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This is also a solved problem (largely) around trans issues specifically. I suggest reading http://www.glaad.org/reference/transgender http://www.glaad.org/ref

This is also a solved problem (largely) around trans issues specifically. I suggest reading http://www.glaad.org/reference/transgender http://www.glaad.org/reference/transgender for more context. In particular, you should refer to Chelsea as she would want -- with her current name and her expressed gender pronoun preference (e.g., use 'her' where you use 'his' above). Also, "gender association" is not a common formulation. In terms of capturing the nuance of acts prior to public transitioning, the above link has some suggestions: Avoid pronoun confusion when examining the stories and backgrounds of transgender people prior to their transition. Ideally a story will not use pronouns associated with a person's birth sex when referring to the person's life prior to transition. Try to write transgender people's stories from the present day, instead of narrating them from some point in the past, thus avoiding confusion and potentially disrespectful use of incorrect pronouns.

kbenson 12y ago
Is this a largely solved problem around the issue, or a solved problem in and around the community? I ask because I'm torn between wanting to respect the individual, but also as a computer scientist feeling somewhat offended that someone's later choice of how they want to refer to themselves caused altered accounts of historical information, which to my eyes is more confusing (and possibly less accurate, if that confusion isn't addressed promptly and often). I'm not really sure how to square that with myself, but I think I lean towards preserving the data integrity of the public record. If someone referred to themselves in a specific way and identified themselves a specific way in the past, I think that's how they should be referred to when discussing that point in time.
- doublering 12y ago
  Think of it as a database. A table of events with foreign key references to a table of people. Now if someone's name changes, you only need to update a single entry, eliminating both redundancy and inconsistency in our database. If I look up events about Beyoncé Giselle Knowles-Carter, I sure hope that I find things like when she was born! If you insist on tying events to name at the time of the event, you have a much greater propensity for losing information whenever anyone changes their name for any reason! Therefore, from a data integrity standpoint, I think every database engineer would prefer the one name for all history approach. You could even store the name change event itself!
  - kbenson 12y ago
    That's one possible schema, which assumes the name is the primary key. Now that we've established that the name can change, I think it makes a bad choice for a primary key. Instead, I would think you look up a name, and get a link to the primary record, allowing multiple names in use (whether active currently or not). I personally think any schema that requires going back and changing primary keys on a record (and thus anything that links to that record by it's key) because of an action that record takes if poorly designed, and likely to have errors, which I think sums up my thoughts on this nicely.
    - doublering 12y ago
      I never said anything about using names as a primary key. Of course, you could expand the schema to handle aliases, but in the end, people have names that they prefer. You are kbenson, and if you were able to change your username, the proper action is to change the username on all of your comments.
      - maximumsteve 12y ago
        Wouldn't the primary key be SSN anyways? Regardless, most sites will not allow you to change your username for all past comments. To do this naively would break searching by their old username for other users.
    - lilsunnybee 12y ago
      IMO Wikipedia-esque redirects seem to be a perfectly valid, respectful, non-confusing way of handling cases such as this. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bradley_manning http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bradley_manning
      - kbenson 12y ago
        Wikipedia uses something similar to what I described under the covers. There's a unique id assigned to a page, but it's ALSO accessible by a title. Internally, the page id is used to refer the page from other items, not the title[1]. This is sort of equivalent to having one or more names associated with your SSN, if you are in the US. Which makes sense, because names are not unique. 1: http://goo.gl/T7DfoC http://goo.gl/T7DfoC Edit: HN garbled the wikimedia URL, so I used a shortener.
- king_jester 12y ago
  > Is this a largely solved problem around the issue, or a solved problem in and around the community? That a community has solved a problem is no different than the problem being solved (unless of course you don't believe in the validity of trans people). Chelsea Manning has clearly stated that she is a woman and should be referred to as a woman. > I ask because I'm torn between wanting to respect the individual, but also as a computer scientist feeling somewhat offended that someone's later choice of how they want to refer to themselves caused altered accounts of historical information, which to my eyes is more confusing (and possibly less accurate, if that confusion isn't addressed promptly and often). If you say you are feeling torn, then you are not wanting to respect this person at all, so you really aren't feeling torn. Bottom line, Chelsea Manning is a woman and should be referred to as such. You say you are offended, but what you are really saying is that you feel that you know her gender better than she does. You don't. Your discomfort with trans folks is your own issue and to misgender someone is hugely disrespectful. > I'm not really sure how to square that with myself, but I think I lean towards preserving the data integrity of the public record. If someone referred to themselves in a specific way and identified themselves a specific way in the past, I think that's how they should be referred to when discussing that point in time. There is a difference between talking about past events and continuing to insist on misgendering someone in the present.
  - thanatropism 12y ago
    Isn't this what "née" is for?
    - lilsunnybee 12y ago
      Or the much more common singular they. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Singular_they#Usage http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Singular_they#Usage
      - waterhouse 12y ago
        "née" isn't a pronoun; it's used to identify someone's birth name as distinct from her current name, as in "Hillary Clinton, née Rodham". A French-to-English dictionary says it literally means "born". (And when conjugated with a male noun, in French it would be "né".)
- JeremyNT 12y ago
  The key way to think of this is that the pronoun is an honorific which always signifies the current state of the individual, and it is not a historical fact. If facts related to the individual's gender at an earlier time are germane, such facts should be explicitly stated rather than overloading the pronoun, which (remember) is simply an honorific which the user has selected. The question of gender earlier in one's life in most stories is not even relevant and there is really no need to discuss it at all. However, in Manning's case the question of gender does appear to be somewhat relevant, since her motive appears to have included concerns about how the Army treated (or failed to treat) her own gender disorder.
  - kbenson 12y ago
    > The question of gender earlier in one's life in most stories is not even relevant and there is really no need to discuss it at all. Except that gender neutral singular pronouns are not used much in English where they exist (there is a singular they, but it's uncommon it's used). But I think focusing on this is missing the point. Note my reference to Cassius Clay. I'm more interested in that an identifier changes. That the gender specific also changed is just an additional complication, but once the rules on the name are clear, the rules on the pronoun would be obvious, I think.
- Torgo 12y ago
  You are confused because you are seeing gender how it is currently used, which is a social construct that is assigned to people largely beyond their control that affects how others see and interact with them; and what some people want gender to be: solely an expression of one's personal gender identification, that to be respectful everyone else must acknowledge.
  - kbenson 12y ago
    I'm actually not even going into how people want to identify, which I see as largely their own choice. I'm more interested in why we are supposed to change the past tense pronoun and name. Really, my question is the same when the pronoun argument is excised from it. Consider Cassius Clay and Muhammad Ali. Do we say Cassius Clay won the world heavyweight title in 1964, or do we say Muhammad Ali did, knowing he changes his name afterward. There are cases where it is more confusing both ways, but from a historical record perspective, it feels more correct to me to say Cassius Clay did, simply because that also denotes who he identified as at that point in time.

kbenson 12y ago

Is this a largely solved problem around the issue, or a solved problem in and around the community? I ask because I'm torn between wanting to respect the individual, but also as a computer scientist feeling somewhat offended that someone's later choice of how they want to refer to themselves caused altered accounts of historical information, which to my eyes is more confusing (and possibly less accurate, if that confusion isn't addressed promptly and often). I'm not really sure how to square that with myself, but I think I lean towards preserving the data integrity of the public record. If someone referred to themselves in a specific way and identified themselves a specific way in the past, I think that's how they should be referred to when discussing that point in time.

doublering 12y ago
Think of it as a database. A table of events with foreign key references to a table of people. Now if someone's name changes, you only need to update a single entry, eliminating both redundancy and inconsistency in our database. If I look up events about Beyoncé Giselle Knowles-Carter, I sure hope that I find things like when she was born! If you insist on tying events to name at the time of the event, you have a much greater propensity for losing information whenever anyone changes their name for any reason! Therefore, from a data integrity standpoint, I think every database engineer would prefer the one name for all history approach. You could even store the name change event itself!
- kbenson 12y ago
  That's one possible schema, which assumes the name is the primary key. Now that we've established that the name can change, I think it makes a bad choice for a primary key. Instead, I would think you look up a name, and get a link to the primary record, allowing multiple names in use (whether active currently or not). I personally think any schema that requires going back and changing primary keys on a record (and thus anything that links to that record by it's key) because of an action that record takes if poorly designed, and likely to have errors, which I think sums up my thoughts on this nicely.
  - doublering 12y ago
    I never said anything about using names as a primary key. Of course, you could expand the schema to handle aliases, but in the end, people have names that they prefer. You are kbenson, and if you were able to change your username, the proper action is to change the username on all of your comments.
    - maximumsteve 12y ago
      Wouldn't the primary key be SSN anyways? Regardless, most sites will not allow you to change your username for all past comments. To do this naively would break searching by their old username for other users.
  - lilsunnybee 12y ago
    IMO Wikipedia-esque redirects seem to be a perfectly valid, respectful, non-confusing way of handling cases such as this. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bradley_manning http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bradley_manning
    - kbenson 12y ago
      Wikipedia uses something similar to what I described under the covers. There's a unique id assigned to a page, but it's ALSO accessible by a title. Internally, the page id is used to refer the page from other items, not the title[1]. This is sort of equivalent to having one or more names associated with your SSN, if you are in the US. Which makes sense, because names are not unique. 1: http://goo.gl/T7DfoC http://goo.gl/T7DfoC Edit: HN garbled the wikimedia URL, so I used a shortener.
king_jester 12y ago
> Is this a largely solved problem around the issue, or a solved problem in and around the community? That a community has solved a problem is no different than the problem being solved (unless of course you don't believe in the validity of trans people). Chelsea Manning has clearly stated that she is a woman and should be referred to as a woman. > I ask because I'm torn between wanting to respect the individual, but also as a computer scientist feeling somewhat offended that someone's later choice of how they want to refer to themselves caused altered accounts of historical information, which to my eyes is more confusing (and possibly less accurate, if that confusion isn't addressed promptly and often). If you say you are feeling torn, then you are not wanting to respect this person at all, so you really aren't feeling torn. Bottom line, Chelsea Manning is a woman and should be referred to as such. You say you are offended, but what you are really saying is that you feel that you know her gender better than she does. You don't. Your discomfort with trans folks is your own issue and to misgender someone is hugely disrespectful. > I'm not really sure how to square that with myself, but I think I lean towards preserving the data integrity of the public record. If someone referred to themselves in a specific way and identified themselves a specific way in the past, I think that's how they should be referred to when discussing that point in time. There is a difference between talking about past events and continuing to insist on misgendering someone in the present.
- thanatropism 12y ago
  Isn't this what "née" is for?
  - lilsunnybee 12y ago
    Or the much more common singular they. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Singular_they#Usage http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Singular_they#Usage
    - waterhouse 12y ago
      "née" isn't a pronoun; it's used to identify someone's birth name as distinct from her current name, as in "Hillary Clinton, née Rodham". A French-to-English dictionary says it literally means "born". (And when conjugated with a male noun, in French it would be "né".)
JeremyNT 12y ago
The key way to think of this is that the pronoun is an honorific which always signifies the current state of the individual, and it is not a historical fact. If facts related to the individual's gender at an earlier time are germane, such facts should be explicitly stated rather than overloading the pronoun, which (remember) is simply an honorific which the user has selected. The question of gender earlier in one's life in most stories is not even relevant and there is really no need to discuss it at all. However, in Manning's case the question of gender does appear to be somewhat relevant, since her motive appears to have included concerns about how the Army treated (or failed to treat) her own gender disorder.
- kbenson 12y ago
  > The question of gender earlier in one's life in most stories is not even relevant and there is really no need to discuss it at all. Except that gender neutral singular pronouns are not used much in English where they exist (there is a singular they, but it's uncommon it's used). But I think focusing on this is missing the point. Note my reference to Cassius Clay. I'm more interested in that an identifier changes. That the gender specific also changed is just an additional complication, but once the rules on the name are clear, the rules on the pronoun would be obvious, I think.
Torgo 12y ago
You are confused because you are seeing gender how it is currently used, which is a social construct that is assigned to people largely beyond their control that affects how others see and interact with them; and what some people want gender to be: solely an expression of one's personal gender identification, that to be respectful everyone else must acknowledge.
- kbenson 12y ago
  I'm actually not even going into how people want to identify, which I see as largely their own choice. I'm more interested in why we are supposed to change the past tense pronoun and name. Really, my question is the same when the pronoun argument is excised from it. Consider Cassius Clay and Muhammad Ali. Do we say Cassius Clay won the world heavyweight title in 1964, or do we say Muhammad Ali did, knowing he changes his name afterward. There are cases where it is more confusing both ways, but from a historical record perspective, it feels more correct to me to say Cassius Clay did, simply because that also denotes who he identified as at that point in time.