Dead name

    It's a big step in any writer's life, that point at which they step from just writing stuff to being paid to write stuff. But it's the jump I made this week, in a technical field completely unrelated to this sphere. All of which is very pleasing, though relevant here only in a passing sense.

    Some transgender people will not have their former name uttered in their presence. Dead naming, it's referred to, and while I'm a little more relaxed on the subject as long as the reference is not in a sense as to deliberately deny my transition I can see why they hold that view.
    It was a little jarring though this week when I saw the mother of a young trans man mention his previous name in the context of his former existence on a private online support forum. It was so unexpected, even if it wasn't in an unpleasant manner.
    If I hear my former name it does not evoke the feelings of disgust the same thing seems to in some other people, instead I have an overwhelming sadness that I couldn't make it in that guise. I wanted to settle down with my wife and have a family, something that became very difficult to do.
    I must remember that for those close to us, like my friend on the forum to her son, our former names do not always hold malice.

There comes a time when you have to complain.

    It's been about two and a half years now, since I transitioned. One of the first things I did was change my name at my bank – (Bank name withheld for now) – by going into a branch with a copy of my statutory declaration of name change. All went well, and I went on my way.
    I noticed a few months ago that one of my (Bank name withheld for now) products, an ISA (A British tax-free savings scheme), still had my old name on it in their correspondence with me. Not a problem I thought, I'll simply ring them up and put right what is obviously a clerical error.
    The lady I talked to when I got round to ringing them up last week did not know the procedure, so put me on hold for a while while she consulted someone higher up the ladder. I was very surprised to be told when she came back on the line that they required a letter from one of my medical practitioners confirming that my name change is for gender reassignment and that is permanent.

    That's right. Medical details to change the name on a bank account.

    I was expecting that they would see the name change already on their records and make the change, or at worst require to see my statutory declaration. I explained that this was an unacceptable and highly unusual demand, that I was not prepared to comply with it and that they should follow it up with their diversity department as a matter of urgency. I was told that that was their requirement, and referred to their complaints department.
    The next day I talked to a lady from their complaints department who explained that they had checked again and that the medical detail was a requirement imposed by the Financial Ombudsman (British government financial regulator) because the ownership of stocks and shares was a different matter from a bank account, or for example owning a car. I explained that I felt it was in contravention of the Equalities Act because a cisgender person changing their name would not face an equivalent demand – I likened it to a married woman being asked for a letter from her gynaecologist with her name change request. All to no avail I was told, so I asked for the demand in writing and the call came to a close.
    I felt the citing of the Financial Ombudsman smacked of their making up their policy as they went along. Those stories of organisations you hear of using bogus Health and Safety or Data Protection rules as catch-all excuses to dodge their responsibilities came to mind. Sadly we transgender people are all too used to such things, we see them quite often used in our direction.
    So on receipt of their written response I rang the Financial Ombudsman phone line and asked them whether they had any such requirements for a name change. Their answer was that they do not, as I expected.
    As a result, I've put in a complaint to the Financial Ombudsman. Such complaints are official business, so they will have to respond, any justifications will be investigated, and woe betide them if - as I suspect - they've played fast-and-loose with the Equalities Act.
    In particular I asked them to consider the following points:

• Unnecessary and intrusive requirements such as medical demands for transgender people that are not applied to non-transgender people are likely to fall foul of the Equalities Act.
• An organisation should not be allowed to make multiple demands for name change documentation because of their opaque group structure. I am a consumer not a corporate lawyer, so as far as I am concerned all my (Bank name withheld for now) branded and sold products come from (Bank name withheld for now). I should therefore only have to change my name once with (Bank name withheld for now). If they lack the competence to manage their customer database then that is their problem, not mine.
• Citing bogus Financial Ombudsman rules brings that organisation into disrepute, and undermines consumer trust in the regulation of the banking business. This one I hope the Ombudsman will take especially seriously.
• Given that I can close this ISA and open another in my new name with the same money, the whole process is rather pointless. Just who are they trying to protect here?

    It is likely that in time I will close the ISA in question and take my business elsewhere. However I feel that is is important that I pursue this action as I feel that unless they are required to examine their dealings with transgender customers it is likely that something worse will happen to another transgender customer in the future.  Nobody else is going to close down this kind of activity for us, there comes a time when we transgender people have to do it for ourselves.

A tale of three phone companies

    I have a tale to tell about the mechanics of changing the name on accounts with UK utilities following a legal change of name. It's not in itself unpleasant, but it demonstrates perfectly the kind of petty jobsworth application of invented non-existent laws that blights the process for those of us who are going through it.
    One of the first things I did on transition was to change my name with the first of my three phone companies, the UK's national near-monopoly, BT. Like most Brits I use them for my fixed line phone, and in my case they also provide my broadband. To change my name with them I simply logged in to my online account with them and updated my details. No need to provide any documents as there is no such thing as a legal name in UK law, they know exactly who I am through my address and bank account. Job done, not bad for a usually slow-moving former nationalised near-monopoly.
    My second phone company was the next on my list for a name change update. EE are one of the UK's larger mobile phone networks, having been formed from the merger of T-Mobile and Orange. I've been with them for more years than I'd care to remember, and have always been pretty satisfied with them.
    So I logged into the EE web site and worked through the section for updating my details. That's strange, no place to update your account name. I must have missed something. So I asked them where to look, via my social network of choice.
    Their reply was this link. A page telling me I needed "A covering letter with a copy of the change of name deed poll document and also the documented proof of gender change." Oops, I don't have a deed poll, I have a statutory declaration. And also what exactly is "documented proof of gender change"? A picture of me dressed as a drag queen? A letter from my doctor? My BT phone bill?
    I pointed out to them that (a)not everyone has a deed poll, and (b)was the requirement for documentation really necessary considering it is not a legal requirement and BT can happily do the change without it. The reply: "Just send us the documents we ask for". More than their jobsworth.
    I am physically unable to send them a deed poll, I don't have one. A statutory declaration is functionally the same thing, I advised them to talk to their legal department. I am not spending money with a lawyer to get my "documented proof", just for a poxy phone company who are demanding something they have no legal requirement for. I refer them to the case of Arkell vs. Pressdram.
    Which brings me neatly to the third phone company I mentioned. I don't know who they are yet, but I know they'll have no problem with my name change. You see, the UK mobile phone market is one of cut-throat competition. There are the network owners, EE, Vodafone, O2 and Three, and a host of secondary service providers such as Tesco Mobile, Talk Talk, Virgin Mobile, and GiffGaff who lease capacity from the network owners. Moving providers is a very simple process.
    So I don't have to put up with EE's frankly ludicrous requirement. I'll simply wait for the end of my contract - not too long now - and move mobile provider to my as-yet-undecided third phone company. Start with them in my new name, and the transphobic EE jobsworths can go to hell.
    Everything Everywhere - except in my pocket, that is.

Girl of her time

    One of the more entertaining diversions among my workload has been investigating visualisation techniques for large data sets. Without going in to too much detail we have a very large and very dry heap of stuff that can be rather interesting if you pore over it for a while, and part of my brief has been to find ways to bring it alive and engage people with it.
    So I've been browsing the world of data visualisation. And wow, there are some amazingly clever designers out there coming up with extremely cool ways to present data. For the curious, try Infosthetics, ChartPorn and Information is beautiful. They won't change your world, but they might change the way you look at some of it.
    On my travels I happened on the Baby Name Wizard. 130 years of baby name statistics very neatly searchable in graph form. Want to know how old-fashioned a name is? Here's the tool to do it. Jemima? Don't even go there!
    I've read more than one account from bloggers in this sphere as to how they chose their names. This isn't mine, because I didn't really choose my name. Well, I suppose I did, but I didn't choose it, a sub-five-year-old me did. Jenny wasn't such a bad choice I guess, to my pre-school self she represented everything that at the time I wasn't. But just think, had I left it until adulthood, how much more cool a name could I have had as a girl?
    The Baby Name Wizard delivers its verdict on my choice with devastating accuracy. I wonder if you can guess which decade I was born near the beginning of?