Assistant (to the) Regional Professor

In recent news, I received notice last month that I received tenure and promotion. It’s been a really long road to get here, and I am no longer assistant (to the) professor!

As of July 1, my job title has been “associate professor.” I even changed my e-mail signature—the same day I turned on an out-of-office auto-reply announcing I’d be on limited work hours for sabbatical. The Office jokes aside, I am of course beyond delighted at this news.

There are a lot of people to thank, although almost none of them are on Substack and are unlikely to ever read this: my PhD advisor and friend, Lori Ross, who welcomed me into her research lab—first as an MSW practicum student in 2011, and then again from 2014-2019 when I become one among her growing throng of gracious LGBTQ2S trainees; my T&P file preparation committee and everyone who wrote supportive letters; my many academic mentors from undergrad to graduate school; research participants and community partners to whom my scholarship is dedicated; and many, many close friends and colleagues. But I especially thank Rae, my partner of nearly a decade. Her support, patience, and care goes unmatched. During my PhD, Rae listened to me practice dozens of presentations on my doctoral work—access to transgender medicine in Canada—and then she listened to everything that came after. She stuck with me as I navigated the most challenging years of my academic career—researching detransition—at the same time that we both became new parents, which also happened to coincide with COVID lockdowns. Some of those early tenure track years were brutal and I’m so glad to have it all mostly in the rear view.

Receiving tenure feels especially cathartic because my academic journey was never a particularly linear one. I have questioned the academic path for myself and I even contemplated leaving the PhD program in my third year (my advisor, Lori, talked me out of it and I’m grateful that she did). I still remember being shocked as an undergrad when a philosophy professor I admired told me she believed that I could go to grad school. (I was in my third year then, having nearly failed and dropped out the year prior after coming out as queer, suffering from a kind of depression, and was also generally flitting around at raves instead of studying.) The thought of grad school had never even occurred to me. Neither of my parents had obtained undergraduate degrees. My mother never finished high school. My grandparents told her that she should focus on getting married. My parents—my mother in particular—were some of my biggest supporters and encouraged me to pursue a university education, even if neither of them today are particularly familiar with the ins and outs of academic life. For example, I spent the better part of a decade explaining to them each spring that I do not in fact get to “take the whole summer off.” Still, I know they are proud of me.

Besides a modest pay bump and a bit more job security, I don’t anticipate a lot in my life changing in the shift from assistant to associate professor. My parents will likely continue each year asking me “how’s school going?” As if I am a kind of permanent student. Maybe in some ways, I am.

There is one thing I do hope changes, a bit. I’d like to work a little less. Not a lot less, just a little.

The regional manager of academia will never tell you to work less. Although incentivizing excessive work habits is built into contemporary academia, much of what I have managed to produce and achieve over the last 15 years is a reflection of sincere interest, dedication, curiosity, and a commitment to advance knowledge and LGBTQ care. However, I can’t say that there haven’t been moments I’ve wondered about the trade-offs. That was especially true on the tenure-track trajectory over the last 5-6 years, which also happened to directly correspond to the years when I first became a parent.

But I have already been slowing down. From June-September I’m in France, Belgium, and the Netherlands, in part for a visiting professorship and to deliver a few lectures. But mostly I’m spending time doing sight-seeing with Rae and the kids and wrapping up final book edits. Rae is on maternity leave until October (with our second child), so it was kind of a once-in-a-lifetime opportunity to arrange for this extended visit. (For non-Canadian readers, we are extremely fortunate that most working parents are entitled to up to 18-months parental leave. She’s taking 12 and I took 2. I recently learned that in France, it’s only a few months guaranteed time off postpartum!) We’ve been spending a lot of time at local outdoor gyms—because in another life, before kids, we were gym-rat powerlifters. We’ve also seen a lot of museums, art galleries, pools and other public Parisian swimming spots. We did a lot of swimming in the St. Martin canal which was a very popular activity in June during the obscene heatwave.

I’ve been wanting to write more about what I’ve been up to whilst on sabbatical. I also have some exciting stuff coming up! But I’m now more than halfway through the trip, and I just haven’t found the time to do extra writing. Most of this comes down to working reduced hours now because we don’t have childcare here, and with an infant and an extremely “spirited” 6-year-old, it’s been hard to find any time. But hey now - I’m running a free Substack here, so Im trying not to feel too guilty about it.

I saw a funny substack-note/tweet that said something like: Substack comes with a feeling of being late publishing an article that nobody ever asked you to write. I wonder if that will be a feeling I’ll need to contend with in Associate Professor life?

When I return from sabbatical in July 2027, I’ll move into a new administrative role in my department. I’ll be the undergraduate program coordinator, a service position I agreed to take on out of a sense of duty—to the department, to my colleagues, and to students. But it’s also a position that will carry a really steep learning curve for me and it will take me further away from my primary interest—research. In preparation, I’ve already started declining invites to collaborate on new research projects and such.

But, besides obtaining tenure and becoming associate professor, some other good news is that Pablo and I submitted our book that we’ve been working on for over a year (Understanding Detransition, Polity Press). We have heard back from our editor who gave us positive feedback on our updated/peer reviewed version of the manuscript. We now we have a few days to make a few last minor changes. I’m actually really struggling to finally put the book down as a project because it has lived in my mind for so long. It also seems like every week there’s something new unfolding in trans medicine/gender care that’s relevant to our book’s arguments. It’s a shame the book isn’t available now, as I think it provides an insightful and rigorous interpretation of gender care politics using history and philosophy of science, sociology, and affect theory. But it’s also about so much more, it’s about what happens when a medical category becomes unstable, and how uncertain evidence can become a blank canvas for competing identities, values, and politics. Anyway, we’re really excited to be able to eventually share it.

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Thanks for reading and have a great summer!

Feel free to share any Paris, Antwerp, or Amsterdam recommendations for us to check out. We have another 6 weeks before we return to Toronto.

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