cross-posted from: https://sopuli.xyz/post/44631447
For the record, @Lalla@slrpnk.net entered my thread to spout some finger-wagging threadcrap:
“Could we at least not use her deadname? I get that the article is old, but please don’t.”
I actually agree with using the proper new names of people in the present to address them in the present. But it’s stupid and disrespectful to drag someone’s new name through their history before they changed their identity. I believe my response to the threadcrap was quite civil. This is what @CurlyWurlies4All@slrpnk.net surreptitiously censored:
“We are talking about Manning’s history. It is proper to use the name of the time of the events. People don’t create new identities for the hell of it. New identities are generally created for a new life going forward, to be disconnected from a past life.
Europe recognises the right to be forgotten which is enshrined in GDPR art.17. Guatamala respects people’s wishes to establish a new identity to the extent of allowing name changes with no public record in a closed-door session with a judge.
Tying someone’s new name to their prior history is disrespectful. Some may want their legacy to follow them despite a name change and we might guess Manning is proud of their accomplishment, but it’s not for you to decide what people with new identities carry forward from their past.
Please respect people’s privacy. I know Manning’s privacy is toast anyway, but it’s still off to be part of the intrusion and then to ask others to also drag new identities through their prior history.
You also advocate historic inaccuracy. Exxon (a dead name) discovered climate change. Not ExxonMobil. You cause confusion by insisting on refencing new identities in past events. If you say ExxonMobil discovered climate change in the 1960s, you falsely imply that ExxonMobil existed at that time. But in fact the merger (and thus new identity) came after that.
The modlog vaguely states “breaks rules” without citing a specific rule. This was coupled with the cowardess of not DMing me about the action.
The power abuse occurs alongside the decision to allow the rule-breaking threadcrap I defended from to persist. The mod doubles down on their oppression this way. The privacy-disrespecting finger-wag carries on in a community that inherently values privacy.
Ydi
we don’t do that here
The title is extremely confused but i think i understand after reading
Did you message the mod to discuss? Transphobia is a field where a lot of people use technicalities to normalize poor practices
also, would that mean that you would use male pronouns for Ms. Manning when talking about her actions at the time? Most people would say that’s unacceptable and so would i. I think that would put into focus why the imperfect solution of retroactive nomenclature is preferable to deadnaming
Ms. Manning did request during her trial that her new name be used so i think probably she’s fine with her deadname not being used for her actions in that period.
but putting arguable decisions out on the public record is why this community exists, so thank you for posting!!
Did you message the mod to discuss?
The mod did a surreptitious censor without inquiry. This implies they aren’t interested. But they were tagged in the thread (b/c unlike them, I try to be transparent) so the opportunity is there.
Transphobia is a field where a lot of people use technicalities to normalize poor practices
The arbitrary hunt for suspect transphobes cannot serve as an excuse to disrespect people’s privacy and cause confusion about history. I find it very annoying to encounter incorrect attempts to push political correctness. If someone wants to go around finger-wagging people, they damn well better get it right themselves because they are threadcrapping to interrupt people to make an off-topic point. It’s like someone interrupting an interesting conversation to correct your English or grammar when in fact you had it right to begin with and the person doing the interruption got it wrong.
also, would that mean that you would use male pronouns for Ms. Manning when talking about her actions at the time?
I would favor singular they in the context of the past. Who’s to say (as a general case) when someone changed their gender identity w.r.t. their name? As a general principle, without knowing exactly when someone re-gendered, it’s fair enough to use the pronoun of the time along with the name of the time. It’s confusing and inaccurate to refer to Manning as a /her/ before she was a “her” (or widely known as such), as if to suggest that Manning has some kind of retroactive shame in their previous gender identity. You risk abusing their privacy at the same time as getting the gender (of the time) wrong. Manning was a man at one point in time. But again, singular they is likely safest when referencing a time before their current identity.
What if they switch their gender a 2nd time, and you are talking about a time between the first and second change?
You should think about what is the whole fucking point anyway? If you get someone’s gender wrong today, in the present, it can be offensive. But when talking about the past, the risk of offending someone gets out in the weeds with an off chance of some kind of hyper sensitivity, when there is a possible greater injustice of undermining their privacy. Privacy should be respected first and foremost. Someone who changes their identity has no reasonable expectation that everyone will know whether a fragile-dignity-ego is in play in a historic context, particularly when journalists are trusted sources of who they write about and political correctness. The article that was cited is relevant here.
Ms. Manning did request during her trial that her new name be used so i think probably she’s fine with her deadname not being used for her actions in that period.
We can guess. And because Manning is a high-profile figure we could do plenty of research before uttering a word about Manning, like reading court documents. I see negative value in using such research to finger-wag others though – people who are prima facie superficially aware of the timeline should not have to see threadcrap because a particular trans individual happened to indicate that they were not interested in the privacy benefit of a name and/or gender change and someone else kept sharp track of both that preference and exactly when changes occurred.
The mod did a surreptitious censor without inquiry. This implies they aren’t interested.
removing something doesnt mean disinterest in nuance. it means something seemed off and worth removing.
I would favor singular they in the context of the past.
degendering someone’s past entirely isn’t really a solution
Manning was a man at one point in time.
this is really the disconnect here.
Chelsea Manning presented as male.
trans folk generally (excluding genderfluidity and other things like that) do not change their gender but change their gender presentation
removing something doesnt mean disinterest in nuance. it means something seemed off and worth removing.
It’s not the removal that shows disinterest in discussing the removal. It’s the fact that they were surreptitious about it. Then when tagged in a conversation and consciously chose not to react. It’s their choice. They had the option to be foreward about their action and chose the path of a shitweasel. Then I also gave them the option by tagging them in this thread and they did not take it.
degendering someone’s past entirely isn’t really a solution
I’m not convinced.
trans folk generally (excluding genderfluidity and other things like that) do not change their gender but change their gender presentation
Consider this fictitious scenario:
Bob is born male and identifies as such until reaching 25, at which point they realize/determine that they are female and change their name to Alice. Bob tried to enter a club at age 20 but the door security refused entry because of sausage control. Clubs don’t want to be sausage parties, so they allow women to enter without constraint but only select males (e.g. males accompanied with women). Yes, this really happens. Now let’s say Alice is 40 and we are telling the story of the past. Consider 2 ways to tell the story:
- “She was denied entry to the club because the gate keepers were only allowing women to enter.”
- “He was denied entry to the club because the gate keepers were only allowing women to enter.”
Paragraph 1 of this story is confusing and inaccurate. Par 2 is accurate and comprehensible.
Trans people themselves don’t necessarily know at every given moment with confidence what gender to claim. Bob may have very well been confident of his male gender at 20 and only started questioning it at 24. It’s not our job as outsiders to take liberties in that guesswork. We aren’t going to rewrite history without evidence. Historians use the best information they have to determine history. But as well I would not say there is a duty to investigate thoroughly on the part of non-historians recounting events in some social setting. I’m not going to track down Alice today and ask what her confidence level was in her male presentation 20 years ago before continuing to tell the club-bouncing story in a conversation, assuming it’s even possible to make contact with Alice.
But I would say historians and journalists have a higher standard and duty to get these details right. It’s unreasonable to expect the general public to inherently distrust journalists on political correctness. If a layperson refers to a news article and works with the info as presented, fault the journalist if it is wrong, not the reader who used the best info they had (the article).
Trans folks should be prepared for being addressed in the wrong gender if their presentation is mismatched at the time of presentation. I face this all the time because the pitch of my phone voice differs from my gender which causes people to misgender me. I don’t fault them. I don’t complain. I don’t even correct them. They are addressing me with the best information they have (my voice). If I get bent out of shape, annoyed, or feel a loss of dignity when they get it wrong, that’s my problem for having an unhealthily fragile ego. Rather than demanding that everyone adapt to me, I adapt and just roll with it. It gives me a slight bit of pleasure in having privacy of the other person not even knowing my gender. Privacy and dignity go hand in hand. If I attached more importance to the dignity of gender perception than the dignity of privacy, I would use a voice changing app to ensure I don’t get misgendered.
Okay well fair warning that line of thinking on gendering people’s past is not welcome on here for future reference, so if it comes up in another thread you are expected to gender people correctly when speaking in past-tense
I am not going to keep track of your esoteric personal preferences. If you non-transparently keep this rule concealed, the consequences are on you.
Please put your bizarre new rule in the sidebar so people who accurately discuss past events do not get broad-sided by unexpected interventionalism. The norm is that people use the present gender for present tense chatter, which needs no explicit rule. But this zealous idea of inserting someone’s new identity into their past (prior to the current identity) at the risk of disrepecting their privacy really calls for some explicit wording. Feel free to name the rule of this niche scenario after me, if you want.
