I think a big problem is just in language and preserving history. There’s an idea of deadnaming and an implication you shouldn’t use a trans person’s pre-transition name, but it gets complicated when talking about pre-transition events, since the person was referred to (possibly posted under) their old name and was seen by the people at the same as the gender they identified as at the time, which can get really confusing and hard to keep consistent.
Could go so far as to argue it’s revisionist to do so, though I don’t really think so, but it might be running into some of the same problems in terms of preserving history. But it’s mostly just hard to talk about correctly, respectfully and clearly.
My mom had a hard time with this until I asked her if it hurt more to fuck me over or rewrite the name I went by as a child. It clicked and now she has no issues just replacing my identity completely when talking about my past.
When everyone knows you by who you are now, revise history. Doing anything less will only confuse everyone and humiliate you for no reason.
Doing anything less will only confuse everyone and humiliate you for no reason.
That’s the part I disagree with - I think revising history can itself be confusing. It’s a price I’m willing to pay, I just wish there was a better way.
I’ll also mention I come from a country with a strongly gendered language, where verbs in the past tense and adjectives are gendered. That sometimes makes it difficult to talk about such things, and might be making me worry about this more.
I promise you, relinquishing the worry and just using the current identity to refer to past events will be less confusing in practice 100% of the time. If you have a trans friend introducing them to new people, bringing up the past and needing to clarify that your friend is trans and proceed to misgender them the entire time while talking about it will be extremely humiliating for your friend and awkward for the people you’re supposedly trying to help by making this pointleasly cruel distinction just for some misguided idea of consistency.
I think a big problem is just in language and preserving history. There’s an idea of deadnaming and an implication you shouldn’t use a trans person’s pre-transition name, but it gets complicated when talking about pre-transition events, since the person was referred to (possibly posted under) their old name and was seen by the people at the same as the gender they identified as at the time, which can get really confusing and hard to keep consistent.
Could go so far as to argue it’s revisionist to do so, though I don’t really think so, but it might be running into some of the same problems in terms of preserving history. But it’s mostly just hard to talk about correctly, respectfully and clearly.
My mom had a hard time with this until I asked her if it hurt more to fuck me over or rewrite the name I went by as a child. It clicked and now she has no issues just replacing my identity completely when talking about my past.
When everyone knows you by who you are now, revise history. Doing anything less will only confuse everyone and humiliate you for no reason.
That’s the part I disagree with - I think revising history can itself be confusing. It’s a price I’m willing to pay, I just wish there was a better way.
I’ll also mention I come from a country with a strongly gendered language, where verbs in the past tense and adjectives are gendered. That sometimes makes it difficult to talk about such things, and might be making me worry about this more.
I promise you, relinquishing the worry and just using the current identity to refer to past events will be less confusing in practice 100% of the time. If you have a trans friend introducing them to new people, bringing up the past and needing to clarify that your friend is trans and proceed to misgender them the entire time while talking about it will be extremely humiliating for your friend and awkward for the people you’re supposedly trying to help by making this pointleasly cruel distinction just for some misguided idea of consistency.