Worked with a guy named Nikita who was on phone support. So many people in the US who couldn't wrap their heads around that normally being a mans name in Russia.
I don't get where Yvan would be confusing either. Weird people out there.
Although I honestly do have fond memories of the late 80's BBS era. But to the point those were local and largely only psudo-anonymous.
The Sysop knew who everyone was if they verified users. And here, at the time, the cost of calls greatly limited connection range. People were locals.
Now granted, I have only been online in various forms since 1992 (first on BBSs, then on the Internet occasionally in 1994, and then pretty much continuously since 1996), but I can tell you with a "vaguely feminine" name (Yvan, which is a French name, and any native speaker will tell you it's a male name) and almost 30 years of online activity under my real name, I can tell you that Internet has been a shitty place pretty much since the nerd realized he could stalk a classmate through the university mail system, and probably even before then.