busybee

“So, hey, I have a friend with what I think is a pretty… unique situation. You’re pretty savvy with this pronoun stuff, right?”

“Hm, I try to be, anyway.”

“Okay, so, this friend was born male—”

“Assigned male at birth.”

“… Right. Anyway. Assigned male at birth, totally identifies as male, one hundred percent happy being male. Wears men’s clothes, uses the extremely masculine name given to them, is completely secure in her masculinity, completely normal cis man.”

“Wait, so uh… okay, ‘normal’ is loaded, but… ‘Her?’”

“Yeah, that’s the thing. She prefers to be referred to with she/her pronouns.”

“… Huh. Is there any particular… reason for that?”

“Not as far as I can tell! I’ve asked her about it and she said that she just… likes it.”

“But… …she… doesn’t identify as a woman at all?”

“Nope. And I thought that maybe she is trying to, like, normalize the idea that language is a social construct or something, or push against the idea that ‘he’ is the gender-neutral pronoun, but nope. She just likes the sound of it.”

“And you’re sure she isn’t, like, trans or anything?”

“I mean, I asked her if she feels bad being called he/him, and no, she doesn’t seem to experience dysphoria around her gender or around being called he/him. She just.. prefers she/her.”

“Huh, okay. Well, I mean, anyone can choose to have whatever pronouns they want, and we should all respect that, no matter what the underlying reason is…”

“That’s just the thing, everyone around her does respect it. Even if they’re awful about misgendering actual trans women, for some reason they’re 100% on board with using she/her pronouns for this… well, totally nor— … um, extremely cis man.”

“Aside from the pronouns.”

“Yes, aside from the pronouns.”

“Huh. Well, um… this is an interesting situation, I think, but it probably shouldn’t be interesting. It’s kind of refreshing to hear about? I mean, sort of. I wish people would respect my pronouns that easily, but…”

“Yeah, it’s like the dog thing.”

“Dog thing?”

“Y'know, how people trip over themselves to make sure that they’re using the correct pronouns for a dog? That doesn’t even know what pronouns are and doesn’t give the tiniest shit about them? While still misgendering trans people because it’s ‘so hard?’”

“Ah, yeah, that. Well. Okay. So what’s the problem your friend is having?”

“Oh, she isn’t having a problem at all. I’m just wondering, do you know what this situation would be called?”

“Sounds like she’s a… she-male?”

“…”

“Yeah, I only realized what I was saying as it was leaving my mouth.”

So I learned two things about Werner today.

First, it turns out he was born either in early 2002 or late 2001, making him at least 18 years old, not 17 as I previously thought.

Secondly, the person I adopted him from is named Maelyn Dean. Congratulations, Maelyn! I’m so happy for you. I’ve been reading Real Life Comics since pretty close to the beginning, and could never bring myself to remove the RSS feed from my reader. Now I’m really glad for that.

I love how far the world of webcomics has come when it comes to trans acceptance, too. Back when I was starting out around 20 years ago, any time I brought up trans stuff in my deeply-personal comics I’d just get trolls shouting “NOBODY CARES!” at me, and I felt more comfortable just withdrawing and being evasive and metaphorical about it all. But since then, especially in the last few years, it’s become such a joyous world of acceptance and loveliness, and it’s amazing to see so many stories being told by people who are finally feeling comfortable being themselves after so long.

Comics are such a great medium for storytelling and I really want to get back into it at some point. Hopefully soon.

Remember how a few months ago I had a positive interaction with Lending Club regarding deadnames on 2FA emails? Well, the other day when I logged in it required a 2FA email and, amazingly enough, they actually fixed the problem! I hope more companies actually start to take these complaints seriously and fix issues with how they handle trans peoples' names.

A couple weeks ago I started getting 2FA emails from Lending Club (an online peer-to-peer broker for loans and investments thereof). 2FA is of course a good thing, but less good is when the 2FA emails are addressed to my dead name, rather than my current, legal name.

So, I forwarded it along with a complaint about what was wrong, and fully expected to be brushed off like most companies do. However, they actually responded amazingly, with an explanation of the problem, an apology for it, and a commitment to fix it!

To all the other companies I’ve experienced this issue with: this is the right way to respond.

Thank you for your patience while I took a deeper look into your inquiry. Please know that I was able to find out the reason why the emails you are receiving use your previous name when your current name listed on your account is [current name].

When our engineering team set up the notification emails for our two factor authentication security feature, the source that they used to pull investor data from was the credit reports at the time of account creation, rather than the name listed on the account currently. I do apologize for this and please know that your case has been escalated to our engineering team in the hopes of fixing this issue.