No, it is not.

Sometimes well-meaning people ask this question sincerely, but in practice, it usually feels like people raise and deploy the specter of dead-naming as a way to distract from all of the other criticisms of The Satanic Temple and its owners that are completely indefensible.

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As even these people acknowledge, neither of The Satanic Temple’s co-owners are trans; they are two cis men. Neither of TST’s co-owners use their public pseudonyms in their private lives. Cevin Soling is only “Malcolm Jarry” in the context of the Temple. For nearly everything else, including his self-edited Wikipedia entry, he is Cevin Soling.

Likewise, Doug Misicko is “Doug” in all aspects of his personal life to this day. “Lucien Greaves” is a trademarked stage name originally intended to be a role shared by several people prior to Misicko taking it on wholly. For the first public appearance in January 2013, it’s not clear who was on the phone fielding media inquiries as “Lucien Greaves” in the lead up to the event, but in person, the role was definitively played by actor Michael Wiener. Misicko was there at the same time pretending to be someone else (“Neil Bricke”).

Now, it would not normally be inappropriate to use “Lucien Greaves” just as a matter of convenience. Typically, when you want someone to know you’re talking about “Marilyn Manson” or “Hulk Hogan,” you use those names and not Brian Warner or Terry Bollea. For all intents and purposes, those men’s stage name is just their name. What makes the situation different for Misicko is that he doesn’t just have a government name from birth (Douglas Alexander Misicko) and a stage name (“Lucien Greaves”); he also has a public pseudonym he’s used for a quarter century (“Doug Mesner”), and a whole legion of other pseudonyms he’s used as sockpuppets and to otherwise represent himself publicly (“Konrad Josfesson,” “Mikoto Niikura,” “Neil Bricke,” and more). Some of these, Misicko has even gone so far as to use on legal paperwork or part of formal litigation.

Once you get to the point of giving a court deposition as “Lucien Greaves” talking about “Doug Mesner” in the third person to try to obfuscate previously undeclared — actually, stated falsely outright — self-dealt payments to “Douglas Misicko” out of fundraising monies, you’ve surrendered the expectation that people have to keep referring to you everywhere by some preferred name.

Again: this is not a double-standard or hypocrisy or revocation of basic courtesies as punishment for something unrelated. If, for example, Misicko were a trans man, it would not be OK to misgender him just because he was an asshole who was buddies with transphobes and hadn’t updated his birth certificate or driver’s license.

But, there do exist even trans people who are abusers and who change their given name every few years, not as a reflection of their truest self but as a way to make it harder for people to compare notes on how that abuser has habitually targeted and harmed others. “Good-faith self-identification” is still the appropriate standard, but people can behave in such a way as to demonstrate they are not, in fact, acting in good faith. Doug Misicko crossed that point a long time ago.

“Is it dead-naming to refer to ‘Lucien Greaves’ as ‘Doug Misicko’?” No, it’s not. He is not calling himself names like “Greaves” or “Doug Mesner” out of a sincere desire to identify differently than his government name, but because he is attempting to make it more difficult to hold him accountable as the owner of a collection of for-profit and tax-exempt corporations he solely or jointly controls totally. He may have sincerely been embarrassing his family name for a quarter century by rubbing elbows with neo-Nazis, preaching the immortal science of eugenics, prank calling suicide hotlines, and tea-bagging gravestones, but if that were so, he presumably could have legally changed his name from “Doug Misicko” to “Doug Mesner” at any point in that past quarter century.

“Lucien Greaves” and The Satanic Temple have a lot to answer for

The claim that Misicko is so uniquely in danger due to his brave truth-telling and advocacy for free speech as a Satanist ought to be subjected to some scrutiny, especially as Misicko continues to elbow everyone else out of the role of “public face and voice of The Satanic Temple” for more than a decade, and as he presents himself as a martyr every time he’s criticized. He may sincerely believe he needs a bulletproof vest and attack dog and to shack up with other people without his name on any bills while using fake names everywhere — but we ought to be able to recognize how self-serving all of that is.

If you want to keep calling him “Lucien Greaves” because that’s how most of the public knows him, we won’t stop you. But, it’s important for people to at least be familiar with Misicko’s other names, particularly that government name, because that’s how you can keep up with the legal power he uses to bully and attack his victims.

It isn’t dead-naming to talk about the way Brian Warner has been abusive to his romantic partners, even if you might want to also say “Marilyn Manson” for the sake of clarity. And it isn’t dead-naming to say “Doug Misicko” when trying to keep straight what that specific cis man has said and done over the years under half a dozen fake names in various contexts because there is frankly no other way to hold him accountable without returning to the one aspect of his identity which has never changed.