Facebook Apologizes To Drag Queens Over "Real Name" Rule 280
An anonymous reader writes Facebook apologized to drag queens and the LGBT community after an outcry over the social network's policy of requiring members to use real names on their accounts. While the policy itself will stay in place, Facebook says, it will be changing how the rule is enforced. In a Wednesday post, Facebook's Chief Product Officer Chris Cox apologized to "the affected community of drag queens, drag kings, transgender, and extensive community of our friends, neighbors, and members of the LGBT community for the hardship that we've put you through in dealing with your Facebook accounts over the past few weeks."
What real name policy? (Score:3, Insightful)
If fb is serious and enforcing the policy, their user count will be reduced by at least 60 percent which essentially cut the worth of the company in half.
I'm Special Because I'm A Queen? (Score:1, Insightful)
Drag Queens shouldn't get an extra right to use fake names just because they're Drag Queens. If an apology is in order, it's for everyone. Otherwise, tighten up the panties and use the real name - or spend the money and change the name legally if it's that big a deal.
Comment removed (Score:5, Insightful)
Taking Offense is Taking Over (Score:5, Insightful)
Alternative lifestyles are free to be offensive to some niches of society. Thus, neither are you, Lil Miss Hot Mess, guaranteed the right not to be offended.
Being driven by ratings based on the viewing habits of folks who have checked out, the fourth estate is there in force to address every imaginable social injustice.
Re:Why only LGBT? (Score:4, Insightful)
Re:Good (Score:5, Insightful)
They're very sorry for this policy which they intend to continue. But they're very sorry about it. And that's coming from the heart, man.
Re:What real name policy? (Score:5, Insightful)
Given that most of the people I know on FB don't use their real names, I think FB is just being super-silly.
Re:Reverse discrimination is still discrimination (Score:5, Insightful)
Profiles for pets, WTF? Can teddy bears have profiles too? Are the pets allowed to have political opinions?
Why are facebook apologising to all LGBTs and not just Drag Queens? Why do drag queens get to have an alias and not straight people who wear straight peoples clothes. If women wear trousers do they get to call themselves cross-dressers and get an alias? If the pet cross-dresses can it have an alias?
This is all fucking insane.
Well what about writers with pen names? Musicians and actors with stage names?
Sting has a facebook page. His real name is not Sting, so why should he have special privileges?
Re:its their own fault (Score:2, Insightful)
So I would be okay with Rue Paul getting a pass but to give it to just one group is wrong.
It's not wrong if the one group who's getting the exception represents the group who's unfairly burdened by the original requirement. I'm not clear whether you're supporting or against the decision, but transgender people are unfairly burdened by a requirement of using their birth name when that doesn't agree with the different name they're getting most people (hoping eventually everyone) to use in the real world.
Re:its their own fault (Score:5, Insightful)
represents the group who's unfairly burdened by the original requirement.
I would say that the group is fairly burdened by the requirement. Burdens arent unfair just because you dont want to be burdened.
Way to be offensive in the apology (Score:4, Insightful)
The so-called "apology" is in itself offensive and patronizing. "Drag queens" to LGBT is what "Exotic dancers" are to being a straight woman (or a man, I suppose). The choice of names they used in the example is also not coincidental.
I wonder if reaction would have been different were facebook to require all married women to use their husbands name (Mrs Robinson), and then apologized by way by letting them keep their "Lil Miss Makemeasammich" monikers.
It's only "PC bullshit" until it's your problem.
Re:its their own fault (Score:3, Insightful)
People who who work with kids also use fake names (Score:5, Insightful)
Teachers and counsellors often don't want the kids they work with to be able to easily find them on facebook, so they use fake names. I have many friends who do this. So far they haven't been affected by any rule enforcement.
Re:its their own fault (Score:5, Insightful)
You have such a fundamental misunderstanding of some very basic concepts of justice (which have been tackled over and fucking over throughout the last 100 years of jurisprudence) that I'm not sure whether to bother replying to you.
Consider the following rule: "Anyone whose hair holds a pencil when inserted into the hair is not permitted into the party."
Is it unfair?
Well, no, on the surface of it, it isn't. Pretty simple rule, really? Applies to everyone. Everyone's treated the same. If you don't like it, don't spray/curl your hair, right?
No, of course not. It's a test for blackness. A person who has black skin is way more likely to fail the test than a person who has white skin. It's inherent to black people that they have curlier, tougher hair which is more likely to hold a pencil.
Just as it's inherent to transgender people that their sex organs do not reflect their psychological gender, so there is a very high likelihood that they are misnamed at birth.
Justice does not just consider whether a rule is equally applied to everyone, but whether a rule in effect treats everyone equally. Only in exceptional circumstances do we consider as just a rule which somehow disadvantages a group because of some innate feature of that group.
Reality: deal with it.
Re:Reverse discrimination is still discrimination (Score:5, Insightful)
Ah, it's been a while, Green Site!
Why are facebook apologising to all LGBTs and not just Drag Queens?
Ok, there's a great deal of confusion I see here. It's a question of use-case.
Drag queens are performing artists. See Rue Paul or Pandora Boxx, neither of which iirc use HRT or intend to transition to adopting their performing identities as their own 24/7. Companies get FB pages, so why shouldn't their performing identities get FB pages in addition to their own personal pages?
I find it odd that FB is apologizing to drag queens or that they would even target drag queens. (I'd also like to add that one curious thing I read in Whipping Girl is that drag queens are often welcomed into the female restroom, but trans women are shunned from that place.)
In the case of trans men and women, if FB has targeted them (I haven't been), FB is clearly wrong and the apology is justified. Especially in the case of trans women, proceeding with a legal name change is a risk that can land one homeless in a gutter. I'd also like to add that in my personal experience that I'm gendered female by others quite often (just lucky I guess), however changing my real name without being able to go without a job for a year or two would be suicidal. Employers have this little habit of demanding documents that contain one's legal gender. If one's legal gender doesn't match with the gender of one's identity and the gender others assign to one, it's OMG fucking holy shit GTFO.
There's also the complication that a name change is not enough to get those documents to match one's lived gender. My state requires bottom surgery before the documents can be amended, although some clever trans women are able to get the gender on their driver's license changed at the DMV with a little social engineering (others aren't so lucky). Other states make it impossible to change those documents even with bottom surgery.
My friends know me by one name. My employer and clients know me by another. However, FB is not a network for professionals so instead I have a LinkedIn profile with one name and a FB profile I haven't touched in probably two years with another name (just a few more years and it'll be my real name), the one my friends know me as.
Why do drag queens get to have an alias and not straight people who wear straight peoples clothes.
What is straight peoples' clothes, exactly? Do homosexuals wear something different to the office? In my experience, gays and lesbians tend to dress just the same as their heterosexual peers.
Yes, I'm intentionally being obtuse. I hope I addressed the confusion about drag above. This is a question of identity.
I'd also like to give you something to think about. Currently I'm between genders, so it's all wibbly-wobbly. However, should I obtain bottom surgery after going full time as a woman, I will then be a heterosexual woman and indistinguishable from any other straight woman who cannot have children due to whatever medical problem.
Your head will asplode the day the procedure for a barren cisgendered woman to receive a transplanted uterus (I'm too lazy to find the link, but I believe the procedure involved transplanting her mother's uterus into her so that she could have children) is expanded to transgendered women.
If women wear trousers do they get to call themselves cross-dressers and get an alias?
Why would a cisgendered woman want to have a male identity? If this is a case of a trans man or somebody experimenting with presenting a male identity, then I would say it's justified.
I've met a few trans men, and the decision to undergo gender transition is an even bigger hurdle for them than trans women. There is no bottom surgery they can hope for, and they have to be absolutely certain before they expose their bodies to testosterone. Estrogen is easy, and its changes to the body can be hidden or even reversed. That's
Re: its their own fault (Score:5, Insightful)
use your real name like us normal folks
Wow, I have now met the real person called "Anonymous Coward"
Is it me or is it just funny that someone posted anonymously that you should used your real name like "Normal Folks"
Re:its their own fault (Score:5, Insightful)
represents the group who's unfairly burdened by the original requirement.
I would say that the group is fairly burdened by the requirement. Burdens arent unfair just because you dont want to be burdened.
If you actually read the news stories (it's been widely reported) you'll find out that one individual reported 200 xgenders. Sounds to me like someone who was targeting a group based on their gender expression. Facebook said they didn't catch what had happened at first because they get thousands of reports.
Facebook clarified it's policy by saying that you can go by the name you're known by to the general public. How would you like it if you couldn't go by the nickname you've been using since grade school, but had to use your "real name"? "William Robert Doe? Who the heck is that? Oh, you mean Billy-Bob?"
Transgenders who are not transsexuals generally retain their legal birth name for things such as banking, etc. However, in the context of social interactions, what is the harm in letting them use the name that their friends and the general public know them as? Isn't it supposed to be a social network, and not a courtroom?
For transsexuals, do you have any idea of how long it takes to do the paperwork in some jurisdictions? Some places will refuse to change your name without a valid reason, backed up by documentation. And what is someone supposed to do while they're transitioning? Go by their old name (one that conforms to their old gender) on Facebook when their co-workers know them by a different name and gender? The Standards of Care for transsexuals require that you live and work full-time in your target gender for at least a year. So you've got a year when you don't have that documentation, and then another year while it goes through - minimum. Sure, YMMV, but that's the way it is where I live.
Re:What real name policy? (Score:2, Insightful)
That's why you have... Facebook for your private network.
Ha Ha Ha! Good one!
Re:Reverse discrimination is still discrimination (Score:4, Insightful)
The policy isn't the issue.
Yes it is.
Where is this insistence on real-naming coming from? Not the users (ie, 'the product'), but the advertisers (ie, 'the customers'). The users know their friends' aliases, but the advertisers can't or won't make that leap without some help in the form of arbitrary Terms of Use.
The policy IS the issue. The drag performers are just a symptom.