The Veiling of Queerness: Depoliticization and the Experiences of LGBT Engineers

The ideology of depoliticization within the culture of engineering is the belief that “social” issues can and should be bracketed from the more “technical” aspects of engineering. Through this ideology, issues of equality, justice and power are marked as tangentially important but largely irrelevant to the work of engineers. This paper explores how depoliticization operates to veil issues of lesbian, gay, bisexual and transgender (LGBT) equality within engineering, and ultimately make it more difficult to discuss—and rectify—the inequities this population may experience. Depoliticization not only means that promoting LGBT equality is a low priority within the profession, but that the very discussion of LGBT equality issues is considered irrelevant to “real” engineering education and engineering work. I draw from pilot interviews with LGBT engineers in academia and industry to parse out some of the particular processes through which depoliticization acts to silence LGBT equality issues in engineering. After presenting my findings, I suggest ways in which engineering may challenge these processes of depoliticization and lift the veil surrounding queerness in engineering.