I’ve been thinking about this all morning but I’m uncomfortable with a project that seeks to rename people with their birth name, denying agency to people who’ve potentially made a choice, in the name of feminism. Empowerment by removal of agency.

My immediate thought was you know they’ve deadnamed someone here and a pal of mine kindly reminded me of @graceelavery’s work on George Eliot, some of which I’ve RTd and you should go read bc I don’t think the people who did this project did.

But cis authors also deserve the right to choose the pen name they want and this just seems like a very weird choice to me? It’s impossible to say that all these women were forced into “male” pen names because of patriarchy.

A tent of intersectional feminism should be respecting people for the names they choose to use and as we absolutely cannot be certain about whether their name changes were choice or not, that immediately undermines the feminist attempts of this project.

It’s not feminist to blanket brush all these people with the same presumption of coercion in renaming that eliminates any room for choice or joy or playfulness.

Again, for the people in the back, if you are in publishing and decide to do a project or a book that is around gender and reframing gender, please please please talk to a trans person, especially a trans person who is a scholar in these areas!!