: Re: How to write about transgender issues while avoiding cognitive dissonance? As a writer, it is difficult to help your readers hold two dissonant ideas in their heads. This can occur when the

@Speyer920

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As this answer points out, name changes aren't limited to transgender people. A practice I've seen often is to include both names when clarification is necessary. For example, I'd adjust the example in your question as follows:

Caitlyn Jenner (then Bruce Jenner) won the gold medal in the men's decathlon at the Summer Olympics held in Montreal in 1976.

The same approach works for an example given in Jay's answer:

Original:

Eric Jones found that anti-Semitism was so bad that many companies refused to hire him the instant they saw his name on a job application.

My version:

Eric Jones (previously Eric Rosensweig) found that anti-Semitism was so bad that many companies refused to hire him the instant they saw his name on a job application.

Or alternatively:

Eric Rosenszweig found that anti-Semitism was so bad that many companies refused to hire him the instant they saw his name on a job application, leading him to change his name to Eric Jones.

Which approach you use depends on whether you just need a passing reference to overcome reader confusion ("Caitlyn won men's decathlon...what??") or are explaining a change (my second Eric example).

For authors, whether for name changes or pen names, you can also use the "writing as (name)" formation: "Stephen King (writing as Richard Bachman)" or "Alice Brady Sheldon (writing as James Tiptree, Jr)". In the last example the reader doesn't know (just from this) whether Alice is transgender or wrote under a pseudonym, but that's ok -- most of the time it doesn't matter.

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