DevDiscuss

S1:E1 - Why Tech's Deadnaming Problem Matters

May 13 '20

As an industry, tech is not well equipped to accept when people change their names. This problem effects a range of people, including those who have a change of marital status. However, it can especially effect the security of those who are survivors of domestic violence, and those who are trans, who have to suffer through deadnaming by their tech accounts. This constant barrage of deadnaming can be very psychologically and emotionally harmful. We speak with Penelope Phippen, director at Ruby Central, and author of the DEV post, "Changing your name is a hard unsolved problem in Computer Science," about this issue and what can be done to make it better.

Show Notes

Fastly (sponsor)
Heroku (sponsor)
Commerce.js (sponsor)
DigitalOcean (sponsor)
Ruby
RSpec
Rails
Ruby Central
RubyConf
RailsConf
RuboCop
Go Format
Changing your name is a hard unsolved problem in Computer Science
Falsehoods Programmers Believe About Names
GitHub
One Medical
Whipping Girl: A Transsexual Woman on Sexism and the Scapegoating of Femininity
GLAD
SheCodes
LivingSocial
Rubyfmt

Penelope Phippen

Penelope Phippen (she/her) is a multifaceted Rubyist who works as a Director at Ruby Central, is the creator of Rubyfmt, and was formerly a lead maintainer of the RSpec project. She frequently writes and speaks about about complex aspects of the Ruby grammar, and issues of social justice for trans people in computer science. She's sad that she can't hug every cat.

Episode source

Jota Feldmann • May 15 '20

Hi guys!

Nice podcast!

Please, can you add the podcast to the mainstream feed (e.g. Google Podcasts)? :)

Daniel Albuschat • Jul 12 '20

Any update on this? I'd like to add it to my podcast feed, e.g. via RSS.

Abhi • May 15 '20

This is really great as you provide transcript with your podcasts. Please continue to do so in future too. It's really help deaf and hard of hearing community.

Dave Parr • Jun 3 '20

A trans friend suggested this article as mostly useful practical advice for collecting information on pro-nouns, though also indicated that maybe 'neutral' was not the best approach. It echos many of the sentiments in the podcast I think, such as 'why do you need it', and allowing for a 'complex answer':
uxdesign.cc/designing-forms-for-ge...

I also noticed that there is a back-end but no front end to this on dev.to currently: github.com/thepracticaldev/dev.to/...
FWIW I would be happy to try to implement it, however, I am very not at all familiar with most of the technologies used in the current stack, so it would take a little while for me to even be able to attempt it.

Lewis Cowles • Jun 16 '20

Great podcast. The Taiwan issue came up in a Ruby Gem I'd encountered to change Taiwan to be it's own nation.

Changing names seemed difficult, especially the idea that the link could prove deadly. Part of the issue in the B2B circle is that people want to carry forward accolades, keep getting paid etc, which require that type of linking. It could even help in B2C shopping.

I'd love to hear more about that.

Jun Lin • Sep 2 '20

Really awesome podcast and great website design. Love the transcript.

Karan 🚀☕ • Oct 1 '20

Great podcast. 🖤
Covering to all next episode of podcast.🎙️
I'd love to hear more about that. 🔊

Gulshan kumar Jakhon • Jun 14 '22

First of all congratulations for your 1st podcasts it really sound cool 😎.
As this is your first "DEV Original" podcast, and we learn so much, and. This is really awesome. 👌

Thanks 💐
@ben @jess