Dana Callista Lexa 🏳️‍⚧️

The Software Heritage Archive is a project dedicated to creating a historical record of "important" pieces of software.

I made a piece of software called ftfy that fixes mojibake (Unicode mistakes) in text. It's in use in a lot of places, and I found out it was in the Software Heritage Archive. Then, I found out that nearly everywhere you find it in the archive, it's credited to my deadname. I only thought to look for this because I had heard of another trans woman's struggle trying to update her name in the archive.

I already fixed my name in my code. I updated the README and the copyright notice, and I ran git-filter-repo to rewrite the git history so it had always said my correct name, including in commits. This is a thing you can do.

I contacted the Software Heritage Archive (SWH) and asked them to change it. This started a process of over two years of me trying everything I can to get them to update my name and stop deadnaming me. They've said many different things on the topic, but the answer remains: no, they won't.

The reason is because they're a bunch of privileged cis people who have never comprehended the idea of data hurting somebody, but the other reason is a fucking blockchain.

hey what the fuck is happening on tumblr

a popular trans woman’s blog got deleted for no real reason (same old) and the ceo is dming people to say it was Totally Justified Actually??? (this is new)

the ceo saying that mistagged sexually explicit posts were a factor is especially funny because as far as i’m aware nobody has been able to determine what the actual policy around erotic content is (and moderation is frequently misaligned with the stated policies)

one of the "mistagged sexually explicit posts" were a transition timeline. she was fully clothed in the pictures. tumblr caved to a TERF smear campaign against a trans woman and the ceo is justifying this decision by claiming she sent death threats to staff (with 0 proof) AND misgendering her in the post where he's telling these lies. fuck tumblr

I'm a queer academic, if you read pretty much any of my work, there is no cis explanation for any of it

anyways, since i'm trying to advance to candidacy soon (for all you non academics out there this is where you propose what and how you will write your dissertation) i've been thinking a lot about where i go from here

some of it is just the general "academia is kind of awful and trying to exist while trans is hard professionally", but that's not what i'm focusing on here. You basically can't choose where to live in academia, if you want a tenure track job (if you can even manage that) you have to live where you work. It makes sense intellectually but it means that these jobs are extremely restrictive and i don't exactly relish the prospect of moving into states that are trying to legislate my healthcare and existence away because me and what i make are indecent

the other thing is really just, people making their problems your problems too. i dress very butch so i don't expect people to instantly get things right. here's the thing, if you feel bad about misgendering someone (to say nothing of all the people everywhere who don't give a shit), just work on it, you don't have to make it into an entire research project that includes me as an unpaid sensitivity reader

i'm not saying industry or elsewhere is much better, but working remotely helps a lot of small things and there's less of a tendency to literally turn into someone else's project. So yes, it will be a shame for academia to lose my batshit insane research that is ridiculously ahead of the curve, but the pay sucks and is just not friendly to existing as a trans person that wants any control over my life