this post was submitted on 14 Feb 2025
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So the DEI program wasn’t inclusive enough? Would the situation have been better without the DEI program? Just trying to understand the issue, typically DEI has the effect of increasing visibility but it sounds like you had the opposite experience.
The DEI program (at least the one that interfaced with me) excluded and erased anyone who didn't fit their prescribed notions of diversity.
I had a bad experience with an advisor in 2018. She invited me to her home, and asked me to bring food. We ate dinner. After, she put on netflix and started rubbing her butt on me. I ate her out, giving her my virginity. I quickly switched advisors. I had a swarm of "feminists" come down on me to cancel me for daring to eat out my female boss. Because I have something like a penis, it must be my fault, workplace hierarchies be damned.
I was kicked out of space sciences, and clawed my way back over a several year long struggle. In the meantime, I decided to transition to female. I am intersex, and hoped that it would help me avoid harassment. I cannot go on HRT because it would kill me. I try to qualify and push back against the HRT worship performed by mainstream trans culture. Trans people try to cancel me for speaking to my life experience and for pointing out that there are negative medical consequences of HRT that needs to be a part of the discussion. HRT should not be pushed as the default or only way to be trans. This and lingering animosity from the 2018 incident caused me to get kicked out a second time.
DEI, as it was implemented, was as much about reaching out to marginalized communities as it was about enforcing that everyone in the workplace hold the same beliefs. It was as much about bringing in new faces as it was about silencing even moderately dissenting voices. It was about supporting a diversity of identities, while also silencing a diversity of thought. I believe that the exclusive and inequitable implementation of DEI is a major driver of many people's animosity towards it.
My situation would have been better without the DEI program. I would have my PhD by now, and I would probably not be unemployed. I recognize that for others the program was a foot in the door. That does not change the fact that for many like me, it was a boot in the ass.
Edited to put the story in chronological order.
As a trans woman, I don't see HRT being pushed as the only way to be trans. I think the vast majority of us recognize that there are many different paths people take. I have a friend who can't take HRT because of blood clotting issues they have, and they are still 100% valid. Even if someone's health doesn't prevent them from taking HRT and they just don't want it, they are still valid as well. The people saying that HRT is necessary to be trans are known as transmedicalists and they are cringe.
Edit: This got double posted somehow, so I deleted the first one.
Thank you. I wish that the world had more people with compassion like you.
Moving my reply to the non-deleted duplicate :)
Thanks for answering, and I’m sorry about the creep in the replies downplaying your advisor raping you. I believe you, and I know it can be especially difficult for people who are perceived as “masculine” to get support when they come forward about being assaulted. Many self-proclaimed feminists still uphold the patriarchy by embracing gender essentialism bullshit. All I can say is, people are imperfect, biases are tough to unlearn, and living up to our ideals is a constant battle against complacency. I still value those ideals (diversity, equity, and inclusion), and I’m sorry the so-called DEI committee at your university failed to embody them.
Thank you.
I also still value those ideals. I wish that we as a society could do a better job of embodying them.
I hope you realize how bad this entire chain sounds, and that is WITH your one sided account that's clearly skimming over things you did, especially the second time you were kicked out.
I do not, and I would LOVE for you to tell me what I did wrong.
No one else will give me that courtesy.
All I tried to do was live my life and do my work. I didn't even try to go after my former advisor. I repeatedly said that she wasn't a monster. I just tried to move on after learning the hard way about how workplace hierarchies make relationships toxic.
And you're right, I did skim over details for space. I was also sexually assaulted by that former advisor AFTER I split with her personally and professionally. Even then, I refused to go after her for her actions because I just wanted to move on.
Tell me what I did wrong. I really, honestly, do not see it.
I cannot, as you clearly aren't telling the whole story. All I can tell is that you're telling a very biased story, and you're blaming DEI for... squints hiring women? Hiring feminists? It's hard to tell who exactly you're blaming for fucking your advisor and not getting abackslap and cigar.
Which is... Well, right up the alley of someone wanting rid of DEI I guess.
I have no problem with DEI hiring. I love that part of it!
I have a problem with the rape apologists masquerading as feminists populating DEI committees to powertrip over prosecuting wrongthink, and the cops that they use to harass people.
I don't want any positive recognition for my mistake of eating out my boss after her advances towards her employee. I only wanted the drama and bullshit to end so I could focus on Saturn.
Where does rape apology come into it?
And that's not a problem with DEI, that's a problem with academic politics, which is what it sounds to me like you got slapped with, in the best case.
In the future, in academics you have to remember that the squeaky wheel does NOT get the grease, it's considered a problem, annoying, distracting, and it gets removed so it goes away. You have to work bottom-up, not top-down. Top down is only an option when youre good friends with someone above them, or several someone on the same rung as them.
tl;dr: DEI sn't the problem, the problem is a toxic workplace. DEI or no DEI, toxic employees will find SOME kind of structure to exert their will. Throwing away good structures because bad people abuse them is active harm.
I got raped by my advisor, then sexually assaulted, then tried to move on without rocking the boat.
The DEI committee decided to go out of their way to defend the rapist and remove me. That is what I am charitably calling rape apology.
Now, to respond to your edit/tl;dr:
I didn't want the DEI hiring baby thrown out with the bathwater. DEI structures were overpowered and centralized and enabled these toxic dynamics. I am only saying that this poor implementation is what led to animosity against DEI programs. Most people don't see the hiring, but they do see the drama and firing and abuses of power. This feeds into the fascist agenda and pushes people away from progressive causes.
tl;dr: this is how we got people willing to vote for Trump
It was the DEI committee doing the slapping.
The DEI committee was the top-down instrument coming after me and others for wrongthink.
I firmly believe in bottom-up approaches, and that's what I tried to implement. Unfortunately those at the top were too powerful, and those at the bottom too scared to speak out in my favor.
I was not the wheel that was squeaking. I was desperately trying to move on from the drama. It was the DEI committee that couldn't stop squeaking. They got the grease of getting me kicked out twice.
... See, now I'm just starting to think this whole thing is simply made up.
I work in academia. A DEI committee is a specific thing that has specific duties, and they wouldnt even be involved in this sort of thing. No one is being hired, no one is lacking an accomodation or opportunity, no one is being excluded. "DEI Committee"is certainly a big Republican Boogeyman dogwhistle though. So I think I'm just done here.
Well, that's been my life for the past seven years.
I really wish it weren't true.
I went all-in on a reboot and second chance only to get shat on again.
I really don't have anything else to live for at this point and I don't know what to do other than to speak my truth and hope that the next attempts at something like DEI can learn from it.
Hey thanks! My reply to you somehow was posted twice, so if you see another in your inbox that's why. I deleted this one just before you replied but the other is still up.
Lol, we are playing tag.