![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
"Cis people: You're not being let in on some secret or learning who we 'really' are or some shit by learning our deadnames.
"Our deadnames are not us."
-- Kathryn the birthday lizard! (TransSalamander), 2020-05-12
"Knowing someone's deadname is like knowing the average circumference of their shits: utterly useless and also I would rather not be burdened with that information." -- Rey (ReynardMiri), 2020-05-12
[Yes, most of the people reading this do know my deadname because of how long you've known me. These quotes were more directed to overly curious folks who try to find out people's deadnames, who ask it, who feel the need to insert it into interviews and articles. Or the vile ones who want to know our deadnames to try to hurt us with.]
(no subject)
(no subject)
(no subject)
First, the general rule: consistently refer to a trans person by their current name & gender even when discussing events from before they transitioned. On an individual basis different trans people will have different preferences for you you refer to their past, but the safest approsach unless you know otherwise is to use current name & pronoun even when talking about the past. (Note that journalists often get this wrong.)
Second, about me personally: even though I know it can feel a little odd, especially for folks who've known me as long as you have, I too would indeed prefer to be Daphne even in old stories; currently I'm kindasorta okay with old friends using my old name for old stories when the story would seem really strange otherwise, like if the way Jeannine used to say my name when exasperated is part of the story, and the story is being told aloud, but ... well, my comfort with that may change as I go on, and even now I'd prefer to be consistently Daphne. I'll grant that editing dialogue in stories is the weirdest part of this change. Also, though the reason for this is kinda vague, I'm less comfortable with my deadname being used in text, especially on social media.
Third, about it being hard to think of me first as Daphne but getting better at it: yeah, that's an adjustment. I'm pretty sure that would be a lot easier if we were seeing each other face to face often. It does seem to have gone faster for folks who I saw more often before the pandemic, and perhaps also for the folks I've been talking to on the phone, just from practice at using my name. I do appreciate the effort. hug
Partly, this is about wanting my name to just be my name. Partly it connects to complicated questions about having control over degrees of out-ness/visibility, which would be very simple questions if not for how extremely visible everyone who knows me is used to me being. That part is actually confusing to me, TBH -- an unexpected cluster of feelings I wasn't expecting from having changed my name and appearence. I'll try to explore those in the future, when I understand my own reactions a little better. But given the footprints I've left all over the Internet in previous decades, that's more about controlling first impressions than trying to be "stealth" in any given environment.
(no subject)
I do have a follow-up, if a person acquired the rights to a piece of work (e.g. music) written by a person who then changes name (Trans or otherwise), the rights are still transitioned but the paperwork/credit might get messy. I know that I have to occasionally produce the legal paperwork of my name change from the court to document the legal threads. So if Cher had written a song before becoming Cher (assuming that wasn't her birth name but I have no idea) and sold the rights to it to Motown. The Chessie Bays found the song in a catalog, pay ASCAP fees, and perform it with the credit to CherBirthName (which is the name it is in the catalog under). How much trouble should they be in? Who is responsible for updating author information after name changes (for whatever reason)?
Personally, the idea that shows up in various guises of people choosing a name as part of becoming an adult makes a LOT of sense and would make the whole DeadName issue much easier for people to adapt to, especially if the birth names are 'child' names rather than 'adult' names. Feather becomes Walter, Sundrop becomes Samantha, etc..
(no subject)
As for etiquette re: referring to someone by their "dead name" when talking about the past, how do you feel? I've had some folks say "[dead name] wrote that" and others say that it's a slap in the face of every transexual to use their "dead name" to refer to incidents before they transitioned.
(no subject)
As for etiquette, yeah it varies from person to person, but the general rule (i.e. when you don't know a specific person feels otherwise about their deadname) is to consistently use a person's current name and pronoun even when talking about them pre-transition. See my longer reply to![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png)
blueeowyn, above.
I had thought a lot more people would be aware of my transition by now, but I also thought that I would see a lot more people a lot more often by now! Between not seeing folks and, well, not being as active here or on FaceBook as I used to be, I'm not really surprised word hasn't spread as far or as evenly after all.
I started HRT in 2012, decided on my new name in 2018 (but sort of rolled out that info gradually in different circles), shaved off the beard a little later in 2018, and am in the process of getting my name and gender marker legally changed.
I feel more me and I smile more often. :-)
(no subject)
:D
(no subject)
People will make honest mistakes or stumble sometimes and that's frustrating but we at least know the intentions are good even if people are imperfect. But going digging just to conjure up hurt and rub it in people's faces? Ugh. Why do people have to be so shitty?
In those rare cases where the past name matters for some reason, I tend to say something like "Owen who was then Zoe" (or "then known as" would be better, I guess). Is there a better way to handle that? I mean, I never want to drag people's unwanted past into things unnecessarily, and yet sometimes current context doesn't transpose into the past well.
(Tangent: did you know that Jewish law forbids bringing up a convert's non-Jewish past, except in cases where that really does matter, by which I mean things like marriage arrangements where lineage is involved? So I've already learned some stuff about eliding or working around past versions of a person, a little. This can be learned. I do stumble sometimes, with both Jewish status and gender, and am sometimes embarrassed and try to do better.)