This is true, and the expectation of "real names" has made this enormously worse. If you were "snopes" or "diogenes", nobody could harass you online for being a woman, because they didn't know you were a woman. Even a feminine name was no guarantee that your real-life gender identity was female. Contrast Fecebutt, which extorts photos of your government ID from you by cutting you off from your social network, then publishes your walletnym for every wanker to see.

During the period in question, IRC (EFNet) was governed for many years by Helen Rose, known as Trillian.