In this episode of the Arts Management and Technology Lab, Melida Hernandez and Christine Rivera dive into the intersections of technology, identity, and representation in digital spaces and media. Melida explores how AI-based recognition systems, often trained on biased datasets, misclassify transgender and non-binary individuals, which impacts their self-presentation, psychological well-being, and digital agency. Melida also discusses how these technologies replicate real-world prejudices, limiting the fluidity of gender expression online, and highlights the lack of diversity in AI research teams, where women make up only 10–15% of staff. Christine’s research, on the other hand, focuses on how scripted and streaming television depicts motherhood and women’s reproductive choices, connecting these portrayals to broader issues such as policy, workplace inequality, and the “motherhood penalty.” Together, they unpack how media archetypes, algorithmic bias, and social platforms shape public perception and reinforce gender roles, calling for more inclusive storytelling, equitable AI design, and better systemic support for women and marginalized communities.
Transcript
Melida Hernandez
So what was interesting, also horrific, is that these systems lack the capacity to understand the nuances and the fluidity and complexities of social self presentation because they are trained on the biases in the real world.
Dr. Brett Crawford
Welcome to another episode of Tech in the Arts, the podcast series of the Arts Management and Technology Laboratory, also known as AMT Lab.
The goal of our podcast series is to exchange ideas, discuss emerging technologies, and uncover things that artists, managers, and tech geeks like us need to know. In our first episode of our 11th. Season. Our contributors, Christine Rivera and Melida Hernandez talk about the impact of our technology on society and the politics of identities.
Thank you, Christine and Melida for kicking off our season with such a juicy topic.
Melida Hernandez
What are we talking about today, Christine?
Christine Rivera
So we are going to be talking a lot about identity, the representation of specific identities and how those things are helped or hurt by the technologies and platforms that help proliferate them. Does that sound right?
Melida Hernandez
That sounds beautiful.
Christine Rivera
Great.
Melida Hernandez
I was kinda lost at the end cause I was like, that's good, and now I'm not. I'm not sure where to continue too. Good.
Christine Rivera
Let's start with you because this is a really. I know that you and I both said we have a lot of stuff, right. I feel like we both could have kept writing for like another two years, but we both would've lost our minds.
Melida Hernandez
Yeah, certainly. I can jump into my topic. Really, my research was looking at how the misclassification, both transgender and non-binary individuals by AI-based recognition systems influence their digital agency, their self-presentation and psychological wellbeing. When I'm talking about AI-based recognition systems, it's both algorithmic and with regards to things like voice recognition, image recognition, and so on and so forth.
Christine Rivera
Amazing. So tell me a little bit more about what made you interested in this topic? And broadly speaking, what were some of the most fascinating things that you found in your research?
Melida Hernandez
Yeah, absolutely. So I think what led me to this topic was really thinking about the way in which online spaces shaped my own identity and that of others. These spaces, they serve as this space for community building and accessing support networks and resources, and especially as a space to experiment with self-expression.
I found myself going back through previous forum posts I'd made as a kid. I have a huge digital trail that extends from the age of six onwards. I have to think. I had very early access to the internet. And it's interesting to see how I would sort of toe the line between, you know, I don't mind being a little androgynous.
You know, in this game where I get to customize a character or I don't mind leaning a little more masculine. It led me to this topic because I began to think about how AI is becoming at least more noticeable in these digital spaces. It has always existed to some extent, especially with regards to the algorithms that deal with content moderation and how people are feeling much more emboldened to sort of inject their existing biases and misconceptions about transgender non-binary people into our digital spaces.
It's really hard to distinguish between physical, real life spaces and digital spaces, and. Whereas before, I felt as though people who were experimenting with their identity or who already identified as transgender non-binary could very readily present themselves in that way online, even if they faced discrimination or biases in the real world.
Now those things are so entangled where it's like you have to confront this every day. There was some research I was reading with regards to the acquisition of. X formerly Twitter by Elon Musk. It was a study that was tracking hate speech on X, and it found that following the platform's acquisition in October of 2022, weekly hate posts increased by approximately 50% with transphobic content, more than doubling in volume.
It wasn't that this hate speech was emerging out of nowhere, but with the combination of just the acquisition of X and some of the algorithms changing, as well as this new unnamed administration. People who were within these chambers felt more emboldened to discuss these topics, which in turn amplified the visibility and influence of the harmful content they were producing. Yeah, so now. Whether you followed them or not, you would see you're getting it.
Christine Rivera
Yeah. Well, it's funny to me, like, I'm sorry to jump in, but like it's funny to me because like on the one hand, I'm not someone who grew up with access. You know, like I was a dialup kid, so like, I remember life before the internet and I remember being in chat rooms and feeling like, oh my God, someone's gonna find out where I live somehow.
Like it was, it was, you know, it's a very different kind of exposure to it, you know, depending on what age you're at. And I think that it's an interesting thing because to some degree. I completely understand the need for moderation of content or sort of whatever in terms of people who, bad actors, who will misrepresent who they are in these forums and prey on people.
But on the other hand, it is like you're saying, these places are widely used for people to kind of figure out who they are or have a safe space to be able to state something about themselves without actual fear of, you know repercussion and lack of safety is really, you know. And so it's this funny thing of what these companies, these sort of overseers on high consider to be harmful, potentially or unsafe. Versus what people are actually living every day and that this is the place that they can go. Like you said, at 6 or 13 or whatever, and be like, I think that I like kind of expressing myself in this way. You know, the egg? Yes. The egg. Talk about the egg.
Melida Hernandez
So within queer communities, and I would say most predominantly those who are very ingrained in digital spaces, so either they're just very active on social media or perhaps they're playing some sort of online MMO, which is a massive multiplayer online game, so that means they're interacting with many others through this space. There is a term which sometimes derogatory, oftentimes a little more just inquiry based in terms of it.
Christine Rivera
It's a softball like, hey friend, tell me something.
Melida Hernandez
Absolutely. And there's a term called egg, which really isn't inherently awful.
Christine Rivera
It offers a soft landing of sorts for someone to be upfront about who they actually want to be or are.
Melida Hernandez
Absolutely. So oftentimes when someone who at the time may be identifying as either a cis female or male. If they were to perhaps have an avatar that is opposite. So for example, in the case of someone who at the time might be presenting as a cis male, if they were to have an avatar that is a female, someone might ask, hey, are you an egg?
And really that's what that means is to ask, are you experimenting and or considering a gender identity that is different from your current sex? I have had many friends who I have met online and have thought, oh, are you a girl? Because your beautiful avatar is this lovely lady, and they're like, no. And I'm like, okay.
And you give it a few months or a year or something and usually the truce comes out and they're like, yeah.
Christine Rivera
Yeah, I think it's really fascinating and I mean just from like the kind of broad sweeping, societal kinds of ways. But also because it's something that I just missed. I missed this stuff, so like it's a totally different way of kind of navigating a space, like I said, sort of like say out loud to someone. You may be thousands of miles away from them, but like you get to kind of, you know, it's a psychological kind of gift in a way to be able to put yourself out there in this very very specific way.
Melida Hernandez
I think what's interesting is the tension that exists between the nature and fluidity that can exist with regards to gender identity. And then conversely, the operational logic of how many current AI systems function and with regards to gender expression. While it is, you know, external or can be this like curated performance in a way, AI recognition systems, particularly in areas like facial analysis often functioned by identifying patterns in what is external and observable and mapping these two predefined, frequently binary categories based on the correlations that it learned from the training data. So what was interesting, also horrific, but also something that I sort of knew and just didn't have the information to back up at the time. Now I do is, is that these systems lack the capacity to understand the nuances and the fluidity and complexities of social self-presentation because they are trained on the biases in the real world, and those things kind of draw into the digital world and they become further enmeshed and inescapable.
Christine Rivera
You said, what's the percentage of women in?
Melida Hernandez
Yeah, we can talk about representations. The AI field suffers from a severe lack of diversity across gender, race, and very likely gender identity. The issue is that these teams are composed of primarily white, cisgender men and they lack the lived experience and perspectives needed to anticipate, recognize, address the biases that disproportionately affect marginalized groups, like transgender and non-binary people. Women constitute only 10 to 15% of AI research staff at major tech companies.
Christine Rivera
God, that's funny because it's the exact same in the research that I was doing, which we can get to in a moment. But, I'm very fascinated by what you worked on. I'd love to see you keep on moving it forward. Once you have a little more brain space.
Melida Hernandez
So tell me about what you worked on.
Christine Rivera
Yeah, so I ultimately kind of went down a couple of different rabbit holes, but the research that I am really honing in on at this point has to do with two different seemingly disparate topics. But I actually think it's a really interesting question to ask, which is, how have the depictions of mothers and women in the position of choosing whether or not to become mothers? How are they being depicted in scripted streaming and televised content policy with regards to not just reproductive rights at large, but also what kinds of systems are in place to support parents, and specifically, are there systems in place to protect women once they do have children? And that's everything from paid maternity leave to school choice to affordable childcare. The list goes on and on.
Melida Hernandez
What are the people in the United States seeing from these programs, shows?
Christine Rivera
Yeah, that's a really good question. So it's obviously difficult to narrow it down. There was a really promising, wonderful surge in the kinds of nuance and complexities and certainly diversity of mothers and motherhood experiences.
So you had the more, you know, you had to let down, you had the things that are like the mothers are in the thick of it and not loving every minute of it. And then you've got the other ones where it's more broadcast, television, sitcom type stuff. These are all things that come into play with how and where you see different portrayals of any character.
So, we did see between 2017, 2018, and present day a really big surge in racial diversity, diversity in sexual or gender identities. Unfortunately, I think the one thing that was really missing, and the Gina Davis Institute pointed this out in one of their pieces of research that, despite all of that representation, there was not a single mother represented on television, at least not in the title cast in 2022, 2023, that had any kind of disability.
So there are definitely big, big areas of improvement in terms of authentic representative kinds of portrayals for women in America, women all over, but specifically in America, just for the purposes of this. Now as someone who has a background in acting, whether for the stage or the screen. There's an understanding that, you know, in storytelling itself, you're not going to ever have a fully realized, fully representative kind of character.
You're going to have the best of the best, in the best circumstances, in the best hands, it's an amalgamation of 20 different people's work coming together in this beautiful way. Naturally, film and television and other sort of storytelling formats will rely on archetypes. Archetypes are not just important in storytelling.
They're also important sociologically and sort of culturally how we refer to ourselves, how we identify ourselves within a role or within a context, right? Archetypally, there's like the good mother, who's self-sacrificing to a fault, who will put all of her needs aside to tend to every need and care of her child at all times.
Then there's the more future focused mother who believes it's her job to really curate this path, whether it's educational or professional or nourishment, whatever. It's a very curated kind of path. There's an intuitive mother, fun mother. There's all these different kinds of things and throughout different storytelling formats, you can tell those stories in a million different ways. Now, the difference is who's seeing which archetypes and how often are they seeing them? Because that's where we really see the perceptions shift, right?
We see perspectives being molded by the fact that you've seen three shows now back to back because the algorithm keeps on feeding you the same kinds of shows where the mom is going to happily continue to hold down every bit of the fort, while the dad, who, God bless him, you know, what a great guy and he's trying so hard, but isn't he just kind of a buffoon. And that's the sort of, you know, weaponization of incompetence, that I actually think can kind of feed into our expectations of each other.
These sort of gender roles are reinforced, not intentionally by the storytellers, but actually just because people are coming at this in their living room or on their laptops or whatever, from wildly different perspectives and wildly different abilities to discern critically what it is they're watching.
So this is where my concern with how people are consuming the content and the kinds of things that are being reinforced, and then put that side by side with a map that can kind of show which way people voted in the past three elections. I think it would be fascinating.
Melida Hernandez
This is a framework that I had been looking at with regards to my own research, which is phenomenology. So phenomenology is this method for studying as the creator of it states, the essences of consciousness and how phenomena appear from our first person point of view. And in particular, I was looking at Sarah Achmed's Queer Phenomenology. And she talks about how our physical bodies have to reorient to follow the line that society is putting in front of us when our bodies are not already oriented to this line, we experienced disorientation constantly or forcing us to orient.
Christine Rivera
Yes. A big part of the research that I did has to do with the sort of motherhood penalty. Are you familiar with the motherhood penalty?
Melida Hernandez
No. It sounds terrifying.
Christine Rivera
It is. But it's basically this idea that even if you have a successful career prior to having children, something like 40 some percent of women go back to work within two or three weeks of having their child because they can't afford not to. Like they have to. We don't have the access, we don't have the support, we don't have the medical support, we don't have all of these things for every child you have, the steeper the motherhood penalty becomes and you earn less when you go back. So not only are you like an average woman who chooses to step away for any length of time to raise her children, you're batting lower than you were when you left. And meantime, the fathers get what they call the fatherhood bonus.
Which is now you have a family, so you get to leverage your situation for more money. So it's this massive shift where women are no longer able to invest in their own 401Ks or retirement. They're not able to, you know, have their own savings, whatever. And this is even in the most equitable of homes. There's still these conversations where it's like, what do I do if shit goes south, right?
I don't have the money. And I don't have the leverage picking up where I left off, if not, above that, professionally. The way that we expect women to bounce back. All of this is just like, oh, I see, got it. I guess I just have to keep on, you're surviving the most enormous hormonal shift and sleep deprivation and role and identity shift in your life. Cool. Great. I better just buckle down and keep moving. You know? It's intense.
Melida Hernandez
I can only imagine. I mean, it's interesting looking at who is seated at the table right now. It is a mother and someone who is at the risk of being too personal. I love working with children. I love children and I cannot imagine a situation that is financially sustainable for myself with regards to the types of work and roles that I am most interested in. So it's like at the sacrifice of yourself, do you potentially ignore the situation altogether, which could potentially be a disservice to your children.
Christine Rivera
Yep. And this is all just for the women that have chosen to be mothers, not to mention the women that have found themselves in that position.
Melida Hernandez
Right.
Christine Rivera
We could be doing a whole lot better at making this. A more palatable choice, but also a more sustainable choice, a more actually supported choice.
Melida Hernandez
But it's fascinating to see how these are reflected in if, I don't know if your research led you here, but the Manosphere. And how conversely, you know, mothers or people who are considering having children or considering not having children might see this and be influenced. But conversely, how that might influence men, who then look to these women with a certain expectation of how they should perform as a mother.
Christine Rivera
Yes, absolutely. And it even goes to this idea of we have seen a good upswing in terms of how fathers are represented in their children's lives, in these different kinds of series.
But even with the improvement of like this dad is a really involved dad on this sitcom, there's still a buffoon. And that's because it's a trope. It works. It does sell. And it's funny because ultimately what a viewer wants is not reality. They want something that's slightly elevated or slightly off kilter.
So, that being said, like we've seen this wonderful upswing, but there is still, it falls down to this idea that like the domestic work is still largely being done by women. You'll see a mom folding clothes on, you know, any streaming content or televised content twice as much, if not more than the males.
But I do think that this is interesting because manosphere then expects that, like the mother will be able to do these things. But similarly, I honestly think that it ingrains in us this expectation that men can't. That ultimately the men are still just not evolved enough, like to expect of them.
So what actually has to happen is. On a personal level, you know, from household to household, you have to do these things, but it's also, it is heartening to me that there's at least conversations being had in some of these television shows that have to do with, do we have children, do we want children? All of these things are fairly new, I mean, on the grander spectrum. So I do see more goods and bad in that way. But I just, along with the policy, it's like, oh God, I can feel it all going back to the way it was, and it's terrifying and it feels like when we have the answers, why are we walking away?
Melida Hernandez
Well, I do still think all things considered that it is a vocal minority who are supportive of in terms of looking at archetypes of motherhood, the wife who is beautiful with a glass of wine in her hand, effortless resource, has a, she's a little bit exotic.
Christine Rivera
Oh yeah. Just like ethnically ambiguous enough.
Melida Hernandez
Right. And it is interesting to see how this vocal minority influences not just. Going back a little to the social media, what people are exposed to there. The people, the decision makers who are deciding what shows are green lit and what are not, are looking to where the money is and who is watching.
Christine Rivera
Correct. Everyone is not watching the same show anymore on a Friday night. The shared reality that we had culturally speaking with regards to our entertainment sources is completely fractured and getting more and more so. And you know, I had touched on bundling a little bit in my research because it all depends on who they're already subscribing to and you're bundling it all together.
So it's this interesting kind of like corporate thing where it's like, if you don't wanna see it, you don't have to look at it. It just doesn't exist for you. And that is pleasant, but not real.
That's all for today's episode of AMT Lab.
Dr. Brett Crawford
Thank you for listening to this episode of Tech in the Arts. If you found this episode to be informative, educational, or inspirational, be sure to check out our other episodes and send this to another arts or technology aficionado in your life. If you want to know more about arts management and technology, check out our website at amt-lab.org, or you can email us at info@amt-lab.org. You can follow us on Instagram at techinthearts, or on Facebook and LinkedIn at our full name Arts Management and Technology Lab.
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