User talk:Stewartcbaker

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I hope you enjoy editing here! Please sign your name on talk pages using four tildes (~~~~); this will insert your name and the date. If you need help, check out the community portal, or ask me on my talk page. Again, welcome!.--Dirk P Broer 19:40, 22 September 2018 (EDT)

Anya Johanna DeNiro

Hi, I'm a bit at a loss for what you are trying to accomplish with the change in preferred name. Isfdb policy is to grant a most common name used in publications as the so-called canonical name, regardless whether that is the 'true' name of the author or not. And even when 'Anya Johanna DeNiro' were to be that canonical name, then would all pre name change publications still have the original name as 'as published by', as we do not falsify history. See e.g. R. L. Fanthorpe as an example what it means in our database to have multiple names under which your work came out. Any name change for Fanthorpe would not 'solve' anything either, all work would come under the new name just as it appeared under the old (minus one -the change- and with one added: Fanhorpe, the original name). I hope I've made myself clear, if not do not be afraid to ask questions.--Dirk P Broer 19:56, 22 September 2018 (EDT)

Hi Dirk,

A policy that treats somebody's gender identity as a pseudonym implies that their gender identity is fake. That has the potential to be incredibly harmful to transgender people, who already face significant bullying and attacks online.

I would encourage you to consider changing your policy to whatever that person has most recently self-identified as, similar to Wikipedia's policy on gender identity: https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Manual_of_Style#Gender_identity

If you're not familiar with transgender issues, I know this can seem confusing and unnecessary. But although it might require a little bit more work for ISFDB it's really a small change, and it can really have a big impact on transgender authors. Here's an article that talks about the negative effects being referred to by birth name can have on transgender people: https://www.healthline.com/health/transgender/deadnaming#media

I don't think you would need to worry about retroactive changes, but marking a person's transgender name as a pseudonym is something else altogether, at least to me. If you take a look at Charlie Jane Anders page, her previous publications don't display her current name, so I'm not sure why this should be different from a programming perspective.

I would be happy to talk with you more about this if that would be helpful. You can feel free to email me at stewart.c.baker@gmail.com if that's easier than a talk page discussion. Stewartcbaker 14:44, 23 September 2018 (EDT)

Let me make sure that I understand the proposal correctly. The current policy says "The canonical name is the name under which a particular author's bibliography is organized. For authors who publish under multiple names, the canonical name is the most recognized name for that author within the genre." For example, see James Tiptree, Jr.'s and Murray Leinster's bibliographies, which are organized under what was the author's best known in-genre pseudonym.

Your proposal is to change the policy so that bibliographies would be organized under "whatever that person has most recently self-identified as", right? If so, then I suggest you post it on the Rules and standards discussions page. Ahasuerus 15:03, 23 September 2018 (EDT)

The issue is the word pseudonym. In Tiptree's case, it makes sense for that to be her base name. However, Tiptree was not to my knowledge transgender. She published under what was actually a pseudonym.

In Anya and Charlie Jane's case, the name change is not due to a pseudonym, but due to a gender identity that no longer matches that of their birth name. Conflating this with a pseudonym has the potential to cause actual harm to these authors.

That said, I recognize that this is not intentional but sure to what is still a rapidly changing set of norms in the real world. Also, I'm obviously an outsider to this organisation and have a limited understanding of how this change would be made it what it would affect. I am not by any means an expert on transgender issues either, although I do know a fair bit about the topic.

If you all would be open to suggestions for a policy change (and it's great that you seem to be!) I will get in touch with some people who are and see if we can put together something more useful and comprehensive, and then I'll propose that in the policy page. It may be that delinking a transgender author from their birth name would be the simplest and least harmful option--although that may be less than ideal, too.

The reason I suggested this change, by the way, is because people use ISFDB to compile lists of publications elsewhere on the web. I saw a page at file770 which listed a 2018 story of Anya's under her birth name, despite the fact that the publication itself used the correct name for her. So this is definitely a policy at present that can cause problems for transgender authors

Thank you again for your consideration on this important issue!

Stewartcbaker 16:16, 23 September 2018 (EDT)