Question for trans folks about misgendering, deadnaming

[Jragon]

@Kamino_Neko

What they said. (May I ask your pronouns, Jragon?) Facepalm-inducingly rude, but not strictly misgendering.

She/her

[foolsguinea]

@BleizDu

Not registering to the “hurtful” level, but when people ask what was my birth name (only happened a couple times in about 20 years of transition though), I just said I don’t tell it because I really disliked it.

I think people are free to ask though, usually it’s just some nosey harmless curiosity, but I encourage also people to feel free not to answer, the same as you would for any other bit of trivia about yourself that is not relevant for the people doing the asking and don’t feel like sharing to a stranger.

I would add to this that of course it’s normal to ask, like asking someone’s maiden name, but if you know someone’s trans it’s like going into a minefield.

The transitioning have already put up with a lot of crap on this issue, including what they’ve heard in their own heads; that tends to wear away any chill they may have started with. And someone who’s committed to transition is pretty likely to have been very much not cool with a previous, expected gender identity (hence the popularity of a phrase like “assigned <gender> at birth” to distance that gender from one’s own “essential” identity). Some trans folks are uptight about sex* in general.*

So, yeah, it’s understandable why people ask the question, and understandable why it gets a very bad reaction a lot of the time.

[foolsguinea]

(By “normal to ask,” I didn’t mean it should be normative. It’s just–yeah, I expect that to be a question that pops into someone’s head.)

[Kamino_Neko]

@Jragon

She/her

makes note Our paths seem to cross in these sorts of threads a lot, so figured it’d be good to ask. (Same, FTR.)

[Nava]

@Balthisar

Do you have examples of this? Granted I’ve spent most of my career within companies of a single industry, but it seems ludicrous that any company would force me to use “James” instead of “Jim.” I can understand not allowing “Lazy Dog” or something in a professional setting, though.

What, in writing? Not right here, thankfully I’ve been my own CEO for a while. But I’ve encountered it in among others the University of Miami, Rohm and Haas (now part of Dow Chemical), AGCO and Accenture. Cognizant, being originally from India, has the “call people whatever you told them to call you” policy and goes to great lengths to explain that seriously, you ought’a and whatever is on “official ID” is irrelevant.

The weirdest thing is that often those policies are mis-expressed: the Americans will use Jim but refuse to accept Marisol, it’s got to be María Sol or María del Sol or Maria Sol depending on how your government prints it and on whether the IT person creating emails knows how to get the accent mark. That’s when they don’t insist it’s got to be María Sol and then address every official communication to Maria… goes into spasms.

[Cub_Mistress]

@Balthisar

Do you have examples of this? Granted I’ve spent most of my career within companies of a single industry, but it seems ludicrous that any company would force me to use “James” instead of “Jim.” I can understand not allowing “Lazy Dog” or something in a professional setting, though.

Just recently, I was helped by a sales associate Robin, who I guessed was a transwoman, and the receipt said Robert helped me. I don’t know whether to complain on her behalf or not. I am concerned that I might hurt her rather than help her.

[Nava]

@Nava

Cognizant, being originally from India, has the “call people whatever you told them to call you” policy and goes to great lengths to explain that seriously, you ought’a and whatever is on “official ID” is irrelevant.

Talk about miswriting… “call people whatever they told you to call them”. I must have been in serious need of coffee!