I recently determined that I am a transgender woman. In the future, please call me "Becca" and use she/her and other feminine terms when referring to me.
Although I am takingsteps to correct my name where I can, my old name will linger in various historical contexts, like the forum archives and git history, that cannot be easily updated; please don't take that as a sign that you should continue using it in new material. (It may also linger over the weekend in account names that I need an administrator to change for me. Don't worry—I'm on it.)
In the last few weeks, I have met dozens of people like me, and I've been struck by how much less I have to fear than most of them. For their own safety, many of them must hide who they really are for an extended and painful period. I don't, and one of the major reasons I don't is that the Swift community is the welcoming place it is.
This is partially because the Swift Code of Conduct covers people like me, of course, but the CoC would be a dead letter if we didn't all take its spirit seriously. In another open-source community, even one that professed to follow exactly the same rules, I might have needed months or years to muster the courage for this post. It is the work we have all done every day—from forum moderation to diversity support groups to just making an effort to treat each other decently—that has allowed me to take this step almost as soon as I was sure I wanted to.
So to everyone who has made the Swift community what it is, from the bottom of my heart, thank you.
Congratulations, Becca! I'm so happy that the Swift Community has gained such an impactful role model for young women who are aspiring compiler engineers (including me)!
Speaking of all the work you've done over the years, I've noticed that your old name is all over the swift-evolution repo. Would you like us to put up PRs to correct your name when we notice the old one, or would you like to do that yourself?
Swift Forums and Swift Bugs both require an administrator to change usernames. I’ve already emailed a request, but I told them to wait until Tuesday (since MLK Day is a company holiday at Apple).
Becca -
Congratulations on living your best life! I am so happy you found the courage inside and the support of those around you to make this determination and follow it through.
Apologies for a late reply, thank you for being yourself and letting us know on the deprecation of your name. Standing up and telling the world who you are makes the world a better place. If I do tag your dead name in future I apologise and hope I do remember to correct it when possible.