Building Kind Social Networks (2018)
Real name policies may (or may not) foster civil discourse, but they do so in a way that favors the already privileged. 
It&#x27;s a burden for marginalized people and a barrier to them resolving their issues.<p>I was molested as a child and women generally tend to have less agency over their lives than men. When I first got online, I used my real first name and last name. I eventually moved to <i>middle name and place</i> as my default semi anonymous handle for privacy reasons because my first name plus last name is so distinctive. I&#x27;m back to using my full name online, though my handle in most places is first name plus middle name.<p>It was a long journey of getting there. It included a divorce, figuring out how to talk publicly -- which I think men tend to get inculcated with early and women don&#x27;t -- and assorted other factors.<p>The perfect is the enemy of the good. If you only want civil discourse in your space and that&#x27;s all that matters to you, you can achieve that by limiting it to very privileged people with no serious personal problems. Insisting on real names is a polite means to exclude anyone for whom speaking publicly under their real name might be a problem, so I&#x27;m sure it can help keep things superficially civil in your little corner of the universe.<p>I am also sure it helps further narrow the lives of people with already narrow existences by ever so politely silencing them online in ways they are already silenced offline. Which isn&#x27;t actually all that kind, imo.