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Culture War Roundup for the week of June 22, 2026

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Unless a living transgender or non-binary person was notable under a former name, the former name should not appear in any page

I don't think that that is too unreasonable of a compromise. Some trans advocates object to any mention of the birth name of a trans person even if they were famous under that name before they transitioned; they are just as welcome to make their own fork.

(It is my understanding that the reason so many trans individuals have such a desire to hide their deadnames is because some anti-trans persons, who have no compunction about respecting name changes in other circumstances, nevertheless insist on referring to Alice as 'Alan' as a subtle way of, every time they refer to her, calling her delusional or worse.

By way of analogy, imagine instead that Alice is a devout Catholic and Bob is a devout Protestant. Each sincerely believes that the other is factually wrong about fundamental aspects of reality, but if Alice doesn't want to talk about it, it is not considered polite for Bob to keep bringing it up when Alice has asked him to stop, and if Bob continuously referred to Alice as 'Alice, who worships a long-dead Babylonian queen, and is thus on a direct route to hell,' I think most people would agree that he was out of line.

The same principle applies if Alice is a trans woman and Bob is an adherent of the ideology which calls Alice a 'trans-identified male'; a lot of people outside the tribal cores would look askance at Bob if, every time he mentioned Alice, he called her 'Alice the delusional man in a dress who is probably some kind of pervert'; repeatedly calling her 'Alan' is, from the perspective of trans individuals and their sympathisers, an attempt to do the same thing with a minimal fig leaf of plausible deniability.)

By way of analogy, imagine instead that Alice is a devout Catholic and Bob is a devout Protestant.

We are not talking about personal etiquette in office or neighborhood, we are talking about official policy of world's encyclopedia of record.

Rather different things.

Imagine Encyclopedia Britannica had a rule to never ever mention that notable persons known for their Catholicism were ever in their life adherents of different religion. (in description of people of other religions or non religion, no such rule applies).

Wouldn't you find it a little strange, wouldn't this make you worry that famous objectivity and impartiality of Britannica might be compromised?

It is my understanding that the reason so many trans individuals have such a desire to hide their deadnames is because some anti-trans persons, who have no compunction about respecting name changes in other circumstances, nevertheless insist on referring to Alice as 'Alan' as a subtle way of, every time they refer to her, calling her delusional or worse.

But "this information could be used to harm someone" is not accepted by Wikipedia in most other contexts as a reason to not include information.

if Alice doesn't want to talk about it, it is not considered polite for Bob to keep bringing it up when Alice has asked him to stop, and if Bob continuously referred to Alice as 'Alice, who worships a long-dead Babylonian queen, and is thus on a direct route to hell,' I think most people would agree that he was out of line.

It is possible to talk normally about Alice without mentioning Alice's religion at all. It's not possible to talk normally about Alice without mentioning Alice's name.

If a trans person was not notable before transitioning, their former name is of no interest to the public and there is no reason to include it, and a good reason – namely, courtesy – to exclude it. Note that the fact that they are trans is allowed to be included, since that is clearly of interest to the public.

In fact, Wikipedia is pretty consistent on this. The same courtesy is extended to, for example, the streamer Jerma985 whose real name you won't find anywhere in his article. It formerly contained a fake real name, which he presents as his real name, presumably to protect his privacy, but even that has now been removed.

This isn't the only instance of Wikipedia being courteous with respect to non-notable people or things people did before they became notable. One Wikipedia policy says (emphasis mine):

Someone who does not wish to be the subject of a [biography article] may nominate it for deletion (...) Unless the subject clearly passes the general notability guideline (GNG) or is a current or former elected or appointed official, editors should seriously consider honoring such requests. Factors weighing in favor of deletion include a problematic article history, real-world harms identified by the subject, and the subject being only minimally notable or notable for only one event.

It's not possible to talk normally about Alice without mentioning Alice's name.

But it is possible to talk normally about her without mentioning her previous name.

The reason that Bob doesn't have to refer to Alice's religion by a name that Alice doesn't like is that he doesn't have to refer to it at all. This is not true for Alice's name. Using Alice's preferred name is not remaining neutral; it's giving in. Alice's name, in the trans context, makes an implicit statement about Alice that Bob doesn't believe in and therefore doesn't want to say.

Using someone's objectively real, legal name does not entail accepting that they are their stated gender. Someone could change their name for non-trans-related reasons, and you would presumably accept that.

That the new name is typically one used by the opposite gender is irrelevant. If someone had a gender-inappropriate name because their parents are weird – a boy named Sue or one of the many girls nowadays given traditionally masculine names – you surely wouldn't object to that, either.

Exactly. How many of those who persistently refer to Alice as 'Alan', also refer to the thirty-eighth President of the United States as 'Leslie Lynch King', or the star of Hitchcock's North by Northwest as 'Archibald Leach'?