Emma Reich

PhD Student in Ecological and Environmental Informatics

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Gender Partitioning

Originally published in Transcriptions Zine.

Working in science has taught me two things that I did not expect: (1)to be comfortable not understanding, and (2) to be comfortable not being understood.

I was attracted to the idea of science as a kid because it seemed like a place for eccentrics. After growing up in a close-minded, conservative suburb, the scientific community's tendency towards, what had seemed to me, excessive, highly-specific questioning of how the world works, was an unimaginable comfort. This was a world in which I met people who eat flowers they found growing next to the sidewalk, carry large, strange rocks around at conferences to show their friends, and compete in botanically accurate tattoo competitions. This was nothing like the rigid world I grew up in, where it was not a good thing to be different or excited about unknowns.

I was in college when a friend told me that he saw the different lab groups in the biology department as “instances of obsession”— having enough passion to fully embrace not understanding something, and dedicating a significant amount of time to not understanding itin more detail, is something of note.

This is all to say that I believe it’s a good thing to ask questions you care about, but it’s an even better thing to be around other people who ask questions they care about.

When I started working in science, there was an overwhelming sentiment to “come as your full self” when entering the scientific community. I think this started as a way to encourage scientists to interact with the world as full people— people with eccentricities, belief systems, cultures, hobbies, families, and general interests outside the world of science.

However, this sentiment threw me into a self-reconciliation: Had I ever truly been myself? Science often claims objectivity, but the truth is that science does not exist in a vacuum, and is subject to the same biases that all major institutions are. So, when senior scientists encouraged me to come into the scientific community as my full self, I felt they didn’t fully understand whatthey were asking of me.

However, this sentiment threw me into a self-reconciliation: Had I ever truly been myself? Science often claims objectivity, but the truth is that science does not exist in a vacuum, and is subject to the same biases that all major institutions are. So, when senior scientists encouraged me to come into the scientific community as my full self, I felt they didn’t fully understand whatthey were asking of me.

As a queer non-binary scientist, finding comfort in work and social spaces can be challenging. Throughout my life I’ve had to repeatedly ask myself the question: Will being myself result in a sacrifice of community? For a long time, I only existed after a series of self-edits I thought were necessary to pass through the world with a baseline level of respect. The truth is that to some extent, people only respect you if they recognize where you’re coming from, and to some extent people will only like you if they relate to you. This isn’t necessarily a bad thing— if there are other people in science who are like you. For this reason, sometimes it’s a lot safer to be some diluted version of yourself than who you actually are. However, after a certain point, being palatable for the comfort of other people is not being honest.

Despite this, one thing is clear to me: The scientific community is better when people are comfortable not understanding things and are comfortable asking questions, because that’s what science is. The practice of asking questions is inherent to who I am. This is what being non-binary is to me: a series of difficult questions based on observations that I direct inward. All of my identities are important to my work; the person who asks scientific questions and the person who questions their gender cannot be conveniently separated for the comfort of others, and both identities form a feedback loop to each other.

For a long time I was stuck somewhere between wanting to split my gender open, and wanting to abandon it. This is to say, I did not know if I wanted the word “woman” to mean more things, or if I wanted to use a new word. For a while, I was unproductively concerned with trying to add up the different parts of my personality into statements I could explain to people without using an explicit label. But labels are just social manuals that instruct people how to treat one another. I like the term non-binary now, because it gives me a word to communicate these feelings to other people, and maybe that gives me a chance at truly being myself.

Science is really just for people who like to ask questions. Because of this, I think it should be normal and somewhat common for scientists to want to question— to redefine— their gender. For me, wanting to be a scientist and being non-binary were two things that existed in tandem to each other, because being non-binary is inherently inquisitive. It is a benefit to the scientific community to include non-binary people, and I have found a great deal of worth and meaning in being a non-binary scientist.



A brief and incomplete love letter to ecology

All science is based in wonder. In fact, it was a yearning for adventure that led me to pursue ecology in the first place. Whether measuring water potentials of oaks in northern California, collecting algae in French Polynesia, identifying plants in the arctic, or censusing fossils in New Mexico, I have found the act of discovery that comes with research inexplicably exciting.

Science offers a way to explore the world that is inherently curious and beautiful. There isn’t a better way to approach growing and learning than doing science, because it requires you to ask questions. The whole point of science is not knowing, and that ideology opens doors to different modes of perception in all areas of the human experience.

A few years ago I read an essay by Thomas L. Fleischner that highlights how I've grown to feel about research (Why Natural History Matters). In it, Fleischner makes a case for the value of observation-based science, not only for its usefulness in inspiring scientific questions, but for its effect on the human condition by encouraging sympathetic meditation on the surrounding world. At the time, I had started my own journal of natural history observations and I related to his sentiment with an acuteness I did not expect— in my ecological research I too had found joy in the simple act of paying attention. Through careful observation of the natural world, ecological thinking can become a rebellion against standard schemas of thought in that it functions in a space where one must focus on systems separate from one’s personal self. In this way, careful observations in the field can become empathy outside of it. Learning that type of perceptivity has the potential to become really powerful. I believe we can apply this empathy for the unknown into our everyday lives, whether we are interacting with nature or with people.