Facebook Is Dissing Drag Queens In the Name of ‘Safety’

When Sister Roma, a San Franciso–based drag performer and member of the Sisters of Perpetual Indugence, tried to log into his Facebook account yesterday, he was locked out.

Facebook requires people to use their “real name” on their profile, a message told him, and before he could get back into his account he’d have to add his “legal name.” 

According to Facebook, profile names cannot include:  

Symbols, numbers, unusual capitalization, repeating characters, or punctuation Characters from multiple languages Titles of any kind (e.g., professional, religious) Words, phrases, or nicknames in place of a middle name Offensive or suggestive words of any kind

And nicknames can only be used if they’re variations on a real name. Sister Roma added his “legal name,” Michael Williams, on his profile in order to get back into the account but says that’s not who he is.

“I’ve been Sister Roma for 27 years. If you ask anyone who knows me—in the drag world or out—they’re going to tell you my name is Roma,” he says.

Roma is part of a vibrant group of activist queer nuns who host the annual “Hunky Jesus” competition in San Francisco’s Delores Park; they’re a fixture at protests and parades across the city. While there are members around the world, the Sisters of Perpetual Indugence have deep roots in San Francisco’s drag and queer communities. They’re a little like nuns in the movies, if nuns in the movies had big beards, white face paint, and very encouraging attitudes toward alternative lifestyles. The sisters have raised more than $1 million for local LGBT rights and HIV/AIDS–related causes since 1979. Urging others to “go forth and sin some more,” their mission is to “To Promulgate Universal Joy and Expiate Stigmatic Guilt.”

Sister Roma, who has nearly 5,000 friends on Facebook, often uses the site to promote fund-raisers and activist causes. “I love Facebook, I really do. I think it’s useful for so many things,” he says.  

But now Roma is furious that “every drag queen that I know on Facebook has had to somehow insert their legal name, or some weird hybrid of their drag name and legal name” into their profile. Since he got shut out yesterday, Roma has been tweeting and posting on Facebook with the hashtag #MyNameIsRoma. Representatives from Facebook did not immediately respond when contacted for comment on their “real name” rule. 

“The problem is way bigger than a bunch of drag queens,” Roma says. He’s worried because being able to control what name you use on social media has larger consequences for people who need to protect their identities for security reasons—such as activists avoiding detection by repressive governments—for sex workers who rely on anonymity to avoid arrest and harassment, and for transgender people who no longer identify as their “legal” or assigned names. Realizing the pitfalls of demanding “legal names” online, Google Plus got rid of its “real names” policy in July. 

Roma says one user emailed and thanked him for speaking out, writing, “The name I was born with is the name of a victim, a lonely little boy who hated himself. That is NOT who I am. ‪#‎MyNameIsJayd‬”

A petition to change the Facebook policy already has more than 500 signatures. It states, “When I can buy a house, rent a car or take out a loan using my Facebook account I will understand the need for this. But until then this must be stopped.”

For now, Roma is going ride out the whole name change thing and see what happens. “This is San Francisco, and the Sisters of Perpetual Indulgence don’t take anything lying down—nor do sex workers or the trans community,” he says. If things don’t change he says they just might have to “get a really cute bus caravan and take it to Facebook directly. If it comes to that we’ll put on our boots and take it to the streets.”

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Original article from TakePart