A transgender woman running for an Ohio House seat has been disqualified for failing to disclose her former name on petitions circulated to voters, in violation of a seldom-enforced state law.
Local election officials informed Vanessa Joy, who hoped to run as a Democrat for Ohio House District 50, that she was not eligible to do so, despite having collected the signatures necessary to run.
Joy sought to run in a firmly Republican district covering Stark County, just south of Akron.
Not really. It was traditional to publish it out of the way of where you lived. So like you’d pick a small town’s small local paper and it’s there, but it requires looking and most people aren’t going to bother. And it’s not like we’re trying to hide our pasts completely, more, it’s painful to us so we’d like to minimize our interaction with it and the degree to which it impacts us.
People can find my deadname but it’s not easy. And by not easy I don’t mean “serious investigative journalism” I mean “pulling court records”. A journalist can do it easily, and an everyday citizen can do it with reasonable inconvenience.
And beyond all that, yeah it would be no more difficult to find my past than that of a woman who took her spouses name. Ok it would be more difficult, but that’s because my present is apparently very difficult to find online. I’m a quite private person.
Totally wasn’t meaning to imply anyone would was hiding their pasts, I totally get why trans people want to shed something they’re not aligned with, even if it’s just a name to some people, to trans people it’s a lot more than that.
I used to be called all sorts of slurs that weren’t my name and I know how wearing that can be. Forget about a whole ass identity tied to a name. I couldn’t imagine
But yeah I do get the real concern of someone changing their name to hide their past. In fact if I was using my name change to hide from debt collectors or consequences of criminal behavior I’d get in extra trouble for perjury because I had to swear to a judge that wasn’t the case under oath.
As far as I’m concerned so long as journalists can determine a candidate’s past as needed I don’t need them announcing it. And we’ve already seen a politician use name changes to hide their life this year and it wasn’t some super subtle thing.
But yeah the state of Ohio does concern me that we’re going to be particularly hostile to trans people attempting to join our legislature because people here are generally cool with us, but politicians here really aren’t and we’re very gerrymandered
Power to the people, wouldn’t be the first time the public stuck it to tyrants in office.
Stay strong, stay smart! 🩵🩷🤍