Conversation

Feb 17, 2021

As someone who used to read SSC back in the day nothing about this is really surprising, but it's worth reading if you still need more evidence that SSC was way closer to NRX than Siskind likes to claim. twitter.com/TopherTBrennan

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kind of rich of someone with a trans flag in their screen name to insist on using someone's wallet name when they specifically and very visibly requested otherwise

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Really? Because IIRC he's been signing his substack posts with Siskind these days, so I'm pretty sure I'm not making him dysphoric by using it.

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Feeling pretty confident that I'm not deadnaming him here but I'm happy to discuss in more detail if you have an actual point to make!

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I call people by their preferred names no matter their reasons, they don't need to show me their spent leuprorelin injectors or estradiol patches to qualify for it

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also, as both of us know, he only switched to using his wallet name to defuse potential blackmail - he would very much have preferred not to

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So you're acknowledging that he now publicly uses the name "Scott Siskind", but asserting that he would prefer people continue to refer to him as "Scott Alexander"? Am I understanding your point correctly? Surely if he had such a preference he'd have said so in "Still Alive"?

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good point, but going by astralcodexten.substack.com/about?sort=peo I'd still stick with Scott Alexander

astralcodexten.substack.com

Astral Codex Ten

P(A|B) = [P(A)*P(B|A)]/P(B), all the rest is commentary. Click to read Astral Codex Ten, by Scott Alexander, a Substack publication with tens of thousands of readers.

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That's...fine, but not really a reason reason to police others' use of the name "Siskind", let alone accuse

of hypocrisy.

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When I grew up into the internet, we had strong anti-dox norms, and for me at least the no-deadname rule follows naturally from that. When a friend has a nick or other kind of chosen name, I use that often to the point of forgetting what someone's meatspace name is.

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You don't need to be trans to experiment with identity, or you might be trans but an egg and think "trans" doesn't apply to you. Allowing people to use chosen names and to not punish them is to enable that sort of experimentation, and boy did I have many names and genders

2:16 AM · Feb 18, 2021Twitter Web App

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I have no disagreement with any of that. And I think the NYT made the wrong call when they insisted on publishing Scott's last name. But none of that explains why it's wrong to call someone by the name they use when publicly stating "my name is..." without caveat.

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I think this whole "I deleted my blog for half a year because people decided to spread my wallet name all over the internet for my enemies to see and use" business is sufficient caveat. You may not, maybe.

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and maybe I'm just oldschool (I've dropped out of the queer scene so long ago that the whole transppl vs trans ppl debate has completely missed me until now) but to me, yes it's hypocrisy to deny anyone the right to a name esp. when you come from a community it was critical to