A review by theaceofpages
The Autobiography of a Transgender Scientist by Ben Barres

challenging informative inspiring medium-paced

3.75

The author seems like he was such an inspiring man. Having grown up as a girl, he had a deep understanding of the struggles women face in science and used his newfound privilege after transitioning to speak up and advocate for and empower women in order to increase equality in the scientific world and beyond. As a queer scientist I would have loved to have gotten the chance to talk to him. The book is pretty short and I do wish that he had gone into a bit more detail about his life, especially surrounding his gender identity and childhood, but he did write it after getting a cancer diagnosis so I understand why. I enjoyed the style of these parts as it felt like he was having a conversation with you. I definitely feel like the introduction also contributes a lot to the impact the book has as it provides some more context (although I did feel a little sad while reading it as it did discuss his death. And at this point I didn't really know anything about him but the author of this segment did an incredible job building up the kind of person he was).

I will say that I think that most people will struggle with the segment that discusses his work - and it's a substantial chunk of the work. Neuroscience has quite a lot of technical terms and jargon and it reads a bit like a paper (although it doesn't go super in depth). I think that this part could have used an edit to make it more accessible to a wider audience. Don't get me wrong, is work is definitely interesting! I just feel like it' s not the easiest to grasp in its current form.

Some notes on some of the content warnings (all are individually spoliered)

Sexism: 
In addition to misogyny. Comments like how he should have been playing with girls, not boys, as a child
 
Misogyny: 
Discussions about how women aren't given the same opportunities in science. Thankfully it's gotten better since, but it's definitely not completely gone yet
 
Cancer:
Both people with cancer and discussions about medical/scientific papers

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