Sister Roma and Others Want to Ban Facebook From Pride Over Ongoing ‘Real Name’ Policy

Though Facebook appeared, last fall, to want to appease the drag queen community and others who were pissed off about getting their accounts suspended over the fact that they used their stage/drag names instead of their real names, it seems like the fight rages on.

Sister Roma, who was one of those San Francisco queens who led the charge and caucused with Facebook employees over the matter, says that people in the LGBT community, especially trans people, continue to be targeted by the site, and more people need to fight back.

The Verge reported two months ago on the ongoing issue, noting that “for a number of years, [Facebook’s policy has] been plagued by accusations that it’s racist, transphobic, and insensitive to the privacy concerns of vulnerable populations, like domestic violence victims and sex workers.”

It appears that if you have some notoriety and can prove the popularity of your stage identity, Facebook will acquiesce and reinstate your account, as they did with the drag queens and with radio host Jay Smooth just this past February. But if you’re a relatively anonymous trans person with an unusual name, or a Native American person for that matter, you can still easily end up on the wrong side of the policy being asked to prove your “real” identity.

SF queen Lil Miss Hot Mess has launched a Change.org petition attempting to ban Facebook from the SF and New York LGBT Pride events this June, and it is currently just over 100 signatures shy of its 1500-person goal. Lil Miss Hot Mess writes, using the hashtags #MyNameIs and #NoPrideForFacebook, “Several members of the #MyNameIs core team have received email from users who feel defeated, disregarded, abandoned, alone, frightened, and even suicidal as a result of being banned from Facebook because of their identities.” In light of this, and the fact that eight months later Facebook has not shown any transparency or willingness to actually change their policy, the group feels that the company needs to be denied any of their traditional involvement in this year’s Pride events in either SF or New York.

Sister Roma is also in strong support.

She tells The Sword, “There has been an upsurge in the number of accounts that are being reported for having a ‘fake’ name.”

Further, she says, “This problem is huge for the LGBT community and potentially dangerous for many people, especially trans men and women who face discrimination, bullying, harassment, and even violence if outed on Facebook.”

She says that there have been no real alterations to Facebook’s reporting process around “real” names, and that the argument that Facebook is a free social media portal that not every has to use, is empty given how central a role it’s come to play in our lives. “For many people,” Roma says, “Facebook is a virtual lifeline to society. I’ve received hundreds of emails from people, especially members of the trans community who feel violated, disregarded, disrespected, isolated, alone, depressed and even suicidal after being hit by some asshole who reports them for using a ‘fake’ name.”

So, add your name to the petition below. And tell your friends, #NoPrideForFacebook.

Photo of Sister Roma by Left Coast Scenes/Chris Knight.

[Change.org]

Previously: SISTER ROMA, OTHER QUEENS, TELL FACEBOOK TO CUT IT THE FUCK OUT WITH THEIR REAL-NAME POLICY [UPDATED]

8 thoughts on “Sister Roma and Others Want to Ban Facebook From Pride Over Ongoing ‘Real Name’ Policy”

  1. What happened to the accountability of profiles online? Meaning, that people have the ability to create instances of fake profiles for dangerous and manipulative acts of cyber bulling: http://abcnews.go.com/Technology/AheadoftheCurve/teens-sued-fake-facebook-profile/story?id=8702282

    We have older drag queens superficially complaining that they cannot use their stage name, lobbying support by using the same issues that are causing Facebook to increase it’s level of profile identification.

    I support facebook, because of the tragic circumstances of many teens and gay or straight, who are publicly viciously ridiculed online without any reason or provocation simply because they aren’t liked by their peers.

    No thanks Roma, stop trying to turn your agenda into something it isn’t. You do know that you can have a private personal account from which you can setup your own fan page, for your drag queen persona. Grow up, this isn’t about you!

  2. Let’s see… Should we side with the proud gay men and women who work at Facebook and want to participate in Gay Pride? Or should we side with a bunch of men who can’t cope with life and dress like clowns hiding behind pancake makeup and ball gowns?

    Sister Roma, you freak, Gay Pride is not a tool at your disposal to deal with your personal stupid squabbles.

    1. Yea his/her discrimination argument might have a little more clout if he/she didn’t have almost exclusively white or latinos with caucasian features in the videos he/she directed. Gotta love hypocrisy.

      1. Yea Sister Roma is/was the art director at Hot House, a studio that, discovered by another blogger, released 240 consecutive scenes with absolutely no black men. That’s a span of about 5 years. That story was released April of last year and since then they released a scene with Micah Brandt and Tyson Tyler. Oddly enough, they started releasing scenes with black men around the same time the news of Falcon buying out Hot House became public.

  3. “abandoned, isolated, alone, frightened, depressed and even suicidal”

    Are you fucking serious????? If this is the way they feel because of a social media site, then these people have bigger problems other than having their FB account closed and need to seek professional help. A social media account is not the end-all and be-all of your whole life, especially since you have other options that are currently far more popular than Facebook, like Twitter and Instagram. But yes I am with banning them from both Pride events.

    1. Professional help is the problem. Instead of helping these people reconcile with themselves so they feel comfortable as they are, the standard treatment for people with gender identity disorders is to allow them to create their own new identities. The problem with that is that no one has to accept or acknowledge these new identities, so it causes them distress when the new identities aren’t recognized. I guess it is easier to indulge someone’s crazy than to sort through a lifetime of traumatic events and maladaptive coping behaviors, but I suppose we are all products of our society so we all just gotta learn to deal facebook included.

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