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Whiteness is prevalent in higher education and therefore permeates science, technology, engineering, and mathematics (STEM) fields. While research shows STEM's long history of exclusion and marginalization in higher education (Ong et al., 2011), there has been limited research on the ways students with minoritized identities of sexuality and/or gender (MIoSG) in STEM interact with systems of dominance, such as whiteness. Using white supremacy culture (Okun, 2021; Okun & Jones, 2001) and the white racial frame (Feagin, 2010) as sensitizing concepts, this paper explores how students with MIoSG are situated in relation to systems of whiteness and white racial dominance in STEM learning spaces. Our findings included three emergent categories: color-evasiveness, desiring diversity in STEM, and the simultaneous invisibility and hypervisibility of Black, Indigenous, and People of Color (BIPOC) in STEM. Findings illuminated the complex ways BIPOC and white students with MIoSG experienced and thought about whiteness and white supremacy in STEM. Data point to the need for intentional anti-racist research, policy, and practice in STEM learning spaces.

Research has highlighted the connection between involvement and important postsecondary outcomes such as persistence, interpersonal/intrapersonal development, civic engagement, and multicultural competence, among many others. However, for students with minoritized identities of sexuality and gender (MIoSG), engaging in identity-based organizations comes with both risks and benefits, especially in a time of increasingly prevalent anti-queer and anti-trans U.S.-based legislation. Our findings reveal the complexity of student experiences, with a specific focus on STEM students who hold MIoSG, from overall positive involvement experiences to barriers such as danger, inactive clubs, and lack of campus spaces. This focus on MIoSG students within STEM disciplines is important, as students often report STEM spaces as particularly oppressive, therefore having a high need for counter spaces where their identities are supported. These findings could help practitioners rethink how to design campus spaces where students do not have to fear for their physical, emotional, and professional safety.

While decades of scholarship show the oppression of women by the enforcement of patriarchal gender norms, little research has explored the ways in which masculinity receives preferential treatment over femininity, independent of a man/woman binary. This exploration is needed to understand why femininity is devalued within the heteropatriarchal masculine social context under which much of current Western society was formed. In response to this anti-femininity sentiment, an emerging area of study called critical femininity was developed to add unique insights into the way in which femininity is embodied and rejected across genders. In this paper, critical femininity is used to explore how masculine-identifying science, technology, engineering, and mathematics (STEM) students holding minoritized identities of sexuality and/or gender (MIoSG) experience and navigate their campus environments that are steeped in anti-femininity. Only by documenting complex understandings of how men and masculine-identifying STEM individuals (who are the majority of STEM learners and faculty) learn, enact, and reproduce anti-femininity can educators begin to resist and alter harmful patriarchal STEM environments.

With constantly changing political landscapes affecting the ability of college students with minoritized identities of sexuality and/or gender (MIoSG; Vaccaro et al., 2015) to thrive on campus, higher educators need to understand student reported stressors to design more inclusive learning environments. Building from minority stress theory and using data from a grounded theory study with 56 collegiate STEM students with MIoSG, this paper documents stressors that students reported as contributing to diminished wellbeing. We used constant comparative grounded theory analysis to identify stressors shared by all participants, which included lack of belonging and invisibility in competitive STEM cultures as well as exclusionary interactions with STEM peers. Recommendations include the design and delivery of holistic education and support services on campus.