It seems like people in this thread are unaware of the very real threats, harassment, and assaults that happen as a trans person in public. Using a name that matches your gender identity is important for both psychological safety, as well as avoiding being outed and threatened by others in public.
Laws in different states can make changing your legal name incredibly complicated and time consuming. Having an easy process to avoid some daily danger is wonderful for trans people, regardless of the motivation from MasterCard.
Seems like many are just feigning lack of awareness, imo. Casual observation shows a pattern of looking the other way when bad things are happening to people they don’t like.
I also think there’s some amount of intellectualization about these issues, for varying reasons. In my own social group the most common one I observe is that it’s an academic exercise to those who aren’t part of an affected group. I don’t say that from a place of judgement, it makes perfect sense that in those cases a lack of lived experience would make it academic. For others it’s reality, and that’s why it’s important to address these kinds of issues.
Not living in north america, there's something i must be missing - who looks at the name on a credit card? who even touches your credit card anymore? in europe and uk you're either contactless or you're given the terminal to enter your card yourself, and I'm 99% certain the "name" that is written on the card never comes up on screen
I've been called by my name many times by store clerks after paying contactless, without having given my name, so I assume it does get surfaced to them on the billing UI. It's also fairly common (in my experience, here in southern California) for the name on the card to be automatically used as the name on your order for, e.g., calling out when it's ready to be picked up at the counter.
Interesting, is this some US thing? Because in Europe for VISA/Mastercard payments I'm quite sure the name of the card owner is never transmitted to the vendor. Not in the past, and not now. It would also be quite in conflict with data protection laws.
Also it's a risk for stolen credit card information. I think the vendor doesn't even get the credit card number when processing a payment, otherwise shop clerks could just take screenshots and abuse a credit card for online shopping.
American banking (including point-of-sale and credit cards) is largely a decade behind Western Europe.
But, apart from restaurants (which continue to inexplicably swipe cards out of sight), most major retailers use chip/pin or chip/signature (and the sig is only ever checked if the salesperson feels a need, which is rare).
"swiping" in context of using the magnetic strip on the card? Most European cards have this kind of payment disabled by default.
But how do you enter the PIN in those cases? We used to have the option to authorize payments with signature until a few years ago. But I think those cards completely vanished now.
When you eat at a sit down restaurant, part of the service is not forcing you to walk to the register up front to pay. Hence you leave your card with the waiter and they disappear with it for up to 15 minutes to process the payment at the terminal.
This is also their opportunity to copy your magnetic strip and/or add a tip without your permission. (Though the latter only happened to me once, I guess the former may have happened a few times over the years it's hard to know.)
For what it’s worth, everywhere else in the world they just bring a small hand held terminal over to your table and you just insert or tap your card yourself.
In europe they bring the pos to your table once done with your custom. Although in the uk table service is uncommon and people queue up at the till to order. No one checks the name as it would be a waste of time anyway.
The first example given is for a liquor store - where a clerk is very likely to ask for one piece of ID, and in some locations, two - one photo ID, one with the customer's name embossed or printed on it.
Car rental agencies and airlines come to mind as well. I was almost unable to purchase a ticket for my better half after we got married as we were slow to process paperwork for name changes on our credit cards. We were able to clear the matter up, with some effort, but …
>When Asher DiGiuseppe tried to make a purchase at his local Toronto liquor store, the clerk looked at him with suspicion and questioned his card, which was still printed with the name he had used before transitioning.
>[...] New research by Mastercard across 16 countries in North America and Europe revealed that 59% of people who identity as nonbinary say they feel unsafe while shopping, and 57% say they think it’s important that companies and organizations address them in a way that respects their identity.
Is this a serious issue? I don't think anyone ever checked the name on my credit card. Even when I was carded at a liquor store, they'd only check my government id, not the credit card itself. Also for online payments I don't think the "cardholder name" field is even checked, so you can put whatever you want. Therefore I'm not sure what the point of this is, other than trying to score some PR points.
Eons ago when I first started to transition I was prevented from making a purchase once because my card didn’t match my female me.
The clerk then seemingly took delight in increasing the volume of their voice when informing me.
The irony being that at work one our cute “pretty plastic people” girls used the male bosses CC all the time.
Should it matter? No, but until people evolve into human beings and leave their bigoted transphobic selves behind, anything like this can, and will, be used as a tool to embarrass and harass transgender people.
This has to be a USA thing right? In the 15 years i have had debit/credit cards in the EU nobody has ever checked the name on it. In fact, since the rise of contactless all the card info is now on the backside and not on front as before. Not to mention the fact that quite a few people today pay by phone contactless.
In South Africa, I tap to pay practically everywhere and no one ever looks at my phone (or prior to my getting Apple Pay, my physical card). In the last 12 months I had to insert my card for chip and PIN maybe twice.
Speaking of chip and PIN, before tap to pay became prominent, people actually never touched my card, I would insert it myself (reducing risk of fraud) enter my PIN and all the merchant cared about was whether the the machine said “approved” or “declined” after doing an online check.
A bigoted store clerk might decide to apply different standards to trans people, to find a way to kick them out of the store. So yeah, my experience is similar to yours, but I don’t doubt that credit card names could be weaponized against trans people.
True, but does having another name on the credit card actually address this genuine problem?
(I think people should be able to use their chosen name on their credit card; I think that adds comfort to their regular interactions and daily life; I just don’t think it will act as an Uno Reverse card against someone prone to bigotry against them.)
A very popular POS used by many order-at-counter restaurants and cafes has an option, configured by the merchant, not the customer (!), to use the name on the credit card as the name called when the order is ready.
The terminology makes me laugh and I think of schismatic churches.
If you investigate the seedy underbelly of Eastern Orthodoxy, you will find many splinter groups which claim that the main bodies have committed apostasy and lost the faith. Therefore these small, schismatic groups, sometimes with limited clergy resources, will name themselves "True Orthodox" or "Really Truly Orthodox and We Mean It This Time". Generally these groups will themselves experience schism as they quibble about trivial things, and so devolve into "Truer than True Orthodoxy" and "Old True Believers of the Truth About Cats, Dogs, and Orthodoxy".
It's a bizarre concept that someone should have a "True Name" that's truer than their legally recorded name(s) and truer still than the names which they were given by their legal parents and names which were used for them throughout their lives. A new name that someone takes for himself is commonly known as an "assumed name" or "alias".
As Pontius Pilate was heard to remark, "What is Truth?"
Bizarre means "very strange or unusual", but the scenario you described happens often.
An assumed name or alias is a part-time name used for a specific purpose; the definition does not extend to a new name used as an individual's full-time name.
> As Pontius Pilate was heard to remark, "What is Truth?"
And as we know, Jesus replied: "Check the dictionary."
> It's a bizarre concept that someone should have a "True Name" that's truer than their legally recorded name(s) and truer still than the names which they were given by their legal parents
Why use a name someone else gave you if you don’t like it anymore ? What prevents us from changing it ?
Sounds like a good thing, though I can't help but feel that this is a workaround for the real issue. Because frankly it shouldn't have to be that hard to get the official documentation correct.
> New research by Mastercard across 16 countries in North America and Europe revealed that 59% of people who identity as nonbinary say they feel unsafe while shopping
We should do what we can to make life easier for everyone, but we should stop encouraging and accommodating this “everything makes me feel unsafe” attitude. It harms everyone when we redefine safety to include awkwardness or very minor psychological discomfort.
If it were only a very minor psychological discomfort, you'd be right. Unfortunately, other clientele in the store may harass you and follow you out of the store.
As someone who has been on the receiving end of incredibly violent threats, being able to not be outed publicly is critical to everyday safety for trans people.
i thought the minor discomfort being referred to was that of changing your name and reissuing a new ID card. i can definitely understand how it would get grating to explain the change at every security check
The language surrounding these topics is so nebulous that I often have no clue what they mean.
-----------------
And beyond the general topic discussing these things generally I've had one anecdotal incident involving such nebulous concepts of "safe". I worked at a place where HR notified us that a member of our team "did not feel safe or welcome". I had no idea what to do with this information. They obviously didn't want to identify the person, or what happened (i can understand the desire to do so) ... but then what does that mean, what of any helpful things could we even do if we don't know what is going on?
Then we got a second notice just as vague as the first about someone (it seemed to be implied it was the same person) still felt that way. This notice (sent to a few hundred people) had a more finger wagging tone to it.
At that point I was actually angry. I responded that I did not feel safe working in an environment with vague notices that someone(s), maybe, did something to make someone(s) else uncomfortable or feel something ... and that to some unknown extent I and others were now on notice in some vague way about it. Maybe I did it, heck if I know, if so what could I do!??!
Shortly after a clarification email went out that nobody was in trouble and any specific incidents would be handled with those involved only and no further group emails would go out.
Someone did leave the company not long after. I was told (not sure if it was true) they were the source of the complaints. That person was "sensitive" to the extent that they seemed upset by every little thing. They were pretty hard to be around, every day events upset them, and frankly they were an asshole too. It struck me how such nebulous language in that case allows someone to impose on others.
I suspect that someone expressing that they did not feel "safe or welcome" in such a vague way contributed to the equally vague and weird "solution" to just spam out a warning(s) to everyone. The result was absurd. It really illustrates how this kind of language can be very confusing.
--------
Now the Mastercard thing isn't that exactly, and I hope it helps someone. But the vague language always throws me off a bit.
Why do you assume their use of the word "unsafe" was limited to awkwardness?
There is a growing group of people willing to confront anyone in public that is transgender, with a smaller (yet still growing) group who are emboldened enough to inflict physical harm.
I fully agree. We do too much to keep people who are already safe from feeling slightly awkward or experiencing minor psychological discomfort.
We should do what we can to make life easier for everyone. If that makes a majority of people aware of the suffering of a particular group, ultimately I think it helps cultivate compassion, and compassion benefits us all.
I applaud your progressive, optimistic, and compassionate position, author
Edit: I’m being told I’m misconstruing your comments and not at all what you meant
Trans people are victims of hate crimes. It’s not “minor psychological discomfort.” For many people, it’s life-and-death. Giving people control to share this very sensitive information when and how they see fit makes trans people safer.
>but we should stop encouraging and accommodating this “everything makes me feel unsafe” attitude. It harms everyone when we redefine safety to include awkwardness or very minor psychological discomfort.
It's pretty clear that the thing he's objecting to is the inflation of "feel unsafe" to include "awkwardness or very minor psychological discomfort", which might draw attention to the issue in the short term, but over the long term dilutes the term and makes the issue worse. It's like the euphemism treadmill but in reverse.
He is saying it harms everyone when being called by the name you don't want is redefined as unsafe because it makes it difficult to differentiate between significant issues.
Step 1. Go to google news or whatever news aggregation website you want.
Step 2. Search for "transgender attack".
Step 3. Take some time to digest the horrible news you're reading.
Step 4. Try to figure out the common thread between these stories. The people in question usually get outed in public during some kind of ID check, and got jumped by some intolerant moron who witnessed it.
This is happening. Today. Including in "North America and Europe". The people who say they feel unsafe because they feel unsafe for their physical integrity and safety. Not because of "awkwardness or very minor psychological discomfort".
in that case it's an argument for getting the name change done properly right from the start, right? i don't think having a different name on your mastercard is a solution here (especially since choosing "mx" as a prefix is hardly keeping things secret..)
> Some accounts in the comments really care about what name is on my credit cards
Which comments are those? From my skim most people objecting to this are skeptical it works, rather than insisting that the name on the card matches your legal name.
Nowadays nobody ever looks at my cards. I just put them into a machine, and enter the PIN. Or just tap them for a contactless payment. When using Apple Pay or Google Pay there is no name shown on the screen of the phone. Neither is the name shown on the screen of the cash register nor printed on the receipt.
So someone seeing the name on your card is not really a thing any more, or am I missing something?
Readit News
Laws in different states can make changing your legal name incredibly complicated and time consuming. Having an easy process to avoid some daily danger is wonderful for trans people, regardless of the motivation from MasterCard.
Also it's a risk for stolen credit card information. I think the vendor doesn't even get the credit card number when processing a payment, otherwise shop clerks could just take screenshots and abuse a credit card for online shopping.
But, apart from restaurants (which continue to inexplicably swipe cards out of sight), most major retailers use chip/pin or chip/signature (and the sig is only ever checked if the salesperson feels a need, which is rare).
But how do you enter the PIN in those cases? We used to have the option to authorize payments with signature until a few years ago. But I think those cards completely vanished now.
This is also their opportunity to copy your magnetic strip and/or add a tip without your permission. (Though the latter only happened to me once, I guess the former may have happened a few times over the years it's hard to know.)
In reality way too many people will use it as a weapon when they suspect the cardholder may be transgendered.
Source: it happened to me when I first started transitioning.
Hotels. All of them.
>[...] New research by Mastercard across 16 countries in North America and Europe revealed that 59% of people who identity as nonbinary say they feel unsafe while shopping, and 57% say they think it’s important that companies and organizations address them in a way that respects their identity.
Is this a serious issue? I don't think anyone ever checked the name on my credit card. Even when I was carded at a liquor store, they'd only check my government id, not the credit card itself. Also for online payments I don't think the "cardholder name" field is even checked, so you can put whatever you want. Therefore I'm not sure what the point of this is, other than trying to score some PR points.
Eons ago when I first started to transition I was prevented from making a purchase once because my card didn’t match my female me.
The clerk then seemingly took delight in increasing the volume of their voice when informing me.
The irony being that at work one our cute “pretty plastic people” girls used the male bosses CC all the time.
Should it matter? No, but until people evolve into human beings and leave their bigoted transphobic selves behind, anything like this can, and will, be used as a tool to embarrass and harass transgender people.
What does this mean?
Speaking of chip and PIN, before tap to pay became prominent, people actually never touched my card, I would insert it myself (reducing risk of fraud) enter my PIN and all the merchant cared about was whether the the machine said “approved” or “declined” after doing an online check.
A bigoted store clerk might decide to apply different standards to trans people, to find a way to kick them out of the store. So yeah, my experience is similar to yours, but I don’t doubt that credit card names could be weaponized against trans people.
(I think people should be able to use their chosen name on their credit card; I think that adds comfort to their regular interactions and daily life; I just don’t think it will act as an Uno Reverse card against someone prone to bigotry against them.)
In Toronto liquor stores, the point of sale payment terminal is on a stand, facing the customer, and you tap or use chip + pin yourself.
If you get asked, you to have to show your government ID.
If you investigate the seedy underbelly of Eastern Orthodoxy, you will find many splinter groups which claim that the main bodies have committed apostasy and lost the faith. Therefore these small, schismatic groups, sometimes with limited clergy resources, will name themselves "True Orthodox" or "Really Truly Orthodox and We Mean It This Time". Generally these groups will themselves experience schism as they quibble about trivial things, and so devolve into "Truer than True Orthodoxy" and "Old True Believers of the Truth About Cats, Dogs, and Orthodoxy".
It's a bizarre concept that someone should have a "True Name" that's truer than their legally recorded name(s) and truer still than the names which they were given by their legal parents and names which were used for them throughout their lives. A new name that someone takes for himself is commonly known as an "assumed name" or "alias".
As Pontius Pilate was heard to remark, "What is Truth?"
An assumed name or alias is a part-time name used for a specific purpose; the definition does not extend to a new name used as an individual's full-time name.
> As Pontius Pilate was heard to remark, "What is Truth?"
And as we know, Jesus replied: "Check the dictionary."
Why use a name someone else gave you if you don’t like it anymore ? What prevents us from changing it ?
We should do what we can to make life easier for everyone, but we should stop encouraging and accommodating this “everything makes me feel unsafe” attitude. It harms everyone when we redefine safety to include awkwardness or very minor psychological discomfort.
As someone who has been on the receiving end of incredibly violent threats, being able to not be outed publicly is critical to everyday safety for trans people.
-----------------
And beyond the general topic discussing these things generally I've had one anecdotal incident involving such nebulous concepts of "safe". I worked at a place where HR notified us that a member of our team "did not feel safe or welcome". I had no idea what to do with this information. They obviously didn't want to identify the person, or what happened (i can understand the desire to do so) ... but then what does that mean, what of any helpful things could we even do if we don't know what is going on?
Then we got a second notice just as vague as the first about someone (it seemed to be implied it was the same person) still felt that way. This notice (sent to a few hundred people) had a more finger wagging tone to it.
At that point I was actually angry. I responded that I did not feel safe working in an environment with vague notices that someone(s), maybe, did something to make someone(s) else uncomfortable or feel something ... and that to some unknown extent I and others were now on notice in some vague way about it. Maybe I did it, heck if I know, if so what could I do!??!
Shortly after a clarification email went out that nobody was in trouble and any specific incidents would be handled with those involved only and no further group emails would go out.
Someone did leave the company not long after. I was told (not sure if it was true) they were the source of the complaints. That person was "sensitive" to the extent that they seemed upset by every little thing. They were pretty hard to be around, every day events upset them, and frankly they were an asshole too. It struck me how such nebulous language in that case allows someone to impose on others.
I suspect that someone expressing that they did not feel "safe or welcome" in such a vague way contributed to the equally vague and weird "solution" to just spam out a warning(s) to everyone. The result was absurd. It really illustrates how this kind of language can be very confusing.
--------
Now the Mastercard thing isn't that exactly, and I hope it helps someone. But the vague language always throws me off a bit.
There is a growing group of people willing to confront anyone in public that is transgender, with a smaller (yet still growing) group who are emboldened enough to inflict physical harm.
We should do what we can to make life easier for everyone. If that makes a majority of people aware of the suffering of a particular group, ultimately I think it helps cultivate compassion, and compassion benefits us all.
I applaud your progressive, optimistic, and compassionate position, author
Edit: I’m being told I’m misconstruing your comments and not at all what you meant
It’s not for you to decide.
>but we should stop encouraging and accommodating this “everything makes me feel unsafe” attitude. It harms everyone when we redefine safety to include awkwardness or very minor psychological discomfort.
It's pretty clear that the thing he's objecting to is the inflation of "feel unsafe" to include "awkwardness or very minor psychological discomfort", which might draw attention to the issue in the short term, but over the long term dilutes the term and makes the issue worse. It's like the euphemism treadmill but in reverse.
How is allowing someone to use a different name harmful to everyone ?
> It harms everyone when we redefine safety
He is saying it harms everyone when being called by the name you don't want is redefined as unsafe because it makes it difficult to differentiate between significant issues.
Step 2. Search for "transgender attack".
Step 3. Take some time to digest the horrible news you're reading.
Step 4. Try to figure out the common thread between these stories. The people in question usually get outed in public during some kind of ID check, and got jumped by some intolerant moron who witnessed it.
This is happening. Today. Including in "North America and Europe". The people who say they feel unsafe because they feel unsafe for their physical integrity and safety. Not because of "awkwardness or very minor psychological discomfort".
Dead Comment
Dead Comment
Dead Comment
Weird when compared with the tech ethos of anonymous internet transactions ( crypto for example)
Which comments are those? From my skim most people objecting to this are skeptical it works, rather than insisting that the name on the card matches your legal name.
So someone seeing the name on your card is not really a thing any more, or am I missing something?