Drag queen at odds with Facebook over profile identity

Drag queen at odds with Facebook over profile identity

LGBT personality Sister Roma's spat with Facebook over using her real name instead of the stage name has gone viral and spurred a Change.org petition.

Facebook has riled its millions of users with privacy policy changes and News Feed tweaks over the years. But, it’s never been at odds with a drag queen – that is, until now.

The gist of the conflict stems from popular LGBT personality Sister Roma, a member of the Sisters of Perpetual Indulgence, allegedly being “targeted by Facebook … for having her stage name, rather than her legal one, appear on her personal Facebook profile,” according to The Daily Dot. Roma told the site she received a message from Facebook that because it appeared she wasn’t using her real name, her account was suspended.

Sister Roma has been on Facebook since 2008 but has never been asked to change it to her legal name, Michael Williams. She obliged with Facebook’s request this week to change her name to the name on her drivers’ license or credit card but has posted numerous updates and been outspoken about the situation.

Facebook has not issued an official statement but The Daily Dot suggests it has to do with Facebook’s policy for personal profiles and an initiative to “keep our community safe.”

Sister Roma has mobilized her supporters with the hashtag #MyNameIsRoma with the aim to show that the “issue that doesn’t just affect her, but a community of individuals who have defined themselves outside of the narrow bounds of the name on a birth certificate,” according to The Daily Dot.

A petition on Change.org has launched to push Facebook to let performers to use their stage name on their personal profiles and not just their fan pages.

A BetaNews article headline screams Facebook’s policy is “wrong, discriminatory and potentially dangerous. “Think of Sister Roma, and that’s the name that comes to mind, not Michael Williams,” Mark Wilson writes in the post. “Think of Elton John and you don’t first think of Reginald Kenneth Dwight. Sting is not Gordon Matthew Thomas Sumner to many people. U2’s Bono is Bono, not Paul David Hewson.”

The Daily Dot’s Greg Seals concludes Facebook’s policy may be an indirect attempt to force performers to fan pages and force them to pay for promoting their posts.

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