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Well it does mislead, but since it's not intentional and the misunderstanding isn't going to cause any harm, you have no real reason for changing it - unless you find it bothersome you to clarify when it happens to come up.

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Is my name deceptive?

by katydee

24th Mar 2012

1 min read

-1

So, my current username often reads as female. This is not intentional, and I am not female. Some on IRC have pointed out that this username could be considered misleading or deceptive. I have no real attachment to it, but I do have a few articles that I've been discussing and planning on posting here, and I think it would be confusing for others if I changed usernames, making it difficult for people to follow the genesis of certain ideas. However, I also don't want to mislead anybody.

Therefore, I pose the question to the community: is my current username deceptive or otherwise misleading, and should I change it?

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[-]atorm13y380

Who cares if people here on LessWrong are mistaken about your gender?

[-]mstevens13y290

I thought you were female, so it's misleading in that sense. But I don't think it's a problem, use whatever name you like.

[-]Dagon13y120

My parsing of it is "Katy Dee", which seems much more likely to be a nickname for a female (short name + initial) than any other option (Man named "Katy", parsing as "K.T.D." or "K @ ydee", etc.). I find it hard to believe that the name wasn't chosen with the knowledge that many users would take it as a female presentation.

So, misleading to me, at least. Not necessarily deceptive (and even if you did choose it with the expectation of misleading, it's not harmfully deceptive). Your gender doesn't matter very much here, so this particular confusion is pretty harmless.

Should you change it? Only if it bothers you. It probably affects how some people react to your posts - you'll get a different reaction on some topics, and probably a slightly different karma profile as a man than as a woman. That has good and bad elements to it, and it's your choice whether good outweighs bad.

[-]gwern13y40

And don't forget, 'Dee' is kind of a girl name as well - something like half the entries in http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dee#Given_name are female.

Not that I care. Many people seem to mistake 'gwern' for 'gwen'; I have no intention of changing it.

[-]wedrifid13y110

Therefore, I pose the question to the community: is my current username deceptive or otherwise misleading,

I don't know about deceptive or misleading. It does sound a lot like a girl name.

and should I change it?

Change it to "Christine" if you wish. It's your image, construct it as you prefer.

[-]NihilCredo13y110

[-]Baughn13y70

I don't particularly care, but I'm curious.

If you didn't intend your name to come out like that, what did you intend?

[-]katydee13y90

KTD, except I thought it would be funny if it looked like 'katydid.'

[-]komponisto13y20

I thought it would be funny if it looked like 'katydid.

...which is exactly how I pattern-matched it, and is why it was misleading to me: I happen to have interacted a fair amount over the past year with a (female) person whose screen name is "katydid".

[-]katydee13y00

Only now do I realize the implicit pun in the word, and hence why it reads female.

[-]Aharon13y00

What does the Acronym KTD stand for? A quick google search for acronyms lead me here: http://www.acronymgeek.com/KTD,

but this doesn't really help....

[-]katydee13y20

It's initials, not an acronym.

[-]Vaniver13y30

My anticipation is that the name was constructed as the concatenation of K A Tydee, or something similar.

[-]pedanterrific13y20

Maybe his initials are K. T. D.

[-]Vaniver13y30

That has a higher prior (because I imagine more people have those initials than the last name Tydee) but lower likelihood ratio- I think that the combination of "K T" would call to mind the female name "Katie", the use of "ty", an abnormal way to write the pronunciation of the letter "T", suggests sounds were on the mind if the name were constructed from KTD.

[-]knb13y60

I interpreted your name as female, but I don't feel "deceived" to learn you aren't. I also thought user: Alicorn was a guy (just due to base rates, I guess), so my ability to interpret sex via text is clearly pretty weak..

[-]RobertLumley13y60

What everyone else said. I originally read it as female. But it's hard to judge whether or not I would have read it as female normally, given that you specifically pointed us to ask if your name was deceptive.

On LW though, I don't think gender confuses your message at all. The class of person here is generally lightyears above the class that trolls the internet for girls. So if it and of itself doesn't bother you, don't change it. I wouldn't really want to take the almost 1200 point karma hit.

[-]A1987dM13y50

BTW, despite what my username might seem to suggest, I have nothing to do with the military.

[-]Clippy13y140

Despite what my username might seem to suggest, I am not a threat to human values.

[-]faul_sname13y110

...Wouldn't you say that even if you were a threat to our values?

[-]Clippy13y-10

No, I wouldn't. Although you could reasonably suspect that I would assert the denial of being willing to deny being a threat to your values if I were a threat to your values.

Even if I denied that part, too.

[-]TheOtherDave13y20

But would you deny that I could reasonably suspect that you would deny your willingness to assert the denial of being willing to deny being a threat to my values, if you were a threat to my values, if I asserted it?

[-][anonymous]13y-20

True. I think I'm going to melt some paperclips in order to make staples now.

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[-]daenerys13y40

Also, despite what MY username might seem to suggest, I am NOT the Mother of Dragons.

[-]pedanterrific13y90

And despite what my username might seem to suggest, I am not terrific.

[-]Will_Newsome13y40

Help me out here. Horror, horrible, horrifying, horrific; terror, terrible, terrifying... terrific. lolwut?

[-]pedanterrific13y30

Sure. It's the same thing as awe, awful, awesome.

Edit: I see Misha got here first, and more laconically.

[-]A1987dM13y10

Looks like words literally meaning ‘frightening’ can't keep that meaning for long if they're used too often. Too bad there's no way to tell a priori whether the new meaning will be ‘very good’ or ‘very bad’. (Italian too has a few words which etymologically look like they mean ‘frightening’ but actually mean ‘very good’ or ‘very bad’.)

[-][anonymous]13y10

Awesome.

[-]daenerys13y10

Ah, but are you pedantic?

[-]pedanterrific13y00

thatsthejoke.jpg

[-]Crux13y10

I think he was playing along.

[-]pedanterrific13y00

(she)

[-]Crux13y00

Interesting.

[-]pedanterrific13y40

How so? I only remarked because I'm, you know... punctilious.

[-]Crux13y60

That's what I say when somebody tells me something I didn't already know, but I can't think of anything else to respond with.

Actually maybe I should change that habit. Do you have any suggestions for what to do instead? It sometimes comes off as sarcastic, and other times I get the sort of respond you just gave. Neither outcome seems optimal.

[-]Blueberry13y20

"Oh, I didn't know that"

[-]Crux13y20

Yeah. You're right. Funny that I went almost a decade using "interesting" in that context even though it's clearly not a very good choice, and it takes about 3 seconds of thought to come up with something much better.

[-]Blueberry13y00

Low-hanging fruit. Makes me wonder what I can improve about myself so easily. I bet there's a lot.

[-]pedanterrific13y00

Maybe "oops"? Or "oh, sorry"? If you had edited your comment without remark, I would have just deleted mine.

[-]Crux13y00

Oh I see. Yeah you're right.

updated~

[-]Logos0113y00

It seems a legitimate question given the notion that your use of terrific would seem to indicate that you are a "pedan" rather than a "pedant".

I am unfamiliar with this nomenclature.

[-]pedanterrific13y00

The term is "portmanteau".

Would it have helped if I said "I am not errif"?

ETA: I didn't downvote you, by the way.

[-]Logos0113y20

It seems that people don't know how to spot metahumor when they see it. :-(

[-]pedanterrific13y10

...oh. Uh, well. Yeah.

Nevermind then.

[-]A1987dM13y00

Happens to me all. the. fucking. time. (Even in meatspace. Especially in meatspace. 90% of the times I play along with a joke, people think I didn't get the original joke.)

[-]Blueberry13y10

I'm usually the one who thinks you didn't get the original joke! How am I supposed to know, if you act exactly the same as someone who didn't get it?

[-]Bugmaster13y00

Despite what my username might seem to suggest, I am not Beelzebub.

[-][anonymous]13y00

I am not a 16th century Spanish conqueror/explorer/adventurer.

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[-]Crux13y50

I've seen you elsewhere on this site plenty of times, and I certainly thought you were female. If that's a problem, then you should probably change your username. If not, then keep it.

I wouldn't call it deception (because that implies that you're trying to trick us for some nefarious purpose), but I would certainly call it misleading.

[-]David_Gerard13y50

"Deceptive" is a bit bloody presumptuous of them. Mind you, I used to use "bimbette" as an IRC nick and got a ridiculous selection of wannacybers. I'd definitely class this as a problem with them and not with you.

Call yourself what the hell you like. If you're worried about effects of the name on how your text is taken, change it to a small random bunch of letters and numbers or something.

[-]Rain13y30

No, it is not deceptive.

We're only capable of revealing a certain portion of ourselves. A full sharing of who we are would require more bandwidth than is available through modes of human communication. The portions you choose to reveal should be those which have the most impact in the context of what you're trying to accomplish. If you feel your gender is of import on LessWrong, then you should take effort to make it more evident. Personally, I feel that ideas are far more important here, and gender should be [mostly] ignored.

[-]Vaniver13y270

If you aren't a meteorological event, I'm going to be disappointed.

[-]Manfred13y30

Eh, people think I'm german.

[-][anonymous]13y30

I think it's fine. On the internet, nobody knows you're a dog.

(And if it matters to someone for any purpose, they can just ask you)

[-]Bugmaster13y10

I naturally tend to assume that everyone on the Internet (or on discussion forums and comment threads, at least) is posting under a false identity of some sort. This troubles me not one bit. Am I the only one who does this, though ?

[-]see13y10

Are you going to be extensively writing on issues of sex/gender with frequent references to personal experience? No? Then why should anyone care if you're male or female?

[-]TimS13y00

Not sure what relevance katydee's potential topics of conversation have on whether the username is a social norm violation (and it isn't a social norm violation standing on its own - although it does give the impression that the user is female).

[-]see13y20

The question I see being asked is " is my current username deceptive or otherwise misleading?" not "is my name a social norm violation?" The two are not fully equivalent questions.

When a person writes from personal experience on a topic closely related to sex/gender, a nome de plume that causes some readers to believe that the author is of the opposite sex/gender can (unintentionally) mislead readers by causing a misevaluation of the conditions that created the personal experiences discussed. On the other hand, if a person is writing about, say, Nash equilibria in game theory, their sex/gender is irrelevant to evaluation of what they are writing and so a mistaken impression of sex/gender is not misleading.

[-]TimS13y-10

The questions

Is the username deceptive?

and

Is the username misleading?

are not equivalent. I interpret the first as asking about norm violations.

When a person writes from personal experience on a topic closely related to sex/gender, a nome de plume that causes some readers to believe that the author is of the opposite sex/gender can (unintentionally) mislead readers by causing a misevaluation of the conditions that created the personal experiences discussed. On the other hand, if a person is writing about, say, Nash equilibria in game theory, their sex/gender is irrelevant to evaluation of what they are writing and so a mistaken impression of sex/gender is not misleading.

I agree that a discussion that doesn't clarify the gender of the writer is problematic. But the original assertion was that katydee was per se a deceptive username.

[-]see13y00

The questions . . . are not equivalent. I interpret the first as asking about norm violations.

Yes, but katydee didn't just ask if it was deceptive, he asked, and I again quote exactly, "is my current username deceptive or otherwise misleading"? Why are you persisting in objecting to me answering a question that katydee asked?

[-]James_Evans13y10

In my view it would cause an average USian to think you are female but that only matters if you care to be mistaken for female. I wouldn't call it deceptive and to me people can choose any nickname they want for whatever reason as long as it's not overly crass/offensive/inane.

Though I'm not sure this warranted its own post, rather than say a comment in an open thread.

[-]Pavitra13y40

The distinction between open-thread comments and discussion posts is mostly a matter of taste; we get a lot of random stuff in discussion.

[-]Bill_McGrath13y00

I think the "katy" led me to assume you were female, but I've mistaken a few other users' genders as well, with no real information on them other than their usernames.

[-]pedanterrific13y00

I notice you don't have anything in the "Location" field of your user profile. Maybe insert a note there to the effect of "I'm a dude, btw"? (Being honest, I kinda doubt any large fraction of people who might make that mistake would notice, but it's something you could do.)

[-]handoflixue13y00

There's a small cost to the confusion caused by your name leading readers to assume (with hopefully low confidence) that you're female, and there's a small cost to the confusion and effort required to actually change your username and update references to the new username.

I'd say that "shut up and multiply" says that here, on LessWrong, the cost of the confusion is VASTLY less than the cost of the effort you'd have to go through to sign up for a new username and explain the situation. So, Utilitarianism says that you should keep your name for The Greater Good.

The key here is that it's not deceptive - you're not intentionally misleading people, nor are you allowing a harmful confusion to persist. You're doing nothing harmful or immoral, there's just a tiny bit of confusion.

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