Lesbian, gay, bisexual, transgender, transsexual and genderqueer people in geek communities face a range of issues which sometimes overlap with those experienced by women.

For example:

• Invisibility -- anything that assumes a heterosexual male audience assumes the absence of all women (because they are not male) as well as all gay and queer men (because they are not heterosexual).
• Sexualized environments may be uncomfortable to people who do not conform to the majority sexual identity
• Online harrassment in the form of "faggot" and "dyke" jokes
• Male Gaze, for example being defined as ugly by heterosexual men and heterocentric culture generally. This is especially relevant to butch women.
• Fetishization of lesbians: like wider society, some male geeks will fetishize lesbian sexuality depicted in pornography while treating as disgusting other lesbian or gay relationships or sexuality.

Gender and sexuality in databases Edit

A lot of software makes presumptions that users are cisgender or that they have cissexual bodies: social software often doesn't handle trans individuals' genders. Sometimes they cannot handle LGBT identities.

Links Edit

• Thread about a transsexual woman in the open source community (Trigger warning: transphobic, misogynistic, and biologically essentialist comments.)
• Being Gay: Google+’s Missing Feature
• Stuff Geeks Love: Homophobia
• When the Gay Outweighs the Geek – An Unexpected Encounter with Homophobia
• A Brief Exploration of Misogyny and Homophobia in Geekdom
• Homophobia at BlizzCon: Is Gamer Culture Anti-Gay?

See also: Intersectionality