Why Facebook Is Deleting Drag Queen Profile Pages
I understand and agree with Facebook’s general rule of using real names - but for every general rule set there are circumstances where nested exceptions need to be made. Drag queens are clearly in need of exceptions, and I urge Facebook to create a policy and a process to create verified alternate persona pages.
“I’ve had this name for 20 years now,” she says. “I walk down the street and people say ‘Hi Heklina.’ People know me by my drag name.” She says asking her to revert to her birth name is akin to not acknowledging her as a person.
When asked just how many drag queens this may have affected, Heklina says every single drag queen she knows has been asked to revert to a name Facebook believes is more suitable. Well-known drag queens such as Sister Roma from the Sisters of Perpetual Indulgence, Peaches Christ and Pollo Del Mar are only able to be found on their fan pages at the moment.
“As part of our overall standards, we ask that people who use Facebook provide their real name on their profile,” stated an email from a Facebook spokesperson. The real-names policy has been in place for a while, but it’s not entirely clear why drag queens have been suddenly targeted en masse. Heklina was told by Facebook reps that it was just an algorithm that discovered the drag queens and started asking them to change their names.