She was one of the people who literally built the technical foundation of the world we know. That alone justifies all the upvotes.
The fact that she did that on top of basically starting life over at 30 due to the constraints around transition at that time? That's winning a marathon with a cinder block chained to your ankle.
As far as the concentration of trans people in computing, AFAIK there are two predominant theories: First, survivorship bias involving careers that are often non-customer-facing and well-paying. Second, that there's common cause or comorbidity with other developmental differences (like ASD or 2SD+ IQ) that are unusually common among people who end up in computing.
* Becoming an accomplished professor, a favorite and recognized teacher to many of the "greats" in the field.
* Undergoing (then new and much riskier) gender reassignment surgery despite the legal and social consequences that it might (and ultimately did) entail - losing a prestigious job, losing a family, and having to start life over.... and doing all that quite successfully!
The fact that ALL of them are true of just one person is pretty spectacular. The fact that there are many comments in this thread from people who knew her and respected her for just one of these accomplishments (mostly the tech ones) and are just learning about the rest should answer the question for you about why this is being upvoted.
Heck - either of my first two bullet points is on it's own black-bar worthy. The fact that you feel the need to focus on "the transgender thing" as possibly being the only reason there's attention should give you some pause. The fact that your entire comment is focused on the fact that a major innovator in our field was transgender with only the faintest of acknowledgement that her work underpins most of what we do here is just plain gross.
>> Is this volume of upvotes due to this person being accomplished in their field or because of the transgender thing
Yes.
>> What is it about computing that it has such a high concentration of trans people compared to other fields.
First, prove your thesis: what is this “high concentration” and what “other fields” are you talking about? There seem to be a great deal of trans people in a great many places, and now that they’re less likely to be hatecrimed, they’re more likely to be out.
If I had to guess why there are more (if there are)- computers allow people to exist as they want to be. Female avatar? Go for it. Anonymous shitposting of your most terrible racist/bigoted thoughts? Vent thine spleen.
Also, most nerds are weird, which leads to many of them developing a great deal of empathy and a great distaste for exclusion. As a demographic, “computers” tends to attract a great deal of nerds with very strong feelings of right/wrong. That’s why I’m here: the jocks didn’t want me and the theater kids were too dramatic so I stuck it out with the geeks and weirdos (who also didn’t give a fuck who I wanted to sleep with as long as I could hold my own in the D&D campaign).
There's no thesis, we're just talking. I don't understand why I got called names and hostile responses. Meh.
The second part of your reply is great, I figured this would be the place to ask somebody who knows about it. I wish you'd have started and ended with that. I'm one of those very nerds who never cared about who wants to sleep with whom.
I must note that on occasion trans techies are aggressively hostile to none trans techies and I don't appreciate it anymore than you do when it flows the other way.
