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Facebook Apologizes To Drag Queens Over "Real Name" Rule

Posted by samzenpus on from the our-bad dept.

An anonymous reader writes Facebook apologized to drag queens and the LGBT community after an outcry over the social network's policy of requiring members to use real names on their accounts. While the policy itself will stay in place, Facebook says, it will be changing how the rule is enforced. In a Wednesday post, Facebook's Chief Product Officer Chris Cox apologized to "the affected community of drag queens, drag kings, transgender, and extensive community of our friends, neighbors, and members of the LGBT community for the hardship that we've put you through in dealing with your Facebook accounts over the past few weeks."

6 of 280 comments (clear)

  1. Re:its their own fault by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 5, Interesting

    So drag queens can use fake names but the rest cant?

  2. Reverse discrimination is still discrimination by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 5, Interesting

    I see no reason why any person with a private Facebook page should be given special status or exemptions from the rules just because of some arbitrary, momentarily popular PC BS category.

    1. Re:Reverse discrimination is still discrimination by rwise2112 · · Score: 5, Insightful

      Profiles for pets, WTF? Can teddy bears have profiles too? Are the pets allowed to have political opinions?

      Why are facebook apologising to all LGBTs and not just Drag Queens? Why do drag queens get to have an alias and not straight people who wear straight peoples clothes. If women wear trousers do they get to call themselves cross-dressers and get an alias? If the pet cross-dresses can it have an alias?

      This is all fucking insane.

      Well what about writers with pen names? Musicians and actors with stage names?

      Sting has a facebook page. His real name is not Sting, so why should he have special privileges?

      --

      "For every expert, there is an equal and opposite expert"
  3. Why only LGBT? by Rob+Kaper · · Score: 5, Interesting

    Why would LGBT members require more of an apology than heterosexual cisgenders who desire to use another name?

  4. People who who work with kids also use fake names by cout · · Score: 5, Insightful

    Teachers and counsellors often don't want the kids they work with to be able to easily find them on facebook, so they use fake names. I have many friends who do this. So far they haven't been affected by any rule enforcement.

  5. Re:its their own fault by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 5, Insightful

    You have such a fundamental misunderstanding of some very basic concepts of justice (which have been tackled over and fucking over throughout the last 100 years of jurisprudence) that I'm not sure whether to bother replying to you.

    Consider the following rule: "Anyone whose hair holds a pencil when inserted into the hair is not permitted into the party."

    Is it unfair?

    Well, no, on the surface of it, it isn't. Pretty simple rule, really? Applies to everyone. Everyone's treated the same. If you don't like it, don't spray/curl your hair, right?

    No, of course not. It's a test for blackness. A person who has black skin is way more likely to fail the test than a person who has white skin. It's inherent to black people that they have curlier, tougher hair which is more likely to hold a pencil.

    Just as it's inherent to transgender people that their sex organs do not reflect their psychological gender, so there is a very high likelihood that they are misnamed at birth.

    Justice does not just consider whether a rule is equally applied to everyone, but whether a rule in effect treats everyone equally. Only in exceptional circumstances do we consider as just a rule which somehow disadvantages a group because of some innate feature of that group.

    Reality: deal with it.