Google+ and legal names

I have been sitting and waiting to see what, if anything, comes out of the Google+ social networking project and whether or not it was something I would be happy to join, given that I already know I am never going to be comfortable with facebook and so haven't joined that - and that generally I struggle with social networking sites anyway.

The verdict is in: No, I will not be joining Google+.

The reason is the requirement of using one's "legal name". I saw a couple of comments about this via various links pages on feminist blogs (notably, Feministe's Shameless Self-Promotion Sunday and The F-Word Blog's weekly link round-up). Bug Girl asked, Does Google+ Hate Women? (acknowledging that "hate" may be overstating it slightly), while Cheshire Bitten explains that it's not his community. The basic problem is this:

Banning pseudonyms puts those whose lives are on the boundaries of what is accepted or tolerated, at risk. This can be anything from the LGBTQ-alphabet soup of identities, a history of mental health issues, being kinky as all get out, having a history of which they are not ashamed, of having worked in the sex/adult entertainment industry, or even simply being female and online (and what does it say about so many online communities that being female and in them should be seen as on the boundaries of what is acceptable and tolerated?)

And yes, I claim some, more, but definitely not fewer, of those identities (check the "What's My Gender?" box in the right hand column! - also, see Cheshire Bitten's remarks about requiring gender to be public, which makes me very uncomfortable.)

Bug Girl writes:

There are many, many resources that can explain to Google why adopting this policy is a stupid idea (aside from the obvious business advantage of not alienating early adopters and potential G+ evangelists). One of the best can be found at the Geek Feminism Wiki:

The cost to these people {of denying pseudonym use} can be vast, including:

• harassment, both online and offline
• discrimination in employment, provision of services, etc.
• actual physical danger of bullying, hate crime, etc.
• arrest, imprisonment, or execution in some jurisdictions
• economic harm such as job loss, loss of professional reputation, etc.
• social costs of not being able to interact with friends and colleagues

That page goes on to list, in detail, the various ways that these groups can be harmed.   We know that women experience 25 TIMES the amount of harassment online that men do.  We know that 50% of LGBT teens are bullied online, and many of them consider–or commit–suicide.  We know that women are stalked and killed by ex-lovers. We know that LGBT folk are the victims of hate crimes.

So, I have a problem with the whole "no pseudonyms" thing.

But, even better, English law doesn't really recognise the concept of a "legal name" as such - for a name to be your legal name, it simply has to be a name that you use regularly and are known by, and that you do not use for fraudulent or deceptive purposes. A deed poll can be used as a legal notification to others of your desire to be known by a different name from before (and again, as long as you have a first name, a last name, and don't claim any titles to which you're not entitled, and don't intend to commit fraud, just about any name is allowed - you can even have non-gendered titles now, with the addition of "Mx").

To all intents and purposes, Snowdrop Explodes is as much my legal name as the name on my birth certificate is, since plenty of people know me by that name only, or by both names, and I could easily get a letter from someone in a position of authority stating that I am known to them by both names, if I wanted to get legal documentation in the name Snowdrop Explodes (I don't, but I could if I did). There are enough ways in which both names are linked, that for all my desires to keep my online, kinky, somewhat genderqueer, sex-pos feminist, recovering depressive, etc identities insulated from my real name, in actual fact anyone who really wanted to dig deep enough would be able to find me. So as far as I can see, there is very little to say that I could not, according to the letter of Google+'s requirement, use Snowdrop Explodes there as I do everywhere else online; but I expect that they would refuse to accept it as such and require that I provide proof, and that would mean getting into complicated situations - a deed poll, according to the links I gave above, requires you to abandon your old name and I don't want to do that. I want to be able to have final control on who gets what about my life, and due to the nature of the internet, that means having some sort of boundary (however leaky it may in practice be) between my meatspace identity and my online self; that boundary is the difference between my birth certificate name and the name I use online.

The Wikipedia entry on US name changes talks about a distinction between a "legal" name and a "true" name, although Google did not help much in trying to find out what the distinction is, or if any such distinction exists in UK law. Certainly, the process of changing your name seems a lot simpler in the UK than in the US, so maybe that distinction doesn't apply here. All of which leaves me thinking that Google+ is not worth the hassle of trying to get my name (Snowdrop Explodes) recognised as being a legal name.