The daily struggle of LGBTQ+ scientists

Sofia Kirke Forslund knew back in college that the gender assigned to her at birth wasn’t right for her, but she wasn’t quite certain what her exact gender identity was. As Forslund started her PhD, she decided to put her explorations aside. ‘I simply assumed they wouldn’t be possible to understand and I would miss out on opportunities and collaborations, and I didn’t feel certain enough of what I was to be able to justify taking the risks,’ she says.

However, suppressing her gender identity took an emotional toll on the computational biologist. ‘Every social interaction was somehow stressful because I felt that people aren’t seeing who I actually am, whoever that is,’ says Forslund. ‘I felt that they were interacting with a mask that isn’t me, and that was draining.’

Luckily for Forslund, she met two successful queer scientists during her postdoc, who inspired her to be herself. ‘What I started to do then was to gradually try to test the boundaries of what I could express and try to make sure that I was, at least, presenting as much of my weirdness outwardly that I could be assured that the people I did become reliant on professionally wouldn’t be surprised or wouldn’t turn on me if I went further,’ she says.