Talk:Harry Allen (trans man)

Latest comment: 5 years ago by Dennis Bratland in topic Deadname

Deadname

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Using Allen's deadname has been a point of contention for a while. The biography guidelines allow it, but don't require it. The basic reason why I feel like we're forced to mention it is to make sense of the raft of newspaper articles listed here. We have a stub with very little information, and mostly the reader is left to scroll down and read the original sources for themselves. As the article says, Allen always protested using his deadname, and at the time, they didn't even know what he was talking about. As explained in a couple of the references, like Knute Berger's article, he was isolated and had no community, no support. That's part of what we're trying to convey. If we had more secondary sources, they could expound on this better and we wouldn't necessarily have to lean on the list of newspaper articles. But until someone publishes a better biographical study of Harry Allen, I feel like this is how we should address this issue.

Other views on this question are welcome. If we delete the name, how do we let the reader understand what all the sources mean, and give them an understanding of the history here? --Dennis Bratland (talk) 00:43, 22 November 2019 (UTC)Reply