In the early 2000's, this website began providing gender transitioners with information, encouragement and hope for a better future. Among its most popular sections were the "Transsexual Women's Successes" and "Successful Transmen".  Back then, trans women, especially, were considered sexually-deviant and mentally-ill by prejudiced psychiatrists and psychologists. By compiling stories of those who went on to fulfilling lives after transition, the pages undermined the pathologization of gender variance by prominent psychiatric thought leaders – and provided role models and hope for the many people then in transition.

The site then documented opportunities for young transpeople to transition anonymously and successfully while in college, and encouraged universities to provide more supportive environments for these transitioners; as the decade progressed, such college-age transitions became increasingly common. The site also educated transwomen about the remarkable facial feminization surgeries (FFS) pioneered by Douglas Ousterhout, M.D. Although FFS involves expensive, invasive and painful maxillofacial reconstruction, it could significantly reverse facial-skeletal damages caused by gender-inappropriate pubertal hormones ‒ enabling many transitioned women to live more fulfilling lives. As more college-age transwomen obtained good educations and went on to better careers, increasing numbers were able to afford it.

The site also exposed, as a myth, the time-worn pronouncement that transsexualism is 'extremely rare'. For decades the psychiatric community had promulgated trans-prevalence numbers that were too small by a factor of ~100, thus hiding from the public the large numbers of transpeople who were suffering from discrimination, social marginalization and inadequate health-care. Worse yet, much of the discrimination against transpeople was itself caused by the very same psychiatrists' pronouncements that gender variance was a 'mental illness'.

In April of 2003, a wonderful woman named Sofia Iglesias translated the "Successes page" into Spanish, and we became good friends. Sofia went on to translate even more pages, to help young transitioners in her country Mexico and all across the Americas. As others saw the impact of Sofia's work, volunteers began translations into many other languages; the resultuing international translation project escalated rapidly in scope and coverage, bringing support to ever more trans-people around the world. 

During 2003-2006, the site became a focal point (along with Andrea James' TS Roadmap) for the investigation and exposure of the publication of J. Michael Bailey's transphobic pseudo-science book by the National Academies. The investigation led to Bailey's resignation as Chair of the Northwestern University's Psychology Department, and to his eventual decline into professional indiscretions, disgrace and obscurity. The Bailey fiasco became a defining moment in trans history by exposing psychiatric theories about gender variance to be absurdly unsound, including those of academic psychiatrist Paul McHugh, M.D., a prominent National Academy member.  Sadly the Academies never expressed regret for their misguided support and heavy-handed promotion of Bailey's malignant science ‒ giving us 'the silent treatment' instead. They did, however, quietly remove Bailey's embarrassingly unscientific book from the NAP website.

During 2006-2009, my site became a focal point for investigation and exposure of Ken Zucker's trans-reparatist treatment of gender-variant children at CAMH in Toronto. Zucker had for years been the autocratic thought-leader behind the psychological pathologization of gender variance.* As the site began exposing Zucker's activities, he became enraged and threatened a lawsuit in efforts to shut it down. I responded by exposing Zucker's threat (see video), triggering a tide of trans-rebellion against what he was doing.

[*Note: Zucker's facade as a 'scientific authority' was finally shattered in 2011-12 by the brilliant Ph.D. research of Y. Gavriel ('Gavi') Ansara and his faculty advisor Peter Hegarty in their quantitative empirical study "Cisgenderism in psychology: pathologising and misgendering children from 1999 to 2008", published in the journal Psychology & Sexuality.  Ansara and Hegarty's investigation documented that authors from mental health professions were significantly more trans-pathologising than authors from other professions, and identified Zucker as the leader of an 'invisible college' of group-think researchers who collectively-exploited such pathologising language to impose their discriminatory gender ideology on scientific thought about children's genders. In 2012, Ansara won the American Psychological Association's Transgender Research Award for this research.]

The site also promoted the movement towards supportive treatment of transgender children and teens, as dynamic groups such as Trans Youth Family Allies (TYFA) organized to help the families of such children.  By the late 00's, many young transitioners were succeeding way beyond expectations, especially those using puberty-delaying therapies pioneered by Norman Spack, M.D. so as to avoid gender-inappropriate pubertal changes prior to transition. This movement has gained increasing traction amongst parents, counselors, physicians, and even school systems (including schools in Toronto, Zucker's home-base); it's clearly the wave of the future.

As work on the trans-information pages wound-down, I created the Trans News Updates to monitor ongoing changes in social and media attitudes about gender variance.  Changing media representations often yield clues to where things are headed, and why, thus enabling advocates to spot opportunities for impactful, well-coordinated interventions. Of special significance were trans-community interventions in exposing the pathologizing teachings of the psychiatric establishment and pressing for removal of gender variance as a 'mental illness' from the DSM (the psychiatrists' bible). To learn more about these events, see the brilliant exposé of psychiatric superstition and malfeasance compiled by Kelley Winters, Ph.D. in her GID Reform website, and in her book Gender Madness in American Psychiatry: Essays in the Struggle for Dignity.

As we moved into the 2010's and I began writing my memoirs, the trans-advocacy pages passed into history (see pre-2012 mainpage). Even so, the pages still get many hits and are an ongoing source of hope for many people. Reflecting on all that, we give thanks to the courageous transitioners who volunteered for early listing in the "successes" pages ‒ back when such exposure often led to terrible backlash from reactionary transphobic people. Fortunately those dark days are receding. Nowadays tens of thousands of transitioners have moved on to happy and fulfilling lives, and are open and proud about their accomplishments.

Lynn's Memoirs

Lynn and her husband Charlie, 2010

[click photo for higher-res version (more, more, more, more)]

Introduction:

During the early 2010's, I began sketching reflections on my experiences in engineering. I'd learned many lessons during my work at IBM-ACS in the 1960's and the 'Mead-Conway' VLSI revolution in the 1970's.  I hoped to illuminate those experiences in memoirs before time ran out, believing lessons-learned back then might prove useful to young engineers in the future. 

Times had also changed enough to seriously begin this work. The widespread internet-based trans-advocacy of the 00's had had great impact: The pronouncements of leading American psychiatrists on gender variance were exposed as 'unsound'.  Laws changed, employment opportunities opened up, and the political landscape brightened. Transpeople emerged from the shadows, taking their rightful places in society. My long-ago transition was no longer the 'elephant in the room', blocking people from seeing the career-story looming beyond. It was time to return to my intellectual roots in science, mathematics and engineering, time to share what I can about such things.

The VLSI Archive:

As we reflect on the past with friends and family, we often use photo albums to share our memories – memories that bind us together and reveal how we got to where we are. But what about our careers? Although the results of our work may linger, mementos of adventures along the way are often lost in the rush of events. Only too late do we realize what we 'should have saved'.

It was different for the VLSI revolution in microelectronics; perhaps it was the exciting visual artifacts, or the shared-sense of breaking new ground. Whatever the reason, many participants saved old treasures from those years (1976-1980) – research notes, prototype silicon chips and chip photos, even huge color check plots – and stored them away for decades. During 2008-2010, members of the original VLSI research team, along with colleagues in academia and industry, began gathering up, scanning and photographing such artifacts – and then posting them online. The resulting VLSI Archive (more, more) helped bring those exciting days back to life. That mass of primary historical evidence also provided a great starting-point for a memoir, with the online VLSI Archive Spreadsheet enabling easy group-access to its wide array of contents.

Lynn’s VLSI Reminiscences:

In 2010, Dave Hodges, the Daniel M. Tellep Distinguished Professor of Engineering Emeritus at U. C. Berkeley, graciously invited me to write a memoir about the VLSI revolution for a special-issue of IEEE Solid-State Circuits Magazine (SSCM). Although many myths had arisen about the 'Mead-Conway' work, this was the first time in thirty years that any of my peers had asked me to explain what had happened back then. It was a nice coincidence in timing, for I’d already begun drafting some sketches about the work.

However there was a problem: The VLSI work had drawn heavily on key scientific and engineering insights I’d gained while at IBM-ACS. I felt a need to document those foundational experiences before immersing myself in writing about VLSI. Many questions also lingered about what had really happened at ACS, questions that needed answering before writing about later work. Thus it was that I began writing an ACS memoir in early 2011. This involved some rather interesting detective work, and along the way I stumbled onto many answers. The resulting ACS memoir was published in the fall of 2011 (see below).

I then shifted to writing about the VLSI revolution, building on the mass of original evidence contained in the VLSI Archive, and interacting with and getting feedback from many VLSI vets. The resulting memoir was published in the IEEE-SSCM in December 2012, along with insightful commentaries contributed by Chuck House, former Director of Engineering at HP, Carlo Séquin, Professor of EECS at U.C. Berkeley, and Ken Shepard, Professor of Electrical Engineering and Biomedical Engineering at Columbia University. The memoir and commentaries are posted at the following links [those in the VLSI archive include embedded links]:

IEEE Solid State Circuits Magazine, VOL. 4, NO. 4, FALL 2012: Front Cover; Table of Contents; Society Listing; Contributors; Editor's Note, by Mary Lanzerotti; (PDF 4mb); UM EECS Department Posting.

Lynn Conway, “Reminiscences of the VLSI Revolution: How a series of failures triggered a paradigm shift in digital design” (SSCM, more, references, timeline)

Chuck House, “A Paradigm Shift Was Happening All Around Us” (SSCM)

Carlo Sequin,  “Witnessing the Birth of VLSI Design" (SSCM)

Ken Shepard,  ““Covering”: How We Missed the Inside-Story of the VLSI Revolution” (SSCM)

As you explore the unfolding VLSI saga, 'go-meta' and think of it as a 'case study'. By doing so, you'll gain perspective on the processes involved in engineering exploration, innovation and paradigm shifting ‒ and on the critical roles that tool-building, exploratory design, rapid-prototyping and the actual 'making of things' play in such events.

Lynn's ACS Reminiscences:

I was hired by IBM Research right out of graduate school and soon joined what would become the IBM Advanced Computing Systems (a pioneering supercomputer project),  just as it was forming in 1965. It was a golden era in computer research, a time when fundamental breakthroughs were being made across a wide front.

The well-distilled and highly codified results of that and subsequent work, as contained in today’s modern textbooks, give no clue as to how those breakthroughs ‘came to be’. Lost in those texts is all the excitement, the challenge, the confusion, the camaraderie, the chaos and the fun – the feeling of what it was really like to be there, at the frontier, at that time. In this, my first foray into memoir writing, I hoped to bring some of that thrill back to life. This effort was also essential preparation for writing the follow-on VLSI memoir. The reason was that I'd gained many valuable scientific and engineering insights while at ACS, and had drawn heavily upon those insights during my later VLSI research.

Many questions also lingered about what had happened at ACS.  I wondered what ‘inside-explanation’ had been used within IBM to rationalize the project's cancellation in 1968. Did the managers who killed the project not realize that my DIS invention had been included in, and had greatly empowered, the machine design? Then too, why did IBM fail to patent DIS and fail to exploit it in their later computers? Was it possible that several rather influential ACS researchers did not understand what DIS was? Much less how it worked, or who had invented it? If so, how could that be? And why was I fired so suddenly, once IBM’s Corporate Executive Committee (i.e., IBM's President and CEO T. J. Watson, Jr.) learned about my upcoming gender transition? That firing seemed impulsively executed, as if in hot-anger. What on earth was that all about?

I launched an investigation in early 2011 to finally begin answering those questions and more. I was fortunate to have access to extensive ACS historical files compiled by Mark Smotherman of Clemson University, along with my own archive of original ACS documents, plus valuable evidence that had emerged onto the internet over the years. My ACS colleague Brian Randell also had many questions about the project, which had been cancelled just as he had predicted early-on in the project. Collaborating closely via Skype, we happened upon and shared lots of additional evidence, and began making sense out of it all. The findings so far are fascinating indeed, as you’ll discover in the resulting memoir.

While that work was underway, I was invited by John Lloyd to contribute a chapter to a Festschrift honoring Brian on his 75th birthday. It was published in November 2011. In addition to my ACS memoir, the Festschrift contained fascinating chapters by many prominent computer scientists, including Gordon Bell, Peter Denning, Tony Hoare, Dave Parnas and many more:

Lynn Conway, “IBM-ACS: Reminiscences and Lessons Learned from a 1960’s Supercomputer Project”. A chapter in: C. B. Jones, J. L. Lloyd, (Eds.), Dependable and Historic Computing: Essays Dedicated to Brian Randell on the Occasion of his 75th Birthday, Springer-Verlag, Berlin, 2011, pp.185–224.