Why is it offensive to say that my celebrity crush used to be Ellen Page (until she came out as lesbian)?
What's not appropriate, is referring to the person that exists today, as Ellen Page.
Even if you are not transgender, just imagine changing your name, telling everyone about it, and someone would come along insisting on calling you using your former name, practicly mocking, belittling you and your choice. Now imagine them doing the same to your entire identity.
Or a daughter who dislikes her father so much that, upon reaching adulthood, changes her surname because she wants to be completely disassociated from him. (In the case I'm thinking of, she said something along the lines "he wasn't my father, he was the sperm donor" - he left when she was a few years old.)
Personally, I understood the idea first through Malcolm X, who rejected "the white slavemaster name of 'Little'" he was given at birth. And the respect Howard Cosell had to refer to Muhammad Ali by Ali's chosen name, while most others used and even taunted him with his old one.
It isn't.
Talking about someone's dead name is not offensive.
Referring to someone using their deadname today is. For example, saying "Ellen Page was really good in the latest season of The Umbrella Academy" is offensive because at that point, they were identifying as Elliot.
In the case of someone not being notable before a transition, talk of their deadname is offensive because it is clearly being done in bad faith. If they were transitioned before they became a notable person, why the obsession with knowing their deadname? There's really only one reason: Because you want to call them that as an "own" against transgender people.
I've tried repeatedly to bring this up online and nobody even attempts to explain this obvious moral contradiction away. I genuinely want to know how someone can hold both "deadnaming is reprehensible and should never be done ever" and "it's okay to just call him 'Kanye West' lol" in their head at the same time without imploding in a poof of self-contradiction.
ok, so I don't have to respect trans peoples' "vanity" name changes if it's not something equivalent to "John", as per my own judgement? like I get to make my own internal judgement as to whether or not the name that someone asks to be referred to as is a "vanity" name or not??
or, I don't get to do this, because trans people are somehow special in this regard compared to everyone else???
you don't get to make rules like that. you can say, "if someone legally changes their name, then you should respect that and use their preferred, legal name." you can even extend that and say, "if someone wants to be referred to as some name other than their legal name, then this, too, should be respected, you should refer to them as their non-legal, yet still preferred name." that's fine too.
but you don't get to claim that someone legally changing their name and asking everyone to use their new legal name and not use their old "slave name" (their own words), is just a "celebrity" with a "vanity name", and therefore "deadnaming" rules no longer apply, somehow! this destroys your entire moral framework about identity and the right to self-determination thereof.
There isn't a moral contradiction to explain. The entire point of deadnaming someone is to cause them harm. Full stop. No one is trying to cause Ye harm by clarifying that he used to be called Kayne West.
If you want a non-trans equivalent, old racists used to insist on calling Kareem Abdul Jabbar and Muhammad Ali by names they had rejected to make a point about how little they thought of them. Just like people deadname Elliot Page solely to hateful and offensive.
Can you really not tell the difference?
exactly, so how is this any different? a black man legally changes his name because he considers his old name to be his "slave name", and almost every headline about him refuses to acknowledge this change. how is this different from Muhammad Ali?
> Unless he's transgender, he can't be deadnamed.
this is the crux of my question: why is "right to not be deadnamed" exclusively a trans "right"? what would make you think that?
I'm not sure what this paragraph is trying to convey. Are you under the impression that Ye changed his name because it was his 'slave name'?
>this is the crux of my question: why is "right to not be deadnamed" exclusively a trans "right"? what would make you think that?
I'm not sure why the word "right" is being used here, but I "think that' because words having meaning in the English language and deadnaming by definition is when you "call (a transgender person) by their birth name when they have changed their name as part of their gender transition."
https://www.google.com/search?client=firefox-b-1-d&q=deadnam...
you don't have to, of course, you can do whatever you want. but the idea that trans people get a special when-I-change-my-name-you-have-to-respect-it privilege that people who don't want to change their gender don't get access to, is completely nonsensical. you should respect the right to identity self-determination innate to all people, for whatever reason they choose, or else your moral framework is not actually cohesive at all and in fact permits granting special privileges to certain classes of people over others, which is generally understood to be bigoted, by definition.
every headline and social media post I see that contains the string "Kanye" or "Kanye West", outside of those who couch it in the context of some variation of "Ye, the artist formerly known as Kanye West", proves that, despite all pretenses to the contrary, there is in fact a brazen double standard when it comes to asserting one's own identity in terms of LEGALLY changing their name, and having everyone else respect it, such that trans people are supposed to get special consideration in this regard compared to everyone else, somehow.
only extremely convoluted contemporary political pseudo-logic could explain how this actually makes perfect sense, how it's okay to call him Kanye West but it's not okay to call him Ellen Page, and how those two things are Actually Completely Different Situations instead of Exactly The Same Thing.
> Are you under the impression that Ye changed his name because it was his 'slave name'?
the man has openly said as much; does his own position on his own identity not have any value to you? is that not the entire idea behind the concept of "deadnaming" to begin with?
Anyhoo, the Bee wasn't accidentally calling someone by the wrong name; they were intentionally doing it to bother the person, which is asshole behavior. It is also when people do it to Ye, and if the kid in your neighborhood had changed his name to from Karl to Brett, and some other kid always ran around saying, "Hey look, it's Karl. Where are you going, Karl?" I'd say that also qualifies as asshole behavior.
Even so, asshole behavior should be allowed, if discouraged. The problem is that the Bee was using their reach and audience to blast a specific trans person, publicly, with the goal of belittling and ostracizing all trans people, who generally already face harassment from society. This would be problematic beyond the simple question of manners whether the target is trans people, Kanye, or Brett.
I mean, are you arguing with yourself? I certainly never said you shouldn't respect peoples preferences.
>every headline and social media post I see that contains the string "Kanye" or "Kanye West", outside of those who couch it in the context of some variation of "Ye, the artist formerly known as Kanye West", proves that, despite all pretenses to the contrary, there is in fact a brazen double standard when it comes to asserting one's own identity in terms of LEGALLY changing their name, and having everyone else respect it, such that trans people are supposed to get special consideration in this regard compared to everyone else, somehow.
And when Elliot Page or Caitlyn Jenner publicly transitioned, the media did the same thing because using their former name provides utility.
You still seem really confused about what the issue is. People aren't being banned on twitter because they slipped up once and deadnamed someone, they are being banned because there is a coordinated campaign by conservatives to deadname trans folks in an attempt to bully and offend them. They are banned because the intent behind the action is to hurt.
>only extremely convoluted contemporary political pseudo-logic could explain how this actually makes perfect sense, how it's okay to call him Kanye West but it's not okay to call him Ellen Page, and how those two things are Actually Completely Different Situations instead of Exactly The Same Thing.
Again, you seem to be arguing with yourself. But you also seem to not understand the difference between accidentally using someones former name and purposefully using it as a tool to try and hurt them.
>the man has openly said as much; does his own position on his own identity not have any value to you?
At this point I'm pretty convinced you aren't actually reading anything, and instead are just responding with canned response.
> is that not the entire idea behind the concept of "deadnaming" to begin with?
No, and you don't seem to be familiar with what deadnaming is. If you follow that google link you can read some information on it so you understand it better.
That's fine, you should probably find something to support that. I haven't seen anything that indicates Ye is offended by being called 'Kayne West'. His official website is www.kaynewest.com. Could you post some examples where it's obvious that they are refusing to call him Ye?
>the only difference is that he's not trans, which you seem to think confers special privileges with regards to correct name use that nobody else has access to
Look, I'm happy to continue this conversation, but you are either failing to grasp basic concepts or pretending you don't. I've never said people shouldn't use his chosen name.
> I am pointing out this contradiction, and you are saying it's not a contradiction at all, because Ye is not trans, and people using his previous name are not intentionally trying to hurt him, but are just lazy or ignorant or whatever excuses you have. you're just talking past me without actually addressing anything I'm saying at this point, so there's no real use in continuing this discussion.
This is really embarrassing for you. I'm sorry for you if you can't read a basic definition, and I'm even more sorry for you if you can't tell the difference between using the wrong on accident and using it to hurt someone. It sounds like you have a lot of growing to do as a person. I agree that there is no point to this discussion.