Okay, writing the title I feel like the answer is obvious but bear with me.
Growing up, I had a male friend for 10+ years. We fell out of touch, and 5 years later I discovered that they transitioned and they now go by a different name.
Of course I’m happy for her now, but I’m not sure how to refer to her in the context of our friendship. For example, bringing up an old story to my family. Suppose her deadname is Sam and she is now called Sarah.
Should I say, Sarah and I used to…
Or Sam and I used to…
I never knew her after her transition, but I suppose she was always a her?
I don’t mean to be offensive, I’m just ignorant :)
When I came out, multiple people asked me this question, and I really don’t understand why.
Decades ago, my uncle changed his name (from a male name to another male name), and nobody asked him “well, when we refer to you in the past, should I use your old name?”
Everyone just instinctively started using his new name to refer to him, even in the past, no questions asked.
You might think it’s different for something like pronouns because they were different at the time, but it’s not. For example, if someone said, “Dr. Thompson used to go swimming in the lake when she was a child.” Nobody would say, “Oh, but she wasn’t a doctor at the time, so you shouldn’t refer to her as a doctor in the past tense.” It’s normal and intuitive to talk about people as they are now, even when referring to the past.
Trans people, for some reason, are just treated by different standards.
It seems like scholars use different names as a form of historicization. So Augustus didn’t fight a civil war with Mark Antony. It was Octavian who did so. Popes are almost always referred to by their former names when talking about their pre-pope days. I guess you could argue that papal names function more like a title than their actual names. So Robert Prevost didn’t stop becoming Robert Prevost while Pope Leo XIV is a papal name that’s not his real name.
It gets weirder for someone like Malcolm X. Technically, “Malcolm X” is the name the man adopted from the time he joined the Nation of Islam to when he left the Nation of Islam. So, “Malcolm X” the name points to a particular historical period within the man’s life just like “Malcolm Little” or “Detroit Red” were as well. The name the man himself actually wanted to be known as is El-Hajj Malik El-Shabazz. That’s his real name. Most people call El-Shabazz “Malcolm X” and some people use “Malcolm X” alongside “Malcolm Little” and “Detroit Red” as a shorthand for “when El-Shabazz was a kid” or “when El-Shabazz was part of the Nation of Islam.” It’s mostly Black Muslims and Pan-Africanists who actually call El-Shabazz the name he wanted to be remembered as.
Names are just weird.
I’ll keep that in mind when I’m being historicized. This just seems so far out of the daily experience of normal people that I don’t really find it relevant.
It seems like this is the only justification that matters. Just because everyone currently refers to him by Malcom X doesn’t mean it’s valid or correct. It just means nobody is respecting his wishes which is pretty analogous to getting deadnamed.
I guess I’m asking because of this specific case. This is a person that I only knew before they transitioned.