No, you haven’t. Their name is Émile P. Torres. From their own biography:
I recently changed my name from “Phil Torres” to “Émile P. Torres.”
I think you changed pronouns, but not their name. Their name is clearly in the tweet you’ve quoted. Check your third sentence.
Just a thought: if people on this forum don’t want accusations of supremacist ideological adherence to sprout up and maybe take root, then maybe be more conscientious about proactively not perpetuating supremacist behaviors. You are literally quoting a tweet here that contains a transgender pride flag and this person’s full name. I find it hard to believe you have missed these things, yet you’ve inexplicably misgendered and misnamed this person. Please read this carefully, its not an accusation, quite the opposite.
I’m non-binary and this makes me personally uncomfortable, fyi/as an example.
I’m going to err on the side of caution and assume you don’t know this: the use of dead names, even for context like “formerly X” is typically viewed as derogatory and unwelcome unless the person in question explicitly states otherwise. Everyone who is aware of this story is aware of this story and who you are referencing, you’ve literally quoted their tweet.
In this instance, the “formerly X” seems quite relevant because of Torres’s history in EA. If I was the OP, I wouldn’t immediately know how to unambiguously make the point that we’re talking about the person who made all these crazy bad-faith accusations against EA without something like “formerly X.” (Of course, I’d see no need to mention “formerly X” if Torres was entirely new to EA or didn’t have a public persona beforehand.)
If you know of a better way to handle this issue with previous EA involvement, maybe it would be helpful for others to post a suggestion.
I don’t know, that policy doesn’t seem very workable when a previous name is very well known and their current name is nowhere near as well known. I’m going to disagree and claim it’s okay to list someone’s current name and their previous name so long as there is a good reason behind it. There is definitely a certain segment of the population where the social rules are unambiguous, but it’s far from uncontroversial.
I guess I see us as obligated to try to treat each other as well as we can, but I don’t see us as being obligated to take full responsibility for everybody else’s psychological state, as that is an impossible burden. This is, of course, a shame, because it’s always sad when someone suffers. It would be nice if we could help everyone, all the time, but sometimes there are real costs to adopting a certain policy. But, just to be clear, we should respect people’s naming preferences insofar as is reasonable/practical.
A choice of words literally costs you or the OP nothing- its just a simple choice you make. And it says far more about you in the context here than you think. Choosing to be empathetic in the way you communicate, again, costing you absolutely nothing. It is what an altruist would do and it certainly doesn’t oblige you to “take full responsibility for everybody else’s psychological state.”
avoiding deadnaming is important, Torres was widely published before the name change. The project of retroactively updating all the EA forum posts, their old username and so on, has not been undertaken. Someone who cares about not deadnaming may not know an obvious policy in such a case!
Could some of the anonymous folks thought policing my comments here please explain what I’ve done wrong? If not, you’re sort of proving the wrong point here, fyi...
Hi. I’m not one of the people who downvoted you, and I’m not anonymous (while you actually are). But I’ll try to explain what I understand here.
On the one hand, you’re complaining about a behavior that made you feel uncomfortable and would probably make others too. This is important, and EAs should indeed make an effort to not exclude trans/queer people (or any other demographic). This inclusion is important to me personally.
On the other hand, you’re implicitly accusing anyone who replied to you of bad things (e.g. “actively harming people to the point of self harm, resulting in suicide and to the point of physical violence resulting in death”) rather than start off from the assumption that they are ignorant, or even have some reason you don’t see to do what they’re doing. And you’re ignoring the context that they’re trying to give you. You even took this conflict to an entirely unrelated comment thread.
Again, it speaks so much more about EA and this place that you all have put this much energy into policing me, while expending so little energy on reducing the harm you claim to be concerned about. Your forum norms are more important to you, for instance, than harm you could be causing others in this context. I find that incredibly problematic for people claiming to be the arbiters of doing good better and claiming to be altruists.
I personally expended energy not to police you but to answer your question (from the comment I replied to), because I thought it was bad that no one else answered.
I cannot speak for others, but certainly don’t see myself as “the arbiter of doing good better”.
Ah, I didn’t know what thread I was on. Seems the whole forum has decided they need to reasonsplain queer harm to the queer so I’ve got a lot of irons in the fire. Thanks for the response.
I think you’re only being downvoted for the “Just a thought” segment, not for pointing out that the name was still wrong (at the time you wrote the comment – it seems to be updated now).
In the “Just a thought” section, you’re IMO coming across as a fanatic on a crusade rather than someone who cares about EA being more welcoming and inclusive (or “taking the right side on a human rights issue” – as you view it; but others may not quite see it in the exact same way even if they generally agree that it’s good to take low-effort actions to prevent others from potentially feeling bad or making a space more accessible for them).
As a comparison, I think factory farming is really bad and I think it’s legitimate that vegans in 2014 or so criticized an EA conference for serving meat. Still, I would downvote vegans who include a rant about how it means EA is a terrible place for altruists if that’s how they approach the issue. Instead, I think vegans who care about EAs not promoting meat at conferences should approach a strategy “continue to criticize, but don’t assume that the target of your criticism is flawed beyond repair for seeing things differently from you.”
Likewise, I want a culture where people are receptive to criticism and ready to make low-effort accommodations even if they disagree with some aspects of the moral position in question.
You were insinuating that someone making a mistake (related to perhaps thoughtlessness or carelessness) is equivalent to a really bad action and calling into question the integrity of EA as a movement (if it happens that a significant portion of EAs would be likely to do that kind of thing). You’re doing this even after the OP showed willingness to update their statements (by changing pronouns at first – they then also changed Torres’s name later [but I see there’s also the issue of “formerly X” that you object to]).
The OP literally created a throw away account called throwaway151 just to attack a transgendered individual and has refused, after having been updated several times about other harmful actions to update their posts. You can rationalize this as naivety all you want, it’s obvious to anyone even slightly aware of how bigotry works what is going on here. And the repeated rationalization of this embarrassingly transparent wink wink is just absurd and disappointing, to say the least. And the fact that you all have wasted exponentially more words and energy on policing me, a non-binary queer person, than you have policing the person actually causing harm to others says pretty much everything.
The OP literally created a throw away account called throwaway151 just to attack a transgendered individual and has refused,
It’s obvious that the OP would have made the exact same type of post if Torres hadn’t changed their name and gender identity (and the post seems to be more about Zoe and Luke), so you’re being incredibly misleading here. I assume it’s probably due to the strong emotions involved – it’s unfortunate how this situation developed. I’m not planning to engage further.
Edit: In light of new comments by the throwaway account, I retract my statement that “the post seems to be more about Zoe and Luke”) – it seems like the OP also has strong views on associating with Torres all by itself. I still see absolutely no reason to believe that they’re acting differently due to the change of gender identity, but I want to flag that I now understand better why the now anonymous account above felt like the OP “had it out for Torres”). (I’m not necessarily saying “having it out for Torres” is unwarranted; I’m just acknowledging a point.)
The use of a deadname is completely unnecessary for reasons already stated. The OP and the people in this post have been informed, by a direct source, that deadname are incredibly harmful but instead of updating to serve altruistic intent, the people in this post at doubling down on a weakly rationalized excuse of naivety which is perpetuating harm.
I was under the impression that most trans people find it ok to mention a deadname in a parenthesis if the person has been notable under that name (which is true of Émile). That’s the Wikipedia policy; here’s a Reddit thread where that seems to be the consensus opinion. Is this wrong?
If this had started that way, it would’ve been fine but within this context, in which the OP clearly intended to malign the subject, regardless and then flat out ignored repeated, civil requests for a change, absolutely not. Context matters. If that was information the OP had and they meant no harm, they would have shared as much. Again, the lengths everyone is going here to police someone explaining harm is incredible...
hmmm so I didn’t downvote, but I think there’s a conflation in your comment between making an etiquette mistake (that Throwaway151 gave every signal that they were trying not to do, trying to fix) and some sort of active or positive cis-supremacism. That kind of conflation is probably seen as sloppy reasoning by many, and makes people hesitate before engaging with you because they don’t want to walk on eggshells, or risk being called transphobic or whatever.
I understand that people not trying hard enough at etiquette feels extremely similar to malice (especially in early stages of transition) because a dozen trans people and/or enbies have reported that to me! But generalizing from Throwaway151′s mistakes to the overall tone of the forum still seems like a mistake.
First of all, this perspective is so far off base. Its not an “etiquette” issue, its a literal human rights issue. Its an issue that is, as we speak, actively harming people to the point of self harm, resulting in suicide and to the point of physical violence resulting in death. And the political climate around this issue, around the globe, is so heated and exacerbated by bigots and bigotry that anyone claiming to be an altruist should be extremely cautious around these things. It would be “sloppy reasoning” to think otherwise. The OP has literally ignored my updates about deadnaming, which rationally says the OP doesn’t actually think these things matter.
It’s worth quantifying and doing ITN estimates of bullying, self harm, suicide in the queer community; then thinking about interventions. I forecast that a good treatment of this would be well received on the forum (which isn’t to say it would go uncriticized). I feel vaguely like I’d support someone doing this in some trivial ways; I’d like to upvote a proper treatment of this, for instance.
But I think it’s basically irrelevant to this post or it’s comments.
I’m sorry you feel like a few EAs might not support or respect you because they disagree with you here, but I don’t think there’s evidence that you’re broadly right about correlations between referring to a he/they who changed their name in the middle of a public writing career and tolerance for bigotry.
Yeah, you don’t get to decide for other people what is or is not harmful to them or who they are. Its just not how it works. When you start letting everyone do that for you, let me know and we can have that conversation. Every bigot (and I am not calling you one) rationalizes their bigotry and the harm they cause to others and devalues it all. That process, which you just summarized, btw, is not altruistic in any way shape or form. Again, words cost you nothing and if someone says they are harmful to them, as a supposed altruist, then you update—because it costs you nothing and you’ve reduced harm.
sorry i’ve corrected
Thank you!
You should also correct your comment on the original post
https://forum.effectivealtruism.org/posts/gx7BEkoRbctjkyTme/democratising-risk-or-how-ea-deals-with-critics-1?commentId=DQMpqghToYCCCEtCd
No, you haven’t. Their name is Émile P. Torres. From their own biography:
I think you changed pronouns, but not their name. Their name is clearly in the tweet you’ve quoted. Check your third sentence.
Just a thought: if people on this forum don’t want accusations of supremacist ideological adherence to sprout up and maybe take root, then maybe be more conscientious about proactively not perpetuating supremacist behaviors. You are literally quoting a tweet here that contains a transgender pride flag and this person’s full name. I find it hard to believe you have missed these things, yet you’ve inexplicably misgendered and misnamed this person. Please read this carefully, its not an accusation, quite the opposite.
I’m non-binary and this makes me personally uncomfortable, fyi/as an example.
Sorry have changed the name now—I previously changed the pronouns
I’m going to err on the side of caution and assume you don’t know this: the use of dead names, even for context like “formerly X” is typically viewed as derogatory and unwelcome unless the person in question explicitly states otherwise. Everyone who is aware of this story is aware of this story and who you are referencing, you’ve literally quoted their tweet.
In this instance, the “formerly X” seems quite relevant because of Torres’s history in EA. If I was the OP, I wouldn’t immediately know how to unambiguously make the point that we’re talking about the person who made all these crazy bad-faith accusations against EA without something like “formerly X.” (Of course, I’d see no need to mention “formerly X” if Torres was entirely new to EA or didn’t have a public persona beforehand.)
If you know of a better way to handle this issue with previous EA involvement, maybe it would be helpful for others to post a suggestion.
I don’t know, that policy doesn’t seem very workable when a previous name is very well known and their current name is nowhere near as well known. I’m going to disagree and claim it’s okay to list someone’s current name and their previous name so long as there is a good reason behind it. There is definitely a certain segment of the population where the social rules are unambiguous, but it’s far from uncontroversial.
Only if you completely disregard the suffering and trauma associated with deadnaming.
I guess I see us as obligated to try to treat each other as well as we can, but I don’t see us as being obligated to take full responsibility for everybody else’s psychological state, as that is an impossible burden. This is, of course, a shame, because it’s always sad when someone suffers. It would be nice if we could help everyone, all the time, but sometimes there are real costs to adopting a certain policy. But, just to be clear, we should respect people’s naming preferences insofar as is reasonable/practical.
A choice of words literally costs you or the OP nothing- its just a simple choice you make. And it says far more about you in the context here than you think. Choosing to be empathetic in the way you communicate, again, costing you absolutely nothing. It is what an altruist would do and it certainly doesn’t oblige you to “take full responsibility for everybody else’s psychological state.”
avoiding deadnaming is important, Torres was widely published before the name change. The project of retroactively updating all the EA forum posts, their old username and so on, has not been undertaken. Someone who cares about not deadnaming may not know an obvious policy in such a case!
Could some of the anonymous folks thought policing my comments here please explain what I’ve done wrong? If not, you’re sort of proving the wrong point here, fyi...
Hi. I’m not one of the people who downvoted you, and I’m not anonymous (while you actually are). But I’ll try to explain what I understand here.
On the one hand, you’re complaining about a behavior that made you feel uncomfortable and would probably make others too. This is important, and EAs should indeed make an effort to not exclude trans/queer people (or any other demographic). This inclusion is important to me personally.
On the other hand, you’re implicitly accusing anyone who replied to you of bad things (e.g. “actively harming people to the point of self harm, resulting in suicide and to the point of physical violence resulting in death”) rather than start off from the assumption that they are ignorant, or even have some reason you don’t see to do what they’re doing. And you’re ignoring the context that they’re trying to give you. You even took this conflict to an entirely unrelated comment thread.
Again, it speaks so much more about EA and this place that you all have put this much energy into policing me, while expending so little energy on reducing the harm you claim to be concerned about. Your forum norms are more important to you, for instance, than harm you could be causing others in this context. I find that incredibly problematic for people claiming to be the arbiters of doing good better and claiming to be altruists.
I personally expended energy not to police you but to answer your question (from the comment I replied to), because I thought it was bad that no one else answered.
I cannot speak for others, but certainly don’t see myself as “the arbiter of doing good better”.
Ah, I didn’t know what thread I was on. Seems the whole forum has decided they need to reasonsplain queer harm to the queer so I’ve got a lot of irons in the fire. Thanks for the response.
I am sorry, but why on earth is this comment being downvoted or whatever you call it?
I think you’re only being downvoted for the “Just a thought” segment, not for pointing out that the name was still wrong (at the time you wrote the comment – it seems to be updated now).
In the “Just a thought” section, you’re IMO coming across as a fanatic on a crusade rather than someone who cares about EA being more welcoming and inclusive (or “taking the right side on a human rights issue” – as you view it; but others may not quite see it in the exact same way even if they generally agree that it’s good to take low-effort actions to prevent others from potentially feeling bad or making a space more accessible for them).
As a comparison, I think factory farming is really bad and I think it’s legitimate that vegans in 2014 or so criticized an EA conference for serving meat. Still, I would downvote vegans who include a rant about how it means EA is a terrible place for altruists if that’s how they approach the issue. Instead, I think vegans who care about EAs not promoting meat at conferences should approach a strategy “continue to criticize, but don’t assume that the target of your criticism is flawed beyond repair for seeing things differently from you.”
Likewise, I want a culture where people are receptive to criticism and ready to make low-effort accommodations even if they disagree with some aspects of the moral position in question.
You were insinuating that someone making a mistake (related to perhaps thoughtlessness or carelessness) is equivalent to a really bad action and calling into question the integrity of EA as a movement (if it happens that a significant portion of EAs would be likely to do that kind of thing). You’re doing this even after the OP showed willingness to update their statements (by changing pronouns at first – they then also changed Torres’s name later [but I see there’s also the issue of “formerly X” that you object to]).
The OP literally created a throw away account called throwaway151 just to attack a transgendered individual and has refused, after having been updated several times about other harmful actions to update their posts. You can rationalize this as naivety all you want, it’s obvious to anyone even slightly aware of how bigotry works what is going on here. And the repeated rationalization of this embarrassingly transparent wink wink is just absurd and disappointing, to say the least. And the fact that you all have wasted exponentially more words and energy on policing me, a non-binary queer person, than you have policing the person actually causing harm to others says pretty much everything.
It’s obvious that the OP would have made the exact same type of post if Torres hadn’t changed their name and gender identity (and the post seems to be more about Zoe and Luke), so you’re being incredibly misleading here. I assume it’s probably due to the strong emotions involved – it’s unfortunate how this situation developed. I’m not planning to engage further.
Edit: In light of new comments by the throwaway account, I retract my statement that “the post seems to be more about Zoe and Luke”) – it seems like the OP also has strong views on associating with Torres all by itself. I still see absolutely no reason to believe that they’re acting differently due to the change of gender identity, but I want to flag that I now understand better why the now anonymous account above felt like the OP “had it out for Torres”). (I’m not necessarily saying “having it out for Torres” is unwarranted; I’m just acknowledging a point.)
The use of a deadname is completely unnecessary for reasons already stated. The OP and the people in this post have been informed, by a direct source, that deadname are incredibly harmful but instead of updating to serve altruistic intent, the people in this post at doubling down on a weakly rationalized excuse of naivety which is perpetuating harm.
I was under the impression that most trans people find it ok to mention a deadname in a parenthesis if the person has been notable under that name (which is true of Émile). That’s the Wikipedia policy; here’s a Reddit thread where that seems to be the consensus opinion. Is this wrong?
If this had started that way, it would’ve been fine but within this context, in which the OP clearly intended to malign the subject, regardless and then flat out ignored repeated, civil requests for a change, absolutely not. Context matters. If that was information the OP had and they meant no harm, they would have shared as much. Again, the lengths everyone is going here to police someone explaining harm is incredible...
At the time of writing, throwaway151 hasn’t commented in several hours (at least 5). Isn’t it possible that throwaway151 logged off a few hours ago?
hmmm so I didn’t downvote, but I think there’s a conflation in your comment between making an etiquette mistake (that Throwaway151 gave every signal that they were trying not to do, trying to fix) and some sort of active or positive cis-supremacism. That kind of conflation is probably seen as sloppy reasoning by many, and makes people hesitate before engaging with you because they don’t want to walk on eggshells, or risk being called transphobic or whatever.
I understand that people not trying hard enough at etiquette feels extremely similar to malice (especially in early stages of transition) because a dozen trans people and/or enbies have reported that to me! But generalizing from Throwaway151′s mistakes to the overall tone of the forum still seems like a mistake.
First of all, this perspective is so far off base. Its not an “etiquette” issue, its a literal human rights issue. Its an issue that is, as we speak, actively harming people to the point of self harm, resulting in suicide and to the point of physical violence resulting in death. And the political climate around this issue, around the globe, is so heated and exacerbated by bigots and bigotry that anyone claiming to be an altruist should be extremely cautious around these things. It would be “sloppy reasoning” to think otherwise. The OP has literally ignored my updates about deadnaming, which rationally says the OP doesn’t actually think these things matter.
It’s worth quantifying and doing ITN estimates of bullying, self harm, suicide in the queer community; then thinking about interventions. I forecast that a good treatment of this would be well received on the forum (which isn’t to say it would go uncriticized). I feel vaguely like I’d support someone doing this in some trivial ways; I’d like to upvote a proper treatment of this, for instance.
But I think it’s basically irrelevant to this post or it’s comments.
I’m sorry you feel like a few EAs might not support or respect you because they disagree with you here, but I don’t think there’s evidence that you’re broadly right about correlations between referring to a he/they who changed their name in the middle of a public writing career and tolerance for bigotry.
Yeah, you don’t get to decide for other people what is or is not harmful to them or who they are. Its just not how it works. When you start letting everyone do that for you, let me know and we can have that conversation. Every bigot (and I am not calling you one) rationalizes their bigotry and the harm they cause to others and devalues it all. That process, which you just summarized, btw, is not altruistic in any way shape or form. Again, words cost you nothing and if someone says they are harmful to them, as a supposed altruist, then you update—because it costs you nothing and you’ve reduced harm.