A prior name

Written by

Ophelia Benson

in

Trump and his goons are wrong about almost everything, but not about Admiral Levine.

As you walk down a particular hallway on the seventh floor of the Humphrey Building in Washington, D.C., you’ll find a line of photographic portraits of all the people from years past who have led the Public Health Corps at the federal Department of Health and Human Services.

Only one of those portraits is of a transgender person: Adm. Rachel Levine, who served for four years as President Biden’s assistant secretary for health. She was the first transgender person to win Senate confirmation, and her portrait has been displayed in the hallway since soon after she was confirmed in 2021. 

They say “the first transgender person” as one might say “the first working class person” or “the first neglected orphan” – as if this Levine fella were some kind of persecuted minority.

Levine’s official portrait was recently altered, a spokesperson for HHS confirmed to NPR. A digital photograph of the portrait in the hallway obtained by NPR shows that Levine’s previous name is now typed below the portrait, under the glass of the frame.

“During the federal shutdown, the current leadership of the Office of the Assistant Secretary for Health changed Admiral Levine’s photo to remove her current legal name and use a prior name,” says Adrian Shanker, former deputy assistant secretary for health policy in the Biden administration who worked with Levine and is now her spokesperson. He called the move an act “of bigotry against her.”

Hey, you know what? Pretending that men are women is an act of bigotry against women. Pretending that a man is the first woman to [whatever] is a rank insult.

An HHS staff member who asked not be identified for fear of professional retribution called the change “disrespectful” and added that it exemplifies “the erasure of transgender individuals by this administration.”

But trans ideology is a massive erasure of women. Not just one greedy man, but all women.

Since taking office, Trump has moved aggressively to curtail the rights of transgender and intersex people through many federal agencies, including the Departments of Health, Justice, Education, and others.

Yes but what rights? There is no “right” to pretend to be the opposite sex, let alone a right to force everyone else to agree that pretender really is the opposite sex.

Comments

11 responses to “A prior name”

  1. Your Name's not Bruce? Avatar
    Your Name’s not Bruce?

    I think it is disrespectful to not use someone’s legal name. If someone makes the change legally, that’s their business.

    At the same time, it is disrepectful to think, demand, or agree, that changing your name (and/or wardrobe, comportment, whatever) changes your sex. Levine is not female, is not a woman, is not “she”. In calling him “she”, the article quoted is disrespectful to actual women. That’s our business.

  2. Ophelia Benson Avatar
    Ophelia Benson

    Well, it depends, though, doesn’t it? Names are a two-way street, in the sense that some possible names are a deliberate insult to or mockery of anyone who has to use them. Hitler, Stalin, Bugs Bunny, a random string of letters, a string of numbers, etc. The whole Men Called Isabella Hotpants thing is an insult plus mockery, so I don’t think it is disrespectful to balk at them.

  3. M. Scott Avatar
    M. Scott

    I agree that no one should respect insulting or mocking names. However, if it’s simply a matter of using a name associated with the opposite sex, I think you should accept it. Even for odious people like Levine. After all, isn’t one of the goals of the gender critical movement to make people realize that masculine/feminine don’t need to be confined to a specific sex? I always think about the actress Michael Learned as a trendsetter in this way. Of course, this does make it all the more critical to use correct sex pronouns for them.

  4. Catwhisperer Avatar
    Catwhisperer

    Is it just me checking if there’s a MenCalledIsabellaHotpants.com?

  5. Jim Baerg Avatar
    Jim Baerg

    Regardless if the reason for changing the name, should the former name be essentially hidden? That makes it harder for others to look up what the person did before the name change. Are there legitimate reasons to make that harder?

  6. Dave Ricks Avatar
    Dave Ricks

    Under the Biden administration, the US Department of Health and Human Services called Levine “female” in this announcement. I might see the Trump administration “deadaming” him as a way of correctly “sexing” him.

    https://us.pagefreezer.com/en-US/wa/browse/0a7f82bb-be6e-448a-ae11-373d22c37842?find-by-timestamp=2021-10-20T11:41:59Z&url=https:%2F%2Fwww.hhs.gov%2Fabout%2Fnews%2F2021%2F10%2F19%2Fstatements-officials-us-department-health-and-human-services-commemorating-first-openly-transgender-four-star-officer-first-female-four-star-admiral.html&timestamp=2021-10-20T05:00:07Z

  7. Lady Mondegreen Avatar
    Lady Mondegreen

    Trump has moved aggressively to curtail the rights of transgender and intersex people

    Interesting that they throw “intersex people” in there. I suppose by “intersex people” they mean males with disorders of sexual development, and by “curtailing rights” they mean, “not letting males compete in women’s sports, even if they were born with malformed genitals.”

  8. maddog1129 Avatar
    maddog1129

    @ Catwhisperer #3

    Not just you. I’m still wondering what “Men Called Isabella Hotpants” even means.

  9. John Reed Avatar
    John Reed

    I’m with YNNB on this one. If a man wants to change his name, that’s his prerogative, and one I will go along with. The admital’s name is Rachel.

  10. Your Name's not Bruce? Avatar
    Your Name’s not Bruce?

    Well, it depends, though, doesn’t it? Names are a two-way street, in the sense that some possible names are a deliberate insult to or mockery of anyone who has to use them…. The whole Men Called Isabella Hotpants thing is an insult plus mockery, so I don’t think it is disrespectful to balk at them.

    Point taken. We are allowed to balk. We are allowed to resist. We are allowed to remember, and use “a prior name.” New names do not come with bespoke pronouns as standard equipment. We get to correctly sex people, and retain our perception and understanding of reality. As Magdelen Berns put it. “I’d rather e rude than a fucking liar.” We get to be “rude”.

    I’m with YNNB on this one. If a man wants to change his name, that’s his prerogative, and one I will go along with. The admital’s name is Rachel.

    And that’s far as I’d be willing to go. He’s not a woman, not female, and referencing his former name is not out of bounds. If his former name is forever appended to his now-legal-name, that’s fine with me. Deliberate disrespect is an acceptable response to bad behaviour. Claiming to be a woman, claiming to be female, and letting others make and argue for those claims for him constitutes “bad behaviour”. He was not, and never will be the first female anything, and the fact that supposedly progressive politicians promulgated this disgusting, misogynistic imposture is a bloody disgrace, because it gave a whole load of ammunition to Trumpists. It was an unforced error that should have been foreseen and avoided. They could have and should have heeded the warnings of women who weren’t trans cultists,.

  11. iknklast Avatar
    iknklast

    He was not, and never will be the first female anything

    And now that HE has claimed that title, the actual first woman in that position will be just ‘ho hum, another one’. Once again, a woman is stripped of her distinction because HE got there first.

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