It’s time for another edition of SE(N)O, an essay series on A+ for personal stories we wish we could tell on the accessible-to-our-employers-and-everyone-we’ve-ever-known mainsite, but can’t for personal and professional reasons.

feature image by Brooke A. Allen 
Last year I wrote about how I chose my name. I also wrote about how my birth name, which was my legal name at the time, still had a lot of power over me, even though I so desperately wanted to free myself from it. When I wrote that, I still had to put my birth name on all legal forms, I still had to show my legal name to bouncers and bartenders and TSA people and police officers.
In that last essay, I really struggled to write and publish my birth name. I thought a lot about wheth...