When did "deadnaming" become a thing?

[Charabanc]

I've been pondering how it's become accepted that "deadnaming" someone is some kind of heinous crime, akin to literal genocide.

When did this come about? Was it via Stonewall? It's not a term I recall from years back, it seems quite recent.

Somehow they decided that it wasn't allowed, and all the DEI lot fell in with it. Like pronouns, I guess. I'm a bit fed up of having to follow their 'rules'.

(Thoughts inspired by SP's naming of Mr Weddell)

What is deadnaming?

It's just disrespectful. It's like if your name is Rebecca and people keep calling you Becky and you w told them that's your preferred name ... It's rude and disrespectful

It was a thing over 10 years ago, a trans identified man i knew through mental health services definitely did not want his therapeutic team to know his birth name. I'm guessing that part of his reluctance was that his "trans" was to escape the trauma he experienced as a boy, so he had to distance himself from his past.

To be clear, at my age anything within the last 20 years or so is "recent" 😄

But 'deadnaming' is seen as magnitudes worse than just being disrespectful.

I'm sure Rebecca would be irritated at people calling her Becky when she doesn't like that abbreviation, but I doubt that she would get inconsolably upset and consider going to the police to report the 'offender' or otherwise put in some kind of 'official' complaint - the way people often do (or at least threaten to) when they are 'deadnamed'.

It's an over reaction to what should be a reasonable social interaction when reminding someone of a name change. Sadly it's often used by terminal bullies seeking to control others by insisting that if they accurately sex someone or forget to use a "new name" it's literal genocide. The aim is to instil fear & compliance in others.

It's very anti social and often promoted by individuals with limited understanding of social, peer and family relationships.

It's such a dramatic phrase! Why not own your whole identity and say, actually yes I used to be Rosie but now I go by Jim?

No idea, and it’s such a load of bollocks.

It’s not new, but the concept is tedious. Navel-gazing “look at me, look at me” BS.

It’s just annoying though. I hate having to correct people when they use a name that I don’t use. It’s always the people who don’t like to call me by my actual name (they say it’s too long) and pretend they have forgotten I don’t like that nickname.

I have also had people insist on calling me by my husband’s surname, even though they know it’s not my name. I literally couldn’t make it any clearer to them, yet they still write it on my birthday/Christmas card.

People change their name all the time, it’s not that hard to just call them by the name they want to be called.

But if you told a colleague in your office your name was Becky and they repeatedly called you Rebecca, that would be classed as bullying.

I think it's because if you use someone's previous name, you will "out" them as trans (unless the dead name was unisex). However, unless the trans person passes extremely well, I think many people will already know, even if they are too discreet to let on.

The GRA entitles a GRC holder to privacy from being revealed as transgender (daft, really, when generally daily Covid what sex most most trans-IDed people are). This right to 'privacy' requires others to pretend and to collude in the GRC-holder's personal choices. Stonewall and the like taught people that self-ID conferred all the same rights as the GRA.

Then GDPR came in. Remember all the confusion and uncertainty about what data you were allowed to collect, hold or reveal? I'm sure Stonewall took advantage of that, and people became afraid to say anything in case they fell foul of GDPR.

According to Wikipedia the term was coined on social media ~2010.

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Deadnaming

Hardly a neutral article though even by Wikipedia standards!

The TRAs consider deadnaming to be a hate crime.

Meanwhile, Rebecca probably isn't about to cut off her right ear over being called 'Becky'.

as usual it's the complete and utter lack of concern or thought for anyone else and the accompanying fit of the vapours of it doesn't happen

middle aged late transitioning men insisting that their wife and their children use their new lady name/call them mum rather than the male name/call them dad they've used for years with no thought for how this makes them feel

It seemed to appear 10-15 years ago. It probably became such a big deal because trans people might be misgendered and outed if their old name (let's be honest, most names are traditionally 'male' or 'female') was used.

Also, if you do change your first name, people look very confused, ask why, and get a long list of reasons in return! Then they sometimes still forget and call you by your old name... (I'm definitely not trans, but prefer my "new" name to my previous one, and because it's just my name, I don't think about the name-change on a daily basis).

It's not just like that. It's viewed as a transgression of a sacred sacrament. Even the expression 'deadname' is hyperbolic. Do women who change their names on marriage or divorce get treated with the same kid gloves when people 'deadname' them? What about when people call women by their husband's surname which is arguably just as hurtful as calling a trans person their old name - who cares about that? 'Deadnaming' is a social crime that is treated far more seriously than any other type of 'wrong' naming.

I dislike my name being shortened. I like people to call me Janet, but sometimes I get called Jan (or equivalent).

I just correct them gently, with a smile, more than once if necessary. I don't get upset, annoyed or suicidal. It's just a word. I am not very important in the scheme of things.

People need to think less of themselves and realise they are not the centre of importance.

It's another way the trans movement is trying to control people and is a big overreaction. Let's face it, if I've known you all your life as Tom and you suddenly want to be Tina, then it's highly possible I might accidentally call you Tom every now and then. I might also think that Tina is traditionallya female name, and being as you cannot change sex, you're probably still actually Tom.

It seems to have occurred around the time that the numbers of children and adolescents identifying as trans really started to increase. I rather cynically think that online exposure to those communities has driven it and it is used as another way to alienate young people from their parents.

Most parents think a great deal about the names they give their children, the term “dead naming” must be really hurtful. Especially in the context of your child who you love just as they are, rejecting their sex / trying to reinvent themselves. I think I remember some of the parents saying this to Julie Bindle on her podcast Genderland.

If child chose a different name simply because they didn’t like their name registered at birth, they would just refer to it as their old name and not a dead name.

The whole concept of the GRC is based on the idea that there is a right to hide identity, and the GRA was passed in 2004.

I think it's most harmful when the concept is used to control how people can refer to the life they shared with a spouse or parent.

I understand the point you are making about courtesy, but if a woman married a man called Bob and he changes his name to Barbara, what should she do? Pretend that her previous life with Bob didn't exist? Pretend that Bob is dead?

There is a limit to how much you can should be able to control the retconning of other people's lives.

The concept itself is relatively sensible, but the term invites hyperbole and hysteria. In the ‘olden days’, trans people - who may or may not have passed - would most likely have gone through a hell of a lot to reach a point where they were using a different name and identity. So the idea that their old name should be left behind because it was ‘dead’, no longer needed, seemed appropriate. There was no nonsense about them having literally changed sex, nor that using the old name was literal violence, it was just bad manners.

As with many things TRAs have got hold of, it’s been taken to an absurd extreme.