Talk

Berlin, Germany May 13, 2017
Your identity will be automatically overwritten!

I'm trans and have decided to use my chosen name and pronoun way ahead of the legal name change. For most parts, this went smoothly: colleagues and students alike adopted my new name, form of address and pronoun without notable issues.

Yet, three systems keep displaying my old name to the students and the world: The University Information System used for course planning and grading, the e-learning-platform, and the official University Website. The only option open to making changes would result in changes being "automatically overwritten daily by the identity management system".

Thus, infrastructure and a case of "this is the way the computer does it" puts us in a situation where we either have to have official documents and legal mail in a not-yet-legal name, or our dead names constantly being shown to people who do their best to respect our identities.

In the talk, I will discuss possible workarounds as well as technical solutions/changes which would make it possible to use chosen names within technically-managed infrastructure before (or without) a legal name change.