Better hers than yours when referring to her.
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Nancy Pelosi didn’t graduate college- that was Nancy D’Alesandro.
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Yeah, when people talk conversationally about what people did in past, they use their current references all the time. It’s not something that’s impossible only when it’s talking about trans people.
I don’t think historians cry when someone on the internet casually and easily says that Woody Allen went to a particular high school, or a thousand other examples. The overall historical record is clear that Chelsea Manning previously went by another name. That’s what she did. When I say she did that, is anyone confused about which human being I’m talking about? “She presented as a man” is a more informative and nuanced and accurate sentence, for anyone super-concerned with historical accuracy.
Two other unnecessary but accurate examples of how people talk normally without people freaking out.
Charlemagne, the son of Pepin the Short and Bertrada, was born in 742. Little is known about Charlemagne’s childhood.
Sarah Palin was less than a year old when her family relocated to Skagway, Alaska.
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I’ll make this easy from a mod perspective.
This individual indicates that she always had a gender identity of a woman. Now that we know that, the appropriate behaviour is to refer to them as ”she”, in any context. When relevant, referring to her as having a gender expression of a male would seem appropriate (though I wager that the incidences of that being relevant to a discussion are likely pretty small.)
Others can feel free to check my work here on the specific wording, but the idea is, if her own identity was female, we should respect that, even if she chose to express her gender as male in the past.
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