00:07:40.120If your bookshelf and your For You page are equally important to your personality, welcome home.
00:07:46.060This is Prose Society, the weekly podcast that's part book club, part group chat for thought daughters, pop culture obsessives, and anyone who thinks Pride and Prejudice and Love Island deserve the same level of discourse.
00:07:58.520I'm Eli Rallo, and every week we're connecting the dots between books, the internet, and the conversations everyone can't stop having.
00:08:05.500I'm going to have to look up this story. I'm obsessed. So obsessed.
00:08:08.760from best-selling authors and your favorite book talk creators to the latest pop culture moments
00:08:13.660nothing is off the table it's like if you can hide some real messages inside compelling
00:08:20.200characters and that is the trojan horse whether you're looking for literary deep dives smart
00:08:25.480pop culture conversations or a community of readers who love to think a little too much
00:08:30.240you're in the right place listen to pro society on the iheart radio app apple podcasts or wherever
00:08:36.700you get your podcasts. See you between the pages. When I was 14 years old, I was kidnapped and held
00:08:44.100captive for nine months. I survived and I've spent my life exploring how other people survive what
00:08:50.560should have destroyed them. I'm Elizabeth Smart and these are the Survivor Files. I just remember
00:08:56.920this low taunting voice next to my ear saying, shut up, don't say anything. Every week I'm with0.97
00:09:05.780survivors who lived through the unthinkable. I knew if he woke up, without a doubt, he was going
00:09:12.600to hurt me. I started feeling that there was someone at the end of my bed and I just started
00:09:19.300screaming. They are abducted, stalked, controlled, and nearly silenced. But these aren't stories
00:09:26.020about what's taken from them. They're stories about what it takes to make it out alive.
00:09:31.380Listen to The Survivor Files with Elizabeth Smart on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts.
00:10:01.380But they weren't just planting houses.
00:10:04.480We need cities on a shining hill that exemplify and embody the Christian way of life.0.89
00:10:52.120so even though conway had kind of put the idea of transitioning in the back of her mind during
00:10:59.440this phase of her life she kept learning about it she learned about the pioneering gender
00:11:03.860transition work of dr harry benjamin an endocrinologist and sexologist known for his
00:11:09.040clinical work with trans people and decided i have to work with him so what's kind of
00:11:14.580heartbreaking about all of this is that according to this profile in michigan engineering conway
00:11:19.080and her then spouse, had worked out like a pretty solid plan together for how Conway transitioning
00:11:24.980would work. Their plan was that they would get a divorce and that Conway would start working with
00:11:30.000Dr. Benjamin to transition. Conway would pay for child support from her IBM salary and stay in the
00:11:35.800children's lives. They actually even worked out what the children would call her, which was they
00:11:40.700would call her aunt. And according to a really compelling Forbes piece by Jeremy Alessandri,
00:11:46.180Conway's immediate family and IBM's divisional management were actually pretty accepting and supportive of this at first.
00:11:53.380However, when IBM's corporate medical director learned that Conway was planning to transition in 1968, he told CEO Thomas J. Watson Jr., who fired Conway to avoid the public embarrassment of employing a trans woman.
00:12:08.520So this moment, you know, getting fired from your big, important job that you are kicking
00:12:13.560ass at and losing the support of your employer began a downward spiral in Conway's life
00:12:27.880California Social Services even tried to keep her away from her children.
00:12:31.680And Conway's ex-spouse decided that she could not have any contact with the children because
00:12:36.340she was worried that if Conway was actually in the kid's life, they would be risking having those
00:12:41.560kids removed by the state. At the time, Conway's kids were just babies, two years old and four
00:12:47.380years old. This was absolutely devastating for Lynn Conway. She recalls, that tore me up. Let
00:12:54.420me tell you, the hardest part of the whole thing was that. I felt like a mom to them, she told
00:12:59.580Michigan Engineering. Lynn knew this was going to be a tough process, and she relied on lessons that
00:13:04.560she had learned from a lifetime love of the outdoors and outdoor adventures like canoeing
00:13:08.920and rock climbing to steady herself for the challenges to come. As she described it,
00:13:13.720now I had a plan to get across the river. I could see the steps I'd have to take to make it.
00:13:18.220I could see the dangers and how to protect against them. The only problem was I didn't
00:13:22.400know where I'd end up on the other side. So even though it cost her her family, her career,
00:13:28.220and her kids, she continued to work with Dr. Benjamin to transition. It was not an easy road,
00:13:35.660as a lot of trans folks will tell you, the logistics, you know, things like changing your
00:13:40.220name, getting new identification and paperwork, can be a big part of navigating trans identity.
00:13:45.820You know, just establishing yourself so that you can work and earn an income, have a bank account,
00:13:49.740and get a place to live. Conway was dealing with all of this decades ago, but even today,
00:13:54.520this process is complicated and sometimes prohibitively expensive. And sadly, today,
00:14:00.060a lot of trans folks do not have the support or resources to navigate it. According to the
00:14:05.140National Transgender Discrimination Survey, only one-fifth of trans people who have transitioned
00:14:09.880have been able to update all of their IDs and records, and one-third haven't been able to
00:14:14.920update any of their IDs and records. So it is a real problem with a lot of barriers.
00:14:21.360Luckily, Lynn was able to use connections that Dr. Benjamin had in Oakland to get this navigated quickly,
00:14:27.120which was really important for her because she's written that she wanted to avoid suspicion because that suspicion could quickly turn unsafe.
00:14:35.380You were an undocumented alien from Mars. You don't have a birth certificate. How are you going to get a job? This was the 60s.
00:14:42.220You could think of it like being a spy in a foreign country. If you were found out, you'd be dealt with immediately.
00:14:47.600If not by the police, then by people on the streets.0.53
00:14:50.520So it's probably pretty clear that why, after transitioning, Conway would go into what she has called the stealth phase of her career.
00:15:00.320So it's 1969. Conway has changed her name and she's hiding her gender identity and starting to look for work in computing, eventually finding a job as a contract programmer and later working at Memorex.
00:15:12.600But then she landed what is sort of like the big job, like nailing the big account in her life, which is getting a job at Xerox Palo Alto Research Center, which was a massively huge deal.0.76
00:15:26.360Again, like she does, Lynn Conway just starts kicking ass professionally, just like she had done at IBM before being fired for being trans.0.74
00:15:34.700During this time, she had many of her biggest accomplishments.0.82
00:15:38.040Her work completely revolutionized how microchips were designed.
00:15:41.880Lynn Conway is sometimes called the hidden hand for her work because so much of her work
00:15:46.380led to the tech revolution in the 1980s and, again, is the reason why we had things like
00:18:06.340So something that I love about Lynn Conway's legacy is that after this point in her life,
00:18:12.240she becomes this vocal advocate for other trans people in tech.
00:18:16.820She has given financial support and assistance to many trans women going through transition.
00:18:21.100And she also has been an advocate for employment protections for trans folks.
00:18:25.080And she was doing this, you know, continuing this legacy of trying to make improvements
00:18:29.180for other trans folks in tech pretty shortly before she died.
00:18:33.360The kind of advocacy that she's done for trans folks in tech has a lasting impact even today.
00:18:39.300In 2013, Conway and Leandra Vicki of the University of North Carolina successfully lobbied the
00:18:45.200board of directors at the Institute of Electrical and Electronics Engineers, which is essentially
00:18:49.680like a code of ethics for the engineering profession, to include trans folks, which
00:18:54.360impacts the world's largest engineering professional society. Lynn Conway's website
00:18:59.240also served as a beacon for trans folks. According to The Independent, for years,
00:19:04.180her personal website was one of the few places you could find clear, detailed, unprejudiced
00:19:08.660information about the experience of being trans and the process of transition, as well as striking
00:19:13.800examples of how trans people could find lasting happiness and success. The Independent spoke to
00:19:19.340a woman named Rebecca, a 51-year-old government worker in Colorado, who was quoted as saying,
00:19:24.680it was the early 2000s. My relationship with my girlfriend was falling apart. I was having a hard
00:19:29.240time containing the feelings I had when I was younger about the need to transition. Her site
00:19:33.540wasn't the first one I found, but when I did find it, it opened up a whole new world to me,
00:19:38.020and I knew I wasn't alone. So Lynn Conway is basically this world-changing technological
00:19:45.360badass. So I think we can all agree that IBM really messed up by firing her because she was
00:19:51.820trans. And after 50 years of silence on this issue, in 2020, October, IBM invited staff to
00:19:59.480an event that they called Tech Trailblazer and Transgender Pioneary Lynn Conway in conversation
00:20:05.300with Diane Gerson. Gerson was IBM's Senior Vice President of Human Resources. The event starts
00:20:11.360with a formal apology to Lynn Conway for her transphobic firing 52 years earlier.
00:20:18.160Conway was struggling to hold back tears.
00:20:21.320Not only did IBM apologize, but they also recognized her immense contributions to IBM's work that had gone unattributed.
00:20:29.180Dario Gill, director of IBM Research, presented Lynn Conway with a Lifetime Achievement Award
00:20:33.960given to individuals who have changed the world through tech innovations.
00:20:37.180And Gill noted that Lynn's extraordinary technical achievements helped define the modern computing industry, and that she paved the way for how we design and make computing chips today, and that she forever changed microelectronic devices and people's lives.
00:20:51.540This is really important. IBM acknowledged that after Conway was fired back in 1968, that her research still aided IBM's successes.
00:21:00.680In 1965, Lynn created the Architectural Level Advanced Computing System 1 Simulator
00:21:05.680and invented a method that led to the development of a superscalar computer.
00:21:09.940This dynamic instruction schedule invention was later used in computer chips,
00:31:56.120Michael Hiltik, a columnist for the Los Angeles Times, who was a friend of Lynn for 25 years,
00:32:01.100said that she was the bravest person that he ever knew.
00:32:03.860IBM also honored her legacy after death, saying,
00:32:07.780During a truly impressive life, Lynn Conway broke down barriers for the trans community
00:32:11.900and pushed the limits of technology through revolutionary work that is still impacting our lives to this day.
00:32:17.840IBM Chief Human Resources Officer Nicole Lamoureux said this in a statement to Axios.
00:32:23.140We are humbled by her continuous examples of grace and her advocacy for others.
00:32:27.680Honestly, thinking about IBM, I am so glad that they righted their historic wrong in firing Conway for being trans.
00:32:35.760I mean, there's a reality where they never took accountability and probably would not have been able to acknowledge that they had this brilliant mind making all of these historic contributions for them.
00:32:45.760You know, or maybe they would have announced it in a statement after she died.
00:32:49.940And if they had not apologized in 2020 and acknowledged this, what would that have looked like?
00:32:55.080I imagine either they would have to keep quiet or risk people really calling them out on social media being like, yeah, don't try to give her flowers now when y'all fired her and never apologized for it.
00:33:05.840So I am glad that they made that apology because it sounds like that allowed for them to adequately honor her legacy in her death in a way that I don't think they would have been able to do had they never apologized.
00:33:18.020Lynn Conway's story is one of resilience and also a story of how things like transphobia
00:33:22.560harm trans people and stifle tech innovation.
00:33:27.020You know, how many trans technologists are being shut out of education and jobs because