This article by an Xoogler illustrates why things at Google are hard to change.
From the point of view of my own issue, it shows why Google Scholar, with all its unearned academic authority, will never be able to change to be inclusive of trans authors.
https://medium.com/@pravse/the-maze-is-in-the-mouse-980c57cfd61a
To catch up on why Google Scholar is a uniquely trans-exclusionary force in academia:
This is not a defense of the status quo. The solution is one Google knows well and is clearly capable of.
Google Scholar must shut down.
You’ll manage, cis people. There are others ready to do the job, right now, if Google didn’t suck all the air out of the room.
If Google had any alternative, a plan better than shutting down Scholar, we would have heard of it by now.
But instead they’ve done nearly nothing for 4 years, they’ve never even responded to the Name Change Policy Working Group, and the one thing they tried (while taking no input from non-Googlers) just outed and deadnamed trans authors _more_.
Here’s an alternative that is ready and not poisoned by Google culture: Internet Archive Scholar. https://scholar.archive.org
They consulted trans authors, including me, on their data update process.
@arborelia Please consider this thread for your valuable work on open aggregation+discovery of the scholarly record, dear @OpenAlex developers 🙏🏽
The things Scholar would have to change, to stop driving trans people out of academia, would depend on deep cultural changes at Google.
They can’t even make those cultural changes for the sake of profit, so they clearly can’t make them for the sake of not being giant assholes.