"Who is Kate?"
On living with my she's-not-dead name.
Let’s not bury the lede: I loathe the term ‘deadname.’ I don’t like using it for myself; I avoid using it to describe others. Every time I hear it, the record skips. Like this past week when I bristled hearing word-minting national treasure Dan Savage say it on his podcast.1 I dislike the word so much that I tried to write three other intros to this newsletter to avoid typing it out: d e a d n a m e.
But, again, you can’t write about the thing without writing about the thing.
And, even if I don’t like how it sounds, the OED has already weighed in on usage. Both of these words are official entries—my phrasing below, not the fine folks from Oxford:
Deadnaming—intentionally, maliciously, callously, or carelessly using a trans person’s former/birth name—is, at best, offensive and often much more harmful.
A deadname is the proper noun itself being referenced. The birth/former/given/childhood/old/government name that a trans person very likely does not want to engage with you about.
I know we need these words because they emerged out of necessity. We trans and trans-allied folks needed a snappier way to say, “Hey, you know that person who now identifies as Felix? Heads up, calling them by the name they no longer use is rude and disrespectful.” That’s a mouthful. “Please don’t deadname her/him/them” is admittedly much faster.
In many ways, these words have succeeded in positively shifting cultural awareness. But I wonder if we lost a little nuance along the way. I once had a truly out-of-body experience hearing a bunch of cis folks in a hot tub educating each other on the trauma of deadnaming someone. I was shirtless in La Jolla, staring into the ocean, as it dawned on me that the way the conversation was flowing, no one clocked I was trans. Despite the scars on my chest just above the water line, I was passing as cis and feeling invisible even while my skin was showing.
What felt itchy to me then, and still does, is that rooting these concepts with “dead” linguistically flattens the trans experience. There I was, listening to a cis person preach about the inherent trauma of transitioning, debating whether or not to complicate their well-intentioned speech with my own experience.
You know this, but it is worth underscoring: some trans people change their names, and some trans people do not.2 Likewise, some folks feel a tremendous amount of trauma about their pre-transition identities; some do not. More accurately, there is a spectrum of trauma and pain in every trans person’s story. So, fully acknowledge that for some, associating their transition with a form of death and rebirth feels just right. For me, and maybe this is the result of an intersection of cultural privileges, death isn’t the metaphor.
I changed my name socially and a little later legally over a decade ago, but my former name lives on. She’s scribbled into the inside covers of my childhood books that now sit on my child’s bookshelf. She scrolls by at the end of a half-dozen Pixar films. And she lays dormant like a virus buried inside innumerable corporate databases.
Last week, my former self received my monthly phone bill. (It would be nice if she could also pay the bill.) That cell account is so vintage it pre-dates smartphones. For years, I didn’t kick up dust for fear that customer service would realize I no longer worked at the company that qualified me for a 20% discount. Eventually, I grew tired of endless form-filling and ran out of bureaucratic energy. The task fell off my list.
I forgot all of this when I walked into the Apple Store to upgrade my phone. It was a cold and rainy evening; I was bundled up, unshaven, and carrying my pink bike helmet. I often imagine in these moments that I read like a certain kind of urban, middle-aged, tired, progressive dad. (And almost always gay.) The nice employee at the bustling Downtown Brooklyn store waited patiently for me to pick a color. (White Titanium.) There was small talk. There was lots of noise. And then, we’re moving through the purchase steps. He’s scanning and clicking on his small handheld device. I look down at the screen in his hand and see my old name in all caps, bold. He looks at me: “Who is Kate?” I blushed. Had he given off the slightest bit of queer vibes, I would have flipped it into a joke: “Oh, she me!” Instead, my response came out more raised-female-so-I-over-apologize-awkward: “Yep. That’s me. Names are hard to change sometimes.”
My former name also appears typed on a sheet of paper, under plexi, screwed into a historic wall at the University of Virginia. I learned this at the start of the school year because the current resident messaged me on Instagram after moving in. This was a tremendous moment! When I lived in that room, I was working on my thesis about the queer history of our college and spent many months reaching out to alums. The cycle repeats! Except that this current student wasn’t looking to connect beyond a wave, they reached out to alert me that my deadname was listed. Ooof.
That earnest college student anthropologist/architect/activist didn’t die. She evolved over 20+ years into this still-earnest, bike-riding, kid-raising, art-making, pleasure-seeking, mustache-wearing, he/him-using version of me.
I’ve been me the whole time.
I feel like the older activist at a gay event in the late 90s wagging my finger and complaining about all of the youth adopting queer: “In my day, queer was a slur!”
Words change, as do cultures. Subcultures push language to evolve, and those new/shifting words get picked up more broadly, which then, at varying speeds, influences culture at large. Sometimes, it feels like you are in sync with the shifts; inevitably, we all feel a little thrown off at some point. Perhaps the imperfect nature of a term is worth the sensitivity that has traveled with its usage.
I don’t love the term “deadname,” but I reserve my real anger for the way trans folks are treated and all the ways we are forced to constantly defend ourselves. While writing this piece, I decided to finally make peace with the term. Because the sting I feel when it hits my ears is 1) not about me and 2) not for me. The sting is designed for you.
xx Kyle
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Dan has coined and/or amplified many culture-changing words: monogamish, pegging, GGG… He’s so good at the linguistic zeitgeist. That very same episode Dan introduced a new term: tolyamory. It’s a good one.
Many, many more cis people change their names every year for reasons having absolutely nothing to do with gender. (Except, doesn’t marriage have everything to do with gender?) If you are a woman and change your name through marriage (we Society love this reason!), you now have a maiden name. The whole situation and verbiage feels antiquated under the microscope, but at least your old self didn’t die along the way. (Or did it?)
Reading the headline, I wondered who is Kate? LOL! Oh. Yeah. Right. I appreciate your perspective and the time and energy you've invested in your blog.
Thank you for this perspective. I loved the voice recording so much.