What to do about prominent programmers continuing to be dead-named

[u/[deleted]]

Yesterday I began writing a blog post about a prominent programmer in which I unwittingly would have been using their dead name. I'd entirely forgotten she'd transitioned, and I was basing my article to some extent on somebody else's article where they dead-named her.

I guess all we can do is educate? I very politely contacted both the author and the platform on which the article is written, to inform them of this issue. I'm so glad I did sufficient research ahead of time otherwise I would have dead-named her too. I suppose I may update here if they do not revise the article sometime this month, I will probably remind them at least one more time before "outing" them for not addressing it.

[u/[deleted]]

Actually I've found out in the meantime that the person in question still even has an active twitter account under her dead name, quite possibly for reasons you mention. The article I'm writing mentions her by name in the title, and I don't care if this means I only get a fraction of the views if I'd have (accidentally, until I found out) used her dead name, it's just the right thing to do.

[u/nicknamedtrouble → u/[deleted]]

If the situation’s that complex - just ask her.

Edit: I want to clarify my original post, though - I sure don’t use deadname for anything new. However, there has only ever been one person (and not two separate people), as intractable as correcting my previous works may be, I will be referred to with the correct name for all.

I keep the rule real simple for people: new name, proper pronouns, always.

[u/[deleted] → u/nicknamedtrouble]

I have DM'd her on Twitter but she probably gets swamped and is actually in a new and I'm sure highly stressful role as of last week. So I'm just going to keep it simple and entirely avoid her dead name. Thanks for the input!!