classic examples of the difficulty include the assault on Ben Shapiro by

      • The "bro culture " isn't limited to tech - but it's pretty well ingrained in tech.

        It's not even limited to tech. I wasn't out of the closet as bi until I moved to Oklahoma, but the harassment I got for being suspected of being gay when I was at the Portland Police Bureau in the early 2000s, along with the response the city generally gave to crimes against the LGBTQ, Latine, indian and black communities specifically, is enough for me to wonder if people equate "doing literally the barest of bare minimum on transportation issues" is the same as progressivism in people's minds.

        Sure, Oklaho

    • Sometimes there are startups that are composed of mostly friends. Which has several bad consequences, mainly that it bypasses the interview process and it's difficult to fire a friend of an executive, so incompetence sticks around. But also it leads to a buddy culture. The same jokes the buddies make in the gym locker room get made on the company's floors as well. I have seen something like this, though I've never been at the early days of a startup, and wondered how such a person who added so little va

  • Slashdot: progressive stories, ignorant comments (Score:5, Insightful)

    by jordan314 ( 1052648 ) on Friday November 20, 2020 @07:28PM (#60748856)
    I've noticed slashdot tends to have progressive stories such as this but then the comment section is mostly full of ignorant trolling posts. Today is the Transgender Day of Remembrance marking over 350 trans people that have been killed worldwide in the past year, and the comments here are about looking like an old guy in drag and tranny retards. I have moderator points right now but would rather say something. When is the older, whiter, more conservative slashdot audience going to come around, in a way that companies like even IBM have?

    • Re:Slashdot: progressive stories, ignorant comment (Score:5, Insightful)

      by frank_adrian314159 ( 469671 ) on Friday November 20, 2020 @07:47PM (#60748918) Homepage

      When is the older, whiter, more conservative slashdot audience going to come around, in a way that companies like even IBM have?

      Probably never. They see any mention of someone out of the norm which makes their conscience and privilege a bit uncomfortable as reverse discrimination and will continue to scream about it to high heaven until their dying day. On the other hand, there are many of us who understand that anyone too far outside the norm is often assailed by the dominant social context and the people who benefit from it. What can one say? Social change comes slowly and usually only with the passing of generations. Sad, but true.

      As far as this old, white, straight male can tell, Lynn Conway was the person who wrote a bang up book and put together design tools in the late 1970's that made VLSI design accessible to engineers to whom it never was before. That makes her aces in my book.

      • It's kind of an odd attitude on slashdot, because nerds are also far outside of the norm already.

        • Not so odd, as "nerditude" is not necessarily visible (as is, for instance, actually being on the spectrum) and is actually privileged by relatively high salaries. Plus, many nerds, rather than feeling sympathetic towards others who suffer, instead have an attitude of "I had to put up with it, so should they." It's sort of like the idiots that perpetuate thirty-six hour shifts for medical residents.

    • Re:Slashdot: progressive stories, ignorant comment (Score:5, Insightful)

      by niftydude ( 1745144 ) on Friday November 20, 2020 @07:59PM (#60748960)

      When is the older, whiter, more conservative slashdot audience...

      Careful - your racism is on display. Do you honestly believe non-whites are more accepting of LGBT+ culture than whites? Because except for a very few exceptions like Thailand, it's not even close

      When my country voted to allow same sex marriage a few years back, the only electorates that recorded a majority vote against it where the ones that were majority non-white.

      If you ever manage to travel internationally, I'll think you'll find that non-white countries are predominantly far more conservative when it comes to these issues than you are assuming.

      • Careful - your racism is on display. Do you honestly believe non-whites are more accepting of LGBT+ culture than whites? Because except for a very few exceptions like Thailand, it's not even close

        Careful - you're distorting what the parent actually said and attacking a straw man. Why are you going on out non-white homo/transphobic attitudes out there in the real world when the parent was clearly and explicitly talking about Slashdot posters?

        • OP claimed it was the older white population of slashdotters who were responsible for the transphobic comments apropos of nothing.

          If you can prove to me that is older white slashdotters who have been making all these transphobic comments, then I'll apologise (pro tip: you can't).
    • I feel like Slashdot's base has generally been socially progressive and fiscally conservative. But, at the same time, very willing to point out feel-good-do-nothing actions or logical flaws. But in recent years it seems like more and more comments are the kind you talk about. I'm not sure if the people have changed, if they feel more empowered to speak their intolerant opinions now, or if Slashdot's dwindling user base means moderation doesn't happen as quickly as it used to.

      • I'm pretty sure it's a change in the userbase. You didn't used to see so much idiocy even at -1, and these days you're even liable to see it modded up to 2 or 3 on occasion. The increasing lack of technical content in the last 10 years has driven the old guard away. Slobbing on Musk's knob a bit is what passes for "tech-oriented" here today. If you can recall the details of each annual Apple Keynote, this place is for you. If you complain about identity politics and still fall for it the instant it's your i

      • Socially progressive and fiscally conservative is pretty much libertarian, going by the libertarian "Nolan chart". I think the chart is too simplistic but it's better than the normal one-dimensional categorization.

    • Re:Slashdot: progressive stories, ignorant comment (Score:5, Insightful)

      by hey! ( 33014 ) on Friday November 20, 2020 @08:15PM (#60748994) Homepage Journal

      The thing I tell kids in my children's generation who are furious at J.K. Rowling is that this eventually happens to most of us. The world keeps changing, and one day you find you can't get used to it anymore. It doesn't make you a bad person, it just makes you an old fart. This will happen to these kids too: some day they'll find themselves in a world that feels alien.

      I will admit that I don't really understand the transgender thing, and I'm not really fully comfortable with it. But what's very clear from the people I've met is that the decision to consider themselves a different gender from their assigned one does more than make them happy: it makes them feel at peace with themselves, despite all the problems it causes for them. So I don't need some all-explaining theory of gender to accept that that's what's good for them, no matter how it makes me feel.

      So I'll predict that most of the old farts here will never be 100% comfortable with transgender people. The question is whether they can make a distinction between feeling uncomfortable about something and being harmed by it.

      • Re:Slashdot: progressive stories, ignorant comment (Score:4, Insightful)

        by Beryllium Sphere(tm) ( 193358 ) on Saturday November 21, 2020 @03:21AM (#60749984) Journal

        Perhaps this will help.

        It's not actually a decision. Every trans person has a different life story, but it's really common to hear of them struggling hard not to acknowledge what's in the ROM in their brain. One pattern that happens over and over is that a trans woman will go into some ultra-macho field like special forces hoping that either the femininity will go away or that she'll get killed, which would also solve the problem.

        There's hard autopsy evidence for what I just analogized as "the ROM in their brain". Short bibliography: https://aebrain.blogspot.com/2... [blogspot.com]

        If it were a decision, then mind-changing would work. What actually happened when the medical profession still thought it was a delusion is that everything up to and including electric shock aversion therapy did not change anyone's internal gender identity.

        I talked to one trans woman who was furious about getting asked "When did you know?", because it reminded her of all of the pain of all of the years trying not to know.

        It turns out that during fetal development, brain organization and genital differentiation happen at completely different times. Right now it's a theory, not a hypothesis, that a trans person's brain went one way and their swimsuit zone went the other way.

        If you want a deep dive, I suggest Dr. Julia Serano's book and web site.

        And of course comments are ignorant. We are all born ignorant. We're nerds -- we can learn counterintuitive things.

      • She writes all these books about inclusiveness, but the most imaginative name she can come up with for an Asian character is "Cho Chang"? The one character who objects to chattel slavery is portrayed as an oddball and a kook?

      • Re: (Score:2)

        by antdude ( 79039 )

        Get off my lawn! :P

    • Re: (Score:2, Funny)

      by Robert Goatse ( 984232 )

      Today is the Transgender Day of Remembrance marking over 350 trans people that have been killed worldwide in the past year, and the comments here are about looking like an old guy in drag and tranny retards. I have moderator points right now but would rather say something. When is the older, whiter, more conservative slashdot audience going to come around, in a way that companies like even IBM have?

      Is that really a day "Transgender Day of Remembrance"? Jesus, what is the world coming to?

    • Re: (Score:3)

      by quenda ( 644621 )

      I've noticed slashdot tends to have progressive stories such as this but then the comment section is mostly full of ignorant trolling posts.

      Maybe we feel we have always been in favour of personal freedom and tolerance of those who differ. But this political correctness is leading to compelled speech, and twisting of reality. We are supposed to pretend that biological sex is irrelevant, even in professional sport, and that Sue has always been female. The obsession with language over actual behaviour or reality is crazy. So much wasted energy, and pointless divisiveness!
      It could be so much more productively directed to more important iss

      • Re: (Score:2)

        by Uberbah ( 647458 )

        Maybe we feel we have always been in favour of personal freedom and tolerance of those who differ. But this political correctness is leading to compelled speech

        No connection between those dots. If you don't want to be trans, have you....considered...not being trans? In the same way that if you didn't want to be gay, you didn't have to have sex with a person of the same gender.

    • Coming around to what exactly?

      A person who willingly cuts off a body part, such as a finger, genitals, etc. is fucking insane.

      A man mutilating his penis does NOT make him a smart "woman" -- it makes him a dumb-ass man for not respecting his body he was born with. Trying to "Fix" an external physical symptom instead of treating an internal mental problem doesn't "magically" make the "problem" go away. It should come as no surprise that the suicide rate is almost 40% among the transgender. :-( Those who who

      • Re: (Score:2)

        by Uberbah ( 647458 )

        Your transphobia is noted. And no different from rantings on how unnatural it is for men to lay with men, women to cavort with women, "lifestyle choices". It's all the same BS.

    • Re: (Score:3)

      by k6mfw ( 1182893 )

      I think many other places you have ignorant trolling posts, it seems there's a huge uptick in negative comments. A recent Periscope Film youtube channel with a film 1966 film about the Gemini program, comment section is bombarded by moon landing hoaxers. Damn where do these people have time to do this. Then there's other places where comments are moderated but I've noticed far more downvotes in places where I rarely saw them before.

      This story is just begging for trollers. Actually I've noticed other /. ar

    • When is the older, whiter, more conservative slashdot audience going to come around, in a way that companies like even IBM have?

      So, probably never:

      https://www.usatoday.com/story... [usatoday.com]

    • Never. If I have to pick between accepting femenists or transsexuals - as many from both categories demand - I'll go with the ones that don't promote irreversible, mutilating surgeries.

    • +1. I've been on /. for a long time (5-digit uid) and the quality of discourse in the comments has declined much as political discourse in the US has.

      Society (American society, at least) is becoming nastier, angrier and dumber. :(

  • Surely anyone involved with this decision has moved on from the company by now and nobody involved with the apology was with IBM when it happened. I guess it's free PR though?

  • An apology is good and all, but what about back-pay to 1968?

  • And the Jews? (Score:4, Insightful)

    by elcor ( 4519045 ) on Saturday November 21, 2020 @12:21AM (#60749692)
    Will they also apologize for providing Hitler with machines that helped organize the genocide?

  • I remember seeing a YouTube video with some kind of panel discussing LGBT issues. One member of this panel was a lesbian that pointed out how the idea of transgender people is incompatible with the idea of lesbian people. For a woman to be a lesbian means that there is such a thing as male and female, that it's "healthy" or "normal" to be attracted to someone of the same sex, and socially acceptable for a woman to exhibit traditionally masculine behaviors.

    If a parent sees their little girl exhibit behavio

    • I remember seeing a YouTube video with some kind of panel discussing LGBT issues. One member of this panel was a lesbian that pointed out how the idea of transgender people is incompatible with the idea of lesbian people.

      No the person didn't "point it out", they stated their opinion on the matter. That is quite different from pointing out a fact.

      For a woman to be a lesbian means that there is such a thing as male and female, that it's "healthy" or "normal" to be attracted to someone of the same sex, and soc

    • Re: (Score:2)

      by dskoll ( 99328 )

      Nah, that's bullshit. I know a bunch of trans people and not one of them "pretended" to be trans to hide homosexuality.

      Your theory makes even less sense today, when the stigma against being gay is negligible in a lot of places, but there are still trans people in those same places.

    • Re: (Score:2)

      by Tablizer ( 95088 )

      Such surgeries can lead to complications later in life, and lead to an early grave from these complications.

      So can nose-jobs. Do you want to ban nose-jobs? If such is riskier than nose-jobs, please provide evidence. This is slashdot, not Fox News.

      A person that wants to have healthy sex organs removed will end up needing constant medical care as this means a lack of vital hormones needed for maintaining their health.

      Evidence? Eunuchs live longer than men. [go.com]

      There's considerable evidence that even successfu

  • All of the people who made the decisions in 1968 are retired by now if not dead.

  • Companies can't apologise; they're just bits of paper. Some people who didn't do the thing apologised. Why Conway would care is beyond me. I certainly don't.

    Find the people who did it and make them apologise.

Slashdot Top Deals

Any circuit design must contain at least one part which is obsolete, two parts which are unobtainable, and three parts which are still under development.

Close