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)

So if it’s not a problem to be reminded of the sex they are, why “deadnaming” and “misgendering” considered genocidal hate crimes?

Answers up thread already.

Where?

So you think “deadnaming” and “misgendering” are genocidal hate crimes?

The thing that winds me up is that we women are the ones who properly know about changing names! Even if you haven't personally got married/changed name on doing so etc, we know that a large proportion of the women in our lives have done this thing. Personally my husband would have happily taken my name, but I was glad to escape the abuse that went with it. Those of us who have changed our names on marriage, we don't bat an eyelid about giving our previous name - it's just something you have to do as an adult, isn't it! No need for histronics.

The then-new-to-me concept of "deadnaming" was one of the things which set me on the road to peaking, about 2019. I had a social media friend who I'd known some 20 years previously. He'd decided all of a sudden to transition, and the first step was changing his name. The following week he got all ranty on social media about his cleaner calling him by the name she'd known the previous week. I pointed out that, chances are, she was probably rather busy what with some forthcoming school holiday or similar. And mentioned that I had inadvertently given my birth surname on many occasions, it just slipped out without thinking. Another female friend chimed in with the same. How curious that our experience of being actual women with different names and empathy for another woman was completely ignored by said friend and his chums. 🙄

Where

"When you deadname someone, you're telling them that you don't see them as their true self. Instead, you see them as you choose to, which is not in alignment with who they are. Deadnaming is one person telling another that they have the option to view them however they choose, rather than respecting the person's identity. This is an incredibly disrespectful act, whether done intentionally or not."

"So you think “deadnaming” and “misgendering” are genocidal hate crimes?"

Not genocidal but definitely hate speech because it qualifies as offensive discourse targeting a group or an individual based on inherent characteristics (such as race, religion or gender) and that may threaten social peace.

Well that’s my point. Pointing out reality - that someone used to be called Bruce and is still and will always be a man - is considered hate speech by trans activists, and it’s akin to blasphemy to non-believers.

To “deadname” or to “misgender” is just saying “I don’t believe.

I don’t believe in your ideology so I can’t be guilty of a crime you wish to impose on me, just like refusing to acknowledge a Christian God doesn’t make me a blasphemer, despite how much some extremists in the world would claim it so.

Yay!

Not genocidal but definitely hate speech

No it's not, it's legally protected free speech. See Maya Forstater's Employment Tribunal Appeal ruling.

This is ridiculous and also appropriates racist slurs and actual hate speech.

Even if you only care about trans, this "deadnamed" ideology doesn't help them either.

It amplifies normal annoyance someone's using an old name, which is going to happen, with hate and so causes them to feel more distress.

It only serves to isolate them from those who have known them the longest. Ridiculous.

It’s massively disrespectful to your wife and kids to dismiss the years of relationship as dead. They were not pretending, even if he was. And feeling pressure to be straight in no way excuses lying to your spouse.

It’s a damaging obsession, narcissism, and is not deserving of respect.

It depends on the context, surely? If you’re working with someone, it would be difficult not to call them by the name that they prefer or request.

In the media, however, when covering, say, a crime, continuing to call a male offender ‘she’ and by their preferred name is simply misinformation, causing confusion. Particularly at a time when so many offenders suddenly find their inner woman when facing jail.

Referring to a male sportsperson as ‘she’ and ‘Rebecca’ in media reports, or in a controversy over specific lavatories, causes confusion and is simply misinformation.

The media’s job is to report the truth and to clarify, not to pander to semi-religious beliefs or individuals’ desires.

There’s also the matter of compelled speech, of forcing people to go along with a fantasy, with something they know to be incorrect. This is a particularly insidious form of disrespect.

There are members of families who have grown up with an individual who now expects to be called by a different name, abandoning one they have used all their lives. And for those families it’s often extremely difficult, not only to always remember to use the new name but also to use the new pronouns when referring to those people.

This can impose quite a bit of pressure on those families, always slightly on edge in case they say the wrong thing.

They can also be put in the difficult position of not believing the ‘transition’, of knowing that the trans person is vulnerable, has always been vulnerable and searching for answers to their pain. So either they capitulate to the compelled speech or they risk losing the relationship with the person they love, and being disapproved of by the wider family.

Women’s oppression across the world and across history is sex-based. If women cannot describe that oppression, they can’t fight it. Denying it makes it impossible to address. They are a sex class.

And until everyone had 24-hour porn at their fingertips.

I am known by two different first names. One of them was given to me by my biological mother. It's a common name, but one steeped in history and cultural associations. I like it. I feel it represents my "authentic self", inasmuch as that means anything.

Most people use my other name, which was chosen by my adoptive parents. It's a quirky misspelled version of a name from a language I don't speak. It gives the impression that I'm older than I am. It contains an ugly consonant cluster that I stumble over when I introduce myself. It is a silly name. I hate it. Maybe I should ask people to use the other name - my "true" name.

But I don't, and that's primarily out of respect and love for my adoptive mother, who chose it and who brought me up. Because other people matter. I'm not a screaming narcissist.

Also - rather on the principle of "A Boy Named Sue" - that name has made me who I am. When I meet new people and have to tell them my name, I do it in a self-deprecating way that breaks the ice and probably shapes their first impressions of me. So, far from being a millstone around my neck, it might actually be an asset.

We have limited control over how people see us. We have to accept reality, which is out there in the world and reflected in our relationships, not confined to our mental state. To see things otherwise, or to try to exert unreasonable control, is a sign of social and psychological dysfunction.

When you deadname someone, you're telling them that you don't see them as their true self.

There is no True Self. There's how a person perceives herself and there's how others perceived her. Neither is a true self, both are just perspectives.

For example, I may see myself as an elegant woman of means, a polymath and the epitome of class while you may see me as a skint, deluded dingbat with delusions of grandeur.

Lia may see a coquettish young woman and sporting champion in the mirror, while I see that he's a mediocre cheating bloke called William.

True Self is a quasi religious concept that has no relevance in reality.

Sorry not sorry if it offends, but I’ll never be forced to call a weed anything other than a weed. It might think itself a 🌹 but it will always be a weed.

To be fair Elliot Page ´s Wikipedia page does say "formerly Ellen Page" right at the top. Although uses "he" throughout and refers to being assigned female at birth.

It's utter nonsense. Look at Ellen Page, she had a big hit film in which she played a pregnant teenager.

Then we were expected to remember that film as starring a boy called Elliot.

Women changing their names upon marriage is completely irrelevant - married women don't demand that we all pretend they were Mrs Hisname all their lives, and that their previous identity never existed.

It must be the biggest heartbreak imaginable to loving parents, seeing their children try to 'kill' their entire childhood.

I recall a TW whose business was under their male name, but didn’t want to change it even though they had a new more female name. It’s funny how when a name, that has benefitted a person in the past, is absolutely fine but then becomes a matter of so called hate speech when it doesn’t.

I think it’s quite rude to ‘deadname’ someone. For example I’m friends with a trans woman who has had facial, top & bottom surgery. She looks like a (beautiful) woman. You would not call her ‘Dave’ !(Not her original name but if it was). It would be not only offensive but totally inappropriate as she no longer resembles a ‘Dave’.

But similarly if I (a straight woman) choose to change my name on marriage or divorce I would expect to be called that name. However my old name and new name would be still be female so it’s not quite as offensive if someone gets it wrong.
I would however be mortified if I was called by a man’s name.

As well as most women changing surnames on marriage, many people from my background have two or three different names that they and other people use. Quite fun figuring out who's who when the family talk about distant relatives I haven't met! On top of this, after some really vicious racial persecution my father and his family emigrated from their birth country and they all celebrated their new-found freedom and identities in the new country by changing their names - first names and family name too.

Everyone in this country including my mother and all of us children knows my father by his chosen names. But my grandmother always called my father by his original name, the name she and his father gave him at birth, until her own death some fifty years later.

No-one would ever have been cruel enough to suggest she should call him anything different.

"Deadnaming" my fat arse.

(Edited for bad arithmetic)

It’s more “if your name was Steve and you now call yourself Julie”

The drama and hyperbole that arises in relation to the concepts of deadnaming and misgendering arise as a result of the obsession trans people have with their identity. The best solution for this is for them to access support in growing their resilience and capacity to accept that not everyone perceives them they way they want, but that’s OK.

The other solution is meeting the hyperbole with a level of calmness. An example is, ‘I am struggling to simultaneously communicate the thoughts I have in mind and remember to use your new name. I’ll work on getting better at this and would appreciate your patience whilst I do so’.

If asked why you deliberately avoid using preferred pronouns by using their name instead, you can say ‘I want you to feel included and comfortable and I know using sex- based pronouns does the opposite. This is why I use your name. Using wrong-sex pronouns denies my need for authentic communication, so using your name is a respectful compromise’.

It's right at the heart of the ideology.

"You must allow me to label myself a woman like you, because my belief about how you experience womanhood tells me that we are the same and my belief about who you are is more important than your belief about who you are. You cannot object or state the ways that we are not the same, because my belief about how you experience womanhood tells me that we are the same and my belief about who you are is more important than your belief about who you are.

@Howseitgoin or other resident TRAs

What is your view on someone who is gender critical using "they" or other neutral third party pronouns rather than preferred pronouns?