Let me give my perspective. At this point, my deadname doesn’t carry the same weight it once did. I can joke about it now because it doesn’t feel like my name a

Let me give my perspective. At this point, my deadname doesn’t carry the same weight it once did. I can joke about it now because it doesn’t feel like my name any more, but, when I started my transition, I had a very different relationship with it. Back then, hearing my deadname was a quick way to dig up all of the pain and dysphoria that had driven me to the brink of suicide. It represented a chapter of my life that I desperately wanted to close out. I needed to feel like I was free to redefine myself in a way that was independent from all of the pain of my pre-transition life, but my deadname felt like a ball and chain that was holding me back. In fact, looking back at the last 2 years of transition, I’d say changing my name and pronouns was the second most important step to escaping my depression. (The most important was starting hormone therapy.) This isn’t a uniquely trans feeling, either. I have friends who had very bad relationships with their parents — so bad that they changed their last names. Like me and my deadname, my friends said that hearing their old family name could dredge up a lot of unpleasant memories. Like me, they wanted to put some distance between themselves and their pasts. Yes, many people change their family name when they get married, and those people usually don’t freak out when they hear their original surname. However, that should not be considered representative of how everyone feels.