Namesake for Goodness Sake

The Artist D

What’s your real name? There’s a question I am unfortunately aware of and still accustomed to hearing. I’ve played this existence to the maximum volume at times. I didn’t think I was just a person with a mistaken gender, I was a crazed artistic being with a gender bend. I didn’t want to dye my hair blonde, I wanted to be as white as the clouds. I didn’t just want to change my normal name to another normal name, I wanted to be a letter and only a letter.

That, gentle readers, is where it all began. It started with a letter at the age of fourteen. I was fumbling around the Internet trying to find myself and my identity. Was I a boy or a girl? I didn’t know. I didn’t really care. I was an androgynous freak with a penchant for fabulous things. I didn’t want to be Bob and I didn’t want to be Gloria. I wanted to be D. I named myself a letter because I liked the letter. I didn’t have any interest in normal names and I couldn’t settle on anything bizarre. The letter D fit and I insisted that everyone call me by it. Not Dee, just D! Dammit.

People are afraid of anything slightly outside of the norm. This counts for the silliest little things too, like names. It was almost a decade before people accepted my letter as a name and even then it was only due to the fact that “Artist” was inadvertently added to it. Calling me The Artist D was much easier for people to comprehend instead of just thinking of me as “D”.

Now Facebook has reared its ugly head once more to normalize the populace. Statements are being thrown around that in just a couple of weeks anyone with a “fake name” will be shut down from their crappy network. People are outraged and think this is new, but it’s not. This may be the first time that a lot of people have given any thought to the subject but I’ve been fighting this battle for just under twenty years. I can promise you that it is nothing new.

For all those years I have had to explain to Internet platforms that my name is D. I type “D” in the first name slot and leave the second name slot blank. The database always kicks me back. I’m always required to have a first and last name. I bow to this rule and enter some stupid surname like “Artist”, click enter and am once again denied. Please enter a first name that has more than one letter. But, my name is only one letter! What’s a girl, guy, creature to do?

I’ve been arguing with people for years over this and nobody has retrofit their systems to accommodate my choices. It does not surprise me that Facebook or any other platform continues to require an ancient social assumption about what a name is or is not. The only difference is they are now directly attacking the communities in which you venture.  Now it’s a problem because you can’t call yourself Cara Mel Latte or through the conspiracy theories of evil social media algorithms they will somehow predict that Mary Jane Smith is actually Reginald Archibald Jones III.  Now it matters. Now it’s personal!

I’ve always been disappointed that people aren’t farther than they already are. All my life I have seen that if you want something, you can usually take it. If you want to be somebody then you can be what you want to be. If you want to change your life then you decide to do so, devise a reasonable plan and start on your journey of change. What we want is always bound by reason, science and the laws of nature, but we can usually have it in some form. The older I get the more disappointed I become at the way humans act and the things they insist on doing. It’s the 21st century and we’re still talking about the meaning of identity. Worse yet we’re still debating if it’s safe for people to have an identity!

I remember sitting on the living room floor watching The Oprah Winfrey Show with my mother in the ’80s and ’90s. They would have these people on who were living “double lives.” It was such a scandal! As I grew up I realized that everybody lives double lives. Some people live quadruple lives. I also learned that it was nobody’s damn business how many identities anyone wanted to have or what they chose to do with those compartments of their lives. It didn’t make them dirty, disgusting or liars. It is also not an act of deception, hiding or a lack of integrity to live as many lives within this one as you can. It simply makes us diverse.

We are terrified of diversity. We cannot handle the fluidity of nature as it truly is. Even within the transgender community we hear the cries of normalcy and compartmentalization. People just want the one identity they most enjoy. They want it connected to the name they want and the lifestyle they wish to pursue. That’s not all that bad either, but there is more to all of this than that for some of us out here on the edge of the dance floor. We’d like some space too.

As the battle begins (and probably ends with a rolling of eyes) they will argue that we can’t have people pretending to be something they are not. For safety’s sake everyone must present exactly who they are by government issued ID. Some dumb bunny will ask, “What would happen if everyone online started using fake names to communicate with each other online?” And I shall answer that it would be like the Internet was in 1999. A much happier, healthier and open place to be who you really are and not what society named you. A place where what you were labeled, gendered and anointed had absolutely nothing to do with who you really are as you really know it. What a scary place that would be …

What’s your take on the “legal ID,” real identity issue? Use the comment area below to let TGF readers know.

Tags: Facebook, featured, Identity, lifestyle, names, theartistd, Transgender

Category: Transgender Body & Soul, Transgender Opinion