discoveringsophia
01-12-2011, 02:03 PM
As you move along in your transition, how do you plan to handle your online identity?
Let's assume that many of you (at least in the U.S.) have Facebook accounts. Others may also have personal web sites and various interests that may have associated web sites (e.g., musical groups, theatre groups). All those accounts and locations show pictures of you (and potentially lots more information like hobbies, hometown, degrees, etc) and have your name as "John Smith" or "Jane Smith", as appropriate to your birth-identified gender.
For one reason or another, many people tend to "jettison" their old identities (see the many discussions about "going stealth").
So, how many of you plan (subject to change, of course) to simply update your online profiles, web sites, etc to reflect your changed identity? Alternatively, how many of you plan to create entirely new profiles and distance yourself from those existing sites and profiles? Maybe you plan a completely different approach?
Tentatively (subject to change, of course), I plan to keep all my profiles and many web sites and just change my information (name, sex, etc.).
Perhaps the approach depends on several things, including, but not limited to:
the amount of interconnectedness people have with their non-TG community (I have quite a lot, with many interests and activities);
how people feel about their life as their birth-identified gender (I am actually quite proud of what I have been able to accomplish in my life, regardless of my gender);
the relationship people will (or will attempt) to maintain with their spouse (I plan to keep my spouse, and she plans to keep me -- the usual caveats about telling the future apply here);
how people feel about their casual acquaintances, like old high school buddies, friends from jobs long past, etc. (I don't get my affirmations from these people, so their reactions are not that important to me)...
Even though it will be awkward for some people, I plan to update my many web sites and online profiles to reflect my gender and name change. At some point, my profiles and sites will include pictures of me as a woman. And I have no intention of deleting the old pictures; to do so would be to erase important parts of how I came to be who I am -- as a woman.
I am not judging anyone in their approach, just curious how people have thought of handling these things, particularly in the "information age," when nothing ever really goes out of circulation. Remember that picture of you drunk in college, when you nearly lost consciousness? Once it gets posted online, it will forever be accessible in the internet archive (not to mention the archives of companies like Google and Facebook). In the same vein, so will all those pictures of you as your birth-identified gender.
Thoughts?
Let's assume that many of you (at least in the U.S.) have Facebook accounts. Others may also have personal web sites and various interests that may have associated web sites (e.g., musical groups, theatre groups). All those accounts and locations show pictures of you (and potentially lots more information like hobbies, hometown, degrees, etc) and have your name as "John Smith" or "Jane Smith", as appropriate to your birth-identified gender.
For one reason or another, many people tend to "jettison" their old identities (see the many discussions about "going stealth").
So, how many of you plan (subject to change, of course) to simply update your online profiles, web sites, etc to reflect your changed identity? Alternatively, how many of you plan to create entirely new profiles and distance yourself from those existing sites and profiles? Maybe you plan a completely different approach?
Tentatively (subject to change, of course), I plan to keep all my profiles and many web sites and just change my information (name, sex, etc.).
Perhaps the approach depends on several things, including, but not limited to:
the amount of interconnectedness people have with their non-TG community (I have quite a lot, with many interests and activities);
how people feel about their life as their birth-identified gender (I am actually quite proud of what I have been able to accomplish in my life, regardless of my gender);
the relationship people will (or will attempt) to maintain with their spouse (I plan to keep my spouse, and she plans to keep me -- the usual caveats about telling the future apply here);
how people feel about their casual acquaintances, like old high school buddies, friends from jobs long past, etc. (I don't get my affirmations from these people, so their reactions are not that important to me)...
Even though it will be awkward for some people, I plan to update my many web sites and online profiles to reflect my gender and name change. At some point, my profiles and sites will include pictures of me as a woman. And I have no intention of deleting the old pictures; to do so would be to erase important parts of how I came to be who I am -- as a woman.
I am not judging anyone in their approach, just curious how people have thought of handling these things, particularly in the "information age," when nothing ever really goes out of circulation. Remember that picture of you drunk in college, when you nearly lost consciousness? Once it gets posted online, it will forever be accessible in the internet archive (not to mention the archives of companies like Google and Facebook). In the same vein, so will all those pictures of you as your birth-identified gender.
Thoughts?