How Facebook Outed Me and Endangered Me With Their Name Policy

I was late to the Facebook game. As where most people were on the social media bandwagon shortly after the trend began, I was still dealing with issues of insecurity, fear of judgement and the court of public opinion regarding my identity.

I was, to be fair, never in “The Closet.” My gender was never a question I had to wrestle with. But, I knew my gender was an issue for others- a religious issue, a political issue, an issue met with misunderstandings, confusion and typically a default to allegations like “Pervert” or “Child molester.” I knew the alignment of my gender since I was young, but having been presumed gay due to my femininity and witnessing so many adult gay men and women experience harassment, abuse, isolation and, in one case I saw up close and personal, excommunication from a church, allowing other people permission to assess the quality of my character and project their ignorance onto me was something that terrified me and took years to reconcile with. A lot of people don’t realize that we transgender men and women were usually labeled gay or lesbian by society even before we developed the self awareness or courage to admit to ourselves that our gender mapping didn’t match our sex.

I never told anyone I was transgender until less than a decade ago. Although I had spent years researching the internet to understand what it implied, the information was sparse and incomplete, often couched between fetishist advertisements and porn. Other websites offered up extensive and difficult to consume medical documents which often pathologize transgender people in rather sinister ways and of course, the conservative websites threatening the all-to-familiar hellfire and brimstone fate certain to befall men who dared to dress as women.

To those who knew me, the way I looked, sounded and dressed was simply “eccentric.”A polite term for weirdo or freak, I understood. I had long nails and long hair and was called also called a hippie by older folks. Still, when being in public I experienced tremendous fear so I often dressed down, clipped my nails and did my best to disappear. That was the ultimate goal.

I lived a rather isolated life for most of it, and I contribute that to much of my uncertainty. There was no one like me around. I had no…