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.
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.