STEM students mock woke LGBT survey, researchers attribute it to the growth of online fascism.

Academic Researchers Shocked by Irreverent Responses to LGBT Survey

Academic researchers were left horrified when college students submitted irreverent and offensive ⁢responses to their ‌LGBT survey. The researchers, from Oregon State University, were conducting a study on undergraduate LGBT ‌students⁢ in STEM fields.

Out of the 349 total survey⁣ responses, approximately 15%‌ (50 responses) were deemed “malicious” by the researchers. These responses contained slurs, hate ⁤speech, and direct targeting of the research team.

One respondent identified their gender ‌as “aerosol,” their race ‌as ​”Afro/Klingon-Asiatic Galapogayation,” and their disability as “being 2.86% ‍white.”

Another respondent identified their gender as ⁢”airplane,” their⁢ race as “Native American (Elizabeth ⁢Warren),” and ‍their disability as “transgenderism.”

Yet another respondent identified their gender as​ “f***ing white male,” ⁣their race as “Swedish Muslim,” and their ​disability as “my country is run by communists.”

One respondent humorously identified their⁢ gender as “pansexual attack helicopter,” ⁣their race as “kangz,” ‌and their disability as “intracranial ⁤lead deficiency.”

The‍ researchers offered a $5 Amazon gift card as compensation for participating in the survey, which‌ led one student to ⁣identify as a “gift card” and claim that their disability was not having enough gift cards.

The researchers decided to analyze these mocking responses within the context of engineering culture and its connection to online fascism. They⁤ published a paper titled “Attack Helicopters and White Supremacy: Interpreting Malicious Responses to⁣ an Online Questionnaire about Transgender Undergraduate Engineering and Computer Science Student Experiences.”

In their paper, the researchers highlighted the presence of online memes associated with white nationalist and fascist movements,⁣ as well as references to gaming and “nerd” culture. They called for empowering “counterspeech”⁤ to confront hate ‍and reclaim agency.

Interestingly, the analysis revealed that 12 students‍ associated their gender with helicopters or aircraft, while 15 students referred to transgender identities ​as ⁣a disability.

Some students also expressed their dissatisfaction with the research project in ‍the survey’s comments section:

• “Please do some research on something that will actually benefit the human race.”
• “How on earth did this study get funding???”
• “Stop trying to push gender and convince people that they are more important or discriminated against because [of] how they identify. Let people choose their own​ path and don’t force them into fields because you think ‌a group isn’t represented enough.”

The researchers acknowledged that the malicious responses had a profound impact on their morale. One of‍ the graduate student researchers, ​who⁣ identifies as transgender, even had to⁤ take time off the project to heal from the distress caused by reading the tongue-in-cheek responses.

Overall, this incident highlights the challenges faced by ​researchers in conducting sensitive surveys and⁤ the importance of addressing hate speech and discrimination in academic settings.

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