A little while ago I was at a party en femme and met an older man who didn’t know many transgender people but was interested in talking about it. He mentioned someone else he knew who’d transitioned, and asked about how to refer to that person when discussing things they’d done together before the transition. He said that in that context it felt more natural to refer to them by their old name and pronouns. While I understood that, I responded “It’s considered polite to refer to someone who’s transitioned by their new name and pronouns, even when you’re talking about them before the transition.”

I stand by that response, and I think that that custom is quite appropriate. For most trans people, their new identity is important to them, they have gone to some struggle to reach it, and that’s how they prefer to be thought of in general; they’d prefer to turn the page on the chapter of their life where they had been called something else. So where there are not other major considerations that override, it’s generally polite and preferred to respect their wishes to be referred to by their new name and pronouns, even retrospectively. That norm seems to me extremely reasonable. What I disagree with is an emergent norm that goes much further than this.

The now accepted term for one’s previous and differently gendered name is a deadname. The term is intended to remind people that that’s not the name to use for them anymore; it’s over, it’s dead. Which is fine. But notice the term does carry an additional implication: that which is dead, used to be alive. The name is no longer alive, but it was alive. And that fact makes it of continuing relevance when discussing the past.

Most of my local friends in metropolitan Boston are part of a subcultural community associated with LARPing. This community has a very large number of trans people within it; it’s also structured such that people might see each other regularly for a few years (at a game that’s running for that time) and then not see each other for years afterward. That means I’ve often had a conversation where I will refer to a person and receive the reply “Who’s that?” – and get a blank stare when I discuss contexts in which my conversation partner might know the person in question, until I finally add “They used to be known as –” and add their deadname. And then I get the instant recognition of “Ah.“

This recognition is important. Personal identity matters, especially in an individualistic society like ours. Maria Heim had already published articles under the name Maria Hibbets before she married; those earlier articles are still under the earlier name, and knowing the earlier name is important for understanding the later work, to recognize that they are the work of the same person. (Thus when I’ve referred to the work she published as Hibbets, I name her as “Maria Heim (née Hibbets)”.) When we are reading works by P.A. Payutto, Prayudh Payutto, and Phra Rajavaramuni, it matters to our understanding of those works that these names all refer to the same monk (and that this monk now goes by Somdet Phra Buddhaghosacariya). And yes, not everybody knows that Caitlyn Jenner, the high-profile transwoman, is a former Olympic gold medalist – but most would know that about her if they knew that she formerly went by the name Bruce.

The problem is that a very loud faction of the transgender movement refuses to acknowledge any of this. For them a deadname is expected to undergo a full damnatio memoriae, absolutely unutterable like the name of Voldemort. This is a good example of the kind of norm illicitly defended by Kelly and Westra, a new norm we’re expected to assume is progress and swallow whole without any discussion of whether it’s reasonable. This norm was one of the points of attack made against the philosopher Rebecca Tuvel, who had referred to “Caitlyn (formerly Bruce) Jenner”. Nora Berenstain began her Facebook attack on Tuvel by proclaiming, “Tuvel enacts violence and perpetuates harm in numerous ways throughout her essay. She deadnames a trans woman….”

It is terribly unfortunate how common that kind of hyperbole has become in the trans movement. Tuvel, entirely reasonably and understandably, made life easier for her audience by inserting two words reminding them that the Bruce Jenner whom they would have heard of in the 1980s was now the Caitlyn Jenner under discussion in her article. But Berenstain proclaims, with the trans movement’s characteristic and unfortunate emphasis on heat over light, that to insert those two words for her audience’s convenience is to enact violence and perpetuate harm. That claim is particularly striking given that Jenner herself has been happy to refer to her past self as Bruce; if Jenner were to read Tuvel’s article, she would have no objection to the usage. So it would be utterly bizarre to claim that Tuvel thereby did any harm, let alone violence, to Jenner with a usage that Jenner herself employs and welcomes. What Berenstain puts out is just a dogmatic assumption, without argument, that deadnaming somehow constitutes a form of harm or even violence. One would hope for better from a philosophy professor.

Even to people who do wish that their deadname not be used, it remains a juvenile form of hyperbole to call it “violence”. It’s rude to gratuitously remind someone of a past they’d rather forget; it’s polite to respect them by aiming do avoid such reminders in the general case. It’s also important and valuable for people in conversation to be able to know that the person being discussed is someone they already know of under a different name. It is entirely reasonable, in such circumstances, to use the deadname once and move on. If even that reasonable step is enough to cause you emotional harm, I would like to offer the rather daring suggestion that maybe it is your job to strengthen yourself enough that you don’t get harmed by such a minor and innocent reminder. If your fear of the number 13 prevents you from reading page 13 of any book, it is on you to figure out how to address that irrational fear; it is not on book publishers to make every book skip from page 12 to page 14. To ask that people never use deadnames is like the latter; it is not a reasonable accommodation to request. (Apparently many cis people – including even Tuvel herself – are reluctant to call trans people like Berenstain on their bullshit in that regard, so I guess that’s my job.)

Kind people make reasonable accommodations to avoid hurting other people where possible. That’s why it’s good etiquette to avoid deadnaming someone when you don’t have to – unless, like Jenner, they’ve made it clear they don’t mind. But etiquette also requires that you make yourself understood rather than causing needless confusion by talking around a matter. So when it’s necessary to be understood, use the deadname once and move on.