In defence of deadnaming

[welshgendercrit]

For ‘deadnaming’ is just a Newspeak word designed to demonise the telling of historical truths. Not satisfied with seeking to control contemporary discussion and attitudes, now trans activists and their allies (all institutions, in essence) want to control the past itself. History. No way. The past happened, it was true, and we should not allow that to be erased and forgotten just to make some people feel better about themselves.

Yet again spiked (which I never used to read) has written a good, hardhitting, sensible article on transactivism.

www.spiked-online.com/2018/10/11/in-defence-of-deadnaming/

WTFIsAGleepglorp. It's not actually a particular joy of mine and I couldn't understand it either when I was young and homophobic but the San Franciscans on the C4 documentary were very eloquent on the subject and then I got to know some real life lesbians.

Then personally VickyEadie I think it's arguable that you're stretching the definition of "exclusively attracted". There's also the lesbians who prefer straight porn, there are people further along the Kinsey Scale than me who surprised me with that one. I'd ask some of them to come and tell you themselves but the consensus is that I have a strong stomach to be able even to argue with the regulars on these threads and tbh I'm not particularly proud of that fact.

Because it is so hard these days

Again, it's not always complicated. I have some personal reservations about claiming a description I don't always feel 100% entitled to but I'm a very indecisive person and I don't wish to extend these reservations to other people.

To be fair, they could be a lesbian with a penis, and be using up Kleenex like it's going out of fashion.

I did address this earlier but if you have difficulty with the idea of an XX woman seeing things differently from you then you can just carry on supposing whatever confirms your biases.

Anyway, deadnaming.

I did address this earlier but if you have difficulty with the idea of an XX woman seeing things differently from you then you can just carry on supposing whatever confirms your biases.

To be honest, fox, you're not the best communicator in the world and I'm still relatively unclear over your overall position in the trans debate. Because you muddy the waters with nonsense about sucking strapons.

So, have we had any further thoughts about deadnaming?

I'm still convinced that safeguarding everyone demands that no-one can erase their previous names.

Me too, Vicky

In many cases it is absolutely right that former names are shared strictly on a "need to know" basis, and that there are penalties for those breach the rules that exist.

To be honest, it rather rankles that there is a criminal offence of "deadnaming" a trans person where the discloser knew the information in a professional context, but not (as far as I know) for disclosing information about an adopted person.

Sharing the birth name of a person who was adopted because of an abusive family can put the adoptee and others in direct danger. It's no-one's business in most cases that Julie Smith was born Chardonnay Jones, but there are some instances (such as completing a DBS check, applying for a passport or visa) where Julie has to declare that she was named Chardonnay at birth

To be honest, fox, you're not the best communicator in the world and I'm still relatively unclear over your overall position in the trans debate. Because you muddy the waters with nonsense about sucking strapons.

I think you're simplistic and overly sure of things. The spiritual cock only came into it to illustrate variety aka "nonsense". People chose to focus on what they found ridiculous instead of the salient point. The salient point is that lesbians aren't a block vote who agree with you and plenty of them don't see any inconsistency in sleeping with trans women. And large numbers of lesbians, including ones who are very unlikely to sleep with anyone of the sex class that produces sperm, object profoundly to your beliefs and to you citing them as victims in your arguments.

I know you like facts, well, that last point is a fact, and if people had been willing to acknowledge it they might have been able to get back to their thread. I've argued with a LOT of believers and cult types: Creationists, Flat Earthers, Seventh Day Corbynites, NRAs, climate change deniers, Trump and Brexit fantasists. They often seem to have trouble comprehending quite basic sentences and understanding that people who are not mad, bad, ignorant, or indeed in a cult, could possibly disagree with them.

So it's possible that I'm "not the best communicator" and all the supposedly excellent answers I've ever written were read or marked by idiots or telepaths, it's quite possible I've gone downhill since then and I could certainly do with an Edit function on here. But it's also possible that some of you could do with a bit of self-awareness when it comes to your dire warnings about cult thinkers. Like you (plural), they're convinced they're shrewd observers of reality and everyone who disagrees is talking nonsense, like you they seem to consider their obsession to be the most pressing issue in any sphere that intersects with it, and like you they tend to have their own little phrasebooks of insults like "waffle" "pomo" and "TRA" to throw at you when they just can't understand why you might have a different opinion.

There are a very few incidences where it’s appropriate. Witness protection for example. I think some criminals also get protected identities after release (one of the Bulger killers has? I’m honestly not sure how I feel about that.)

Deadnaming should remain legal because:

• it’s too open to abuse. Any criminal could change their name and erase their history, leading to serious safeguarding loopholes.

• the official public record is a vital thing for statistics and history and investigation
• it effectively creates a compelled speech situation, and that’s totalitarian in nature.

Interesting point there Babel, the term deadnaming is essentially giving people protected identities. There is no need for such an extreme measure for people toying with their gender identity. Dead naming as a concept needs to be dropped.
The idea that a group that is frequently aggressive, violent and self entitled are too vulnerable to see or hear their own name is absurd.

As it happens, I changed my given name. I did so for very deep psychological reasons to do with the various forms of abuse I experienced, and I did so when I was about 35 years old.

My old name is connected in my mind with a person who doesn't really exist any more and it helped me to get past some of the difficulties I had. No one except a few stubborn family members call me by my old name.

I am quite willing to call anyone by whatever name they wish. But none of us, trans or otherwise, can pretend our past didn't exist, for all sorts of very good reasons.

Some people call me by my old name to be rude. It's not meant well, it's a control measure on their part. I choose to rise above it as a provocation, because the simple fact is that almost everyone in my life knows me as something else and I refuse to give power to those who would hurt me.

That's what you do when you work through trauma and come out the other side. So, i get that someone wouldn't like to be deadnamed, and I understand how it feels when it is done maliciously.

But it is complete bollocks to insist it be punished. People can be shits. Its unpleasant but that is real life. You can't insulate yourself from bad feelings, and those that try tend to be rather stunted people.

essentially giving people protected identities

Indeed. And we should be pointing that out and contrasting with the very few cases where such a thing is actually used. I wonder how many people in the uk actually have protected identities?

I realise I have been derailed, but here is my response.

fox, irrespective of how many women who say they are lesbians you can find, who claim they will sleep with bepenised individuals, the word lesbian has a meaning.

You know it, I know it, lesbians know it and the men who want to sleep with them also know it.

Pretending that the word lesbian means you are attracted to men, is obscuring, deliberately, men's oppression of women.

As is deadnaming. For every person to whom deadnaming might really be traumatic, you will find men who want to obscure who they are, what they've done, and why.

Nobody is suggesting that the word lesbian means you are attracted to men. We're talking about trans women.

Are you saying you believe humans can change sex?

At what point does a man change into a trans woman? How does this miracle happen? What changes have to be in place to make the distinction?

If you want to believe a lesbian who agrees with you is thereby a more valid lesbian than one who disagrees with you

Oh dear lord. A lesbian isn't something that one woman could be more valid than, than the next woman. It either is, or it isn't.

Unless you truly believe that men can become women. In which case knock yourself out.

Welcome to Humpty Dumpty World where words mean whatever someone wants them to mean.

Oh dear lord. A lesbian isn't something that one woman could be more valid than, than the next woman. It either is, or it isn't.

That was irony, but if you want to engage with the substance of what I said rather than pick at the stylistic undertones, you can read it as "If you don't want to believe a lesbian could disagree with you…"

I wish any of my friends who do count as lesbians in your eyes did want to come here and disagree with you, but as I indicated earlier they are less self-absorbed people than me and find these threads too repellent to engage with, not just on principle but with a visceral disgust that puts me to shame.

fox - seriously, a woman saying she's a lesbian has no more authority to change the definition of words than anyone else. And I don't know why you think it.

You could line up a thousand women saying they are lesbians who get turned on by men, and it wouldn't make it any more accurate.

It's nothing to do with people counting as lesbians 'in my eyes'. Sexual orientation is a protected characteristic under equality law.

If you disagree with that, take it up with them.

Fox, we all find threads that trolls continually try to derail repellent. Keeps happening though,trolls keep on trolling.

Fox, we all find threads that trolls continually try to derail repellent. Keeps happening though,trolls keep on trolling.

Yeah, see, I wasn't trying to derail. I try to avoid coming in here, I was going to make a throwaway comment that was more about the billboard and hope you came back with nothing worth bothering about, but people had to start on the Pride thing because you think the lesbians are in the bag as your constituents, allies or at least emotive props and you can't handle the thought that large numbers of them loathe everything you stand for.

My subsequent posts have been responses to replies, some or most of them from straight people, almost all of them of childlike ignorance, telling me how to gay. If you're appropriating my concerns as a member of a less privileged group and you don't have my consent or the relevant experience, well now, that sounds like a complaint with which you'd feel you could sympathise, doesn't it?

I've also listened at great length to the opposing views of other lesbians but there's no universal user agreement, none of us gets to dictate the others' views on homosexuality and straight people can think what they like, safe in the knowledge that we don't have to care. So if you don't want your thread "derailed" by pertinent replies then ignore them and definitely don't post possessively about things which you haven't got the right to dictate, such as lesbianism, feminism, this board or this thread, especially if you also feel entitled to derail threads that you don't like with passive-aggressive lacunae such as recipes and biscuits.

seriously, a woman saying she's a lesbian has no more authority to change the definition of words than anyone else. And I don't know why you think it.

Well, people to whom a word pertains often take ownership of it and manage to deliberately repurpose it if they don't like its current usage, e.g. queer going from a pejorative to a generally defiant to a more specific political sense. But in general yes, words follow a process of evolution through common use, and sadly for you there is no interventionist referee. People gradually use them in a different way, often by simple error, and so nauseous now means nauseated and nauseating means nauseous whether you or I or the dictionaries like it or not. Or they drift towards a more specific interpretation or a less specific interpretation for necessity or convenience's sake. So if a critical mass of people take lesbianism to include trans women then it will, and your preferred meaning might eventually go the way of the panda in the same way that "pathic" still means passive or suffering but is no longer used to refer to bottoming men because society doesn't feel the need to stigmatise them so much.

Sexual orientation is a protected characteristic under equality law. If you disagree with that, take it up with them.

Given that sex reassignment is also legally certified I think they'll be fine about a cis woman and a trans woman being a lesbian couple. You're not even trying now, so I think my work is done here.

Fox
Life is too short so I only read your last paragraph. I refuse to recognise your word ciswoman and as such your statement is nonsensical.
Overjoyed to read your work here is done,my work has just started. You and your ilk will not erase the meaning of the word woman.

You’re done Fox? Hurrah, no more word salad.

You can refuse to recognise a word whose meaning you are clearly cognisant of if you think that will help you communicate, but I didn't use the word ciswoman and as such your statement is nonsensical..

You’re done Fox? Hurrah, no more word salad.

I can see one ineptly obscure sentence and it was a pretty important one but you should still be able to work it out on your own. I believe in you.

fox your entire premise relies on TWAW, but until you can adequately explain the W in that, you're shouting into the void.

And if two men fellating one another can be called lesbian sex, I don't think you'll get many takers.

Language is used to communicate, but under your classification, lesbian coupling could mean two men, two women or a man and a woman, so coherence is fucked for starters. Likewise heterosexuality. It could mean anything. And everyone had better keep awake because it can all change tomorrow.

You have to wonder why it is so damned important for this ideology to obscure the meaning of language. Particularly when it pertains to women.

You don't see many people hammering gay men into agreeing that cunnilingus needs to be part of their sexual repertoire.

Given that sex reassignment is also legally certified

It isn't. Gender reassignment is.