Kind of out of topic, but when one changes gender at some point in their life, do you rewrite their whole wiki page saying "she" instead of "he", or should you mark the transition after the official change of name/gender only ?
Good question! Short answer: generally you refer to them as if they have always publicly identified with their current gender.
Longer answer: The overarching idea is to respect the person's wishes and stated identity. In most cases, and certainly in Rebecca Heineman's case from what I've read, she always identified as female even when she was known as Bill Heineman. So out of respect we would typically refer to her as Rebecca (or with female pronouns) no matter which part of her life we're referring to.
There could be exceptions. In some cases, a person's former gender might be directly relevant to a story. (Imagine you're writing about a person, now female, who was sent to a boy's boarding school as a child. I think, at the least, you'd perhaps need to clarify that she identified as male at that point in her life...)
Thanks for the answer ! I'm asking because the change of gender also associates with a change of name, and it kind of seems like rewriting History if ex-colleagues talk about X-woman as X-woman in the past when she was not yet X-woman but Y-guy instead. How about legal documents ? How do they handle the change of gender ? Do they do it like "X-person, Born Y-person" ?
There are usually procedures for that; varies a lot from place to place.
Here in the UK, you can go before a sort of judicial committee to do it, the Gender Recognition Panel; costs like £140ish. It's kind of a pain; you need to be at least 2 years in full-time, it does help if you've had SRS or at the very least are going to (and they're going to want medical reports), and you'll need two medical practitioners (one of which must be recognised in a list as a psychiatrist or psychologist specialising in gender dysphoria) to testify that yes, you are trans, yes, really you're not going to change your mind, and this is what you've done/are going to do about it. If you pass (and it's a little bizarre and intimidating that they're judging this), you get a new short birth certificate (and can apply for a long one, and thereafter a passport under your new official identity); you then have two proper birth certificates, the historical document you were born with, and a brand new one listing only your target gender (and name). The fact that you have done all this is confidential (unless you tell someone, obviously).
Thanks for the very complete answer. I had no idea there was such a procedure. Now I wonder how it works in Japan where I live, since such minorities are far from being commonly accepted here and they may have more hurdles to get to the same point.
and it kind of seems like rewriting History if ex-colleagues talk about X-woman as X-woman in the past when she was not yet X-woman but Y-guy instead
Yeah, it is rewriting history in a way, and it can be tricky to navigate! I'm far from an authority.
I'm a 38 year-old male who has never had gender identity issues so here's what I do to empathize. I imagine that I was forced to dress like a woman and given a female name for the first 20 or 30 years of my life. That would have been a painful time. Additionally, I imagine that a lot of people think that I'm a freak for wanting to be treated as a man today.
When I put myself into those shoes... I can imagine how it would be incredibly reassuring/reaffirming just to hear people refer to me as "John" whenever possible, even when referring to times when I was forced to dress like a woman, since I was really "John" inside all that time anyway.
I saw that she is married to Jenell Jaquays, which made me think immediately of Paul Jaquays (who worked at iD during the Quake days). Sure enough, Jenell Jaquays is Paul Jaquays.
Gamedev is a small world. I wonder if they met around that time?
