Dirtying the data

I am one week from finishing the graduate program I still sometimes feel like I conned my way into. Go figure. For my digital humanities class this week, we read Hito Steyerl's A Sea of Data: Apophenia and Pattern (Mis-)Recognition, and the way she discussed dirty data, in particular how people do or don't fill out clerical forms, got me thinking about my own life and the data attached to it (or not). In particular, my name.

Steyerl: "Dirty data is where all of our refusals to fill out the constant onslaught of online forms accumulate. Everyone is lying all the time, whenever possible, or at least cutting corners." And also: "...all the seemingly swift and invisible action of algorithms, their elegant optimization of everything, their recognition of patterns and anomalies—this is based on the endless and utterly senseless labor of providing or fixing messy data." 

And, well. I legally changed my name about a year and a half ago, hauling ass to the Manhattan civil court off of Canal Street with all of my many required documents and coming back once my application was approved to pick up a stack of forms saying that I could now legally go by Willem Francis Helf. 

From there I proceeded to change my name on my driver's license, my Social Security card, and my passport. This was not without difficulty, as all three documents also (in my case, at least, and obviously) required a change of gender marker, and I rather stupidly decided to take care of all of this right as Trump was about to enter office. To make sure my Social Security card was correct I had to barrel into the downtown Brooklyn Social Security office without the required appointment and demand my information be changed immediately; the initial passport I applied for returned with an F on it next to a photo of me looking like Bam Margera, so I had to very quickly apply for a new one during a brief legal reprieve in order to get a replacement with the coveted M. I usually refer to this whole process as having been "a fucking pain in the ass."

Yet I'm still in an uncanny sort of limbo. I'll likely have to head back to California to change my name and gender on my birth certificate, and my two insurance plans each have a different name on them. The official data, in this case, has me marked down as a woman with a name I haven't used for years. Is this data "dirty"? When I show my current ID (new name) at the doctor's office (old name, until I fix my insurance), which name is technically "wrong"? I'm not sure there's a singular answer to this question. It throws me for a loop. 

There is, of course, data that is dirty: several times I've had to gently express to a clerical worker that actually the name you have in the database has changed, here's my driver's license, thanks. Were it to stay the same it would now be inaccurate. And, in a sense, a deadname is in and of itself dirty data, no longer relevant, no longer associated with the person it once was – if you were to refer to me by my former name I'd likely just be confused, as I've gone by Willem for several years now.¹ Changing it, both socially and then legally, was its dirtying.

But my old name is still a form of data, was attached to me for a good three decades before I decided it didn't suit me and chose a new one; it has not been scrubbed completely from existence but rather exists as "formerly known as." And there is new data, too, data that documents the fact that I have legally renamed myself and changed my gender. This is particularly unnerving as a transgender person in 2026. It can very easily be used against me, with consequences I try not to mull over too often.² In this sense I wish I could not just dirty this particular data but make it vanish altogether, jettison my old name and gender into a sort of technological void. 

As it is, I am legally Willem Francis Helf FKA Former Name. The hard data is dirty but not gone, as much as I'd like to further muddy the waters. In a social sense, however, it's been interesting as time has passed to meet people who have only ever known me as my current name.³ My old name has not just been dirtied but has not existed at all to these people. The data does not exist. How nice it would be if it could always be that way.

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¹ For the record if you were to do this on purpose I'd make it your problem. 

² Not to mention the medical aspect – what I go to the doctor for, what I'm prescribed, and so on. That's not quite the point of this blog post, though. 

³ Some reading this may know my old name – I socially established myself in New York as a woman with that name for quite a while and went by the name for almost three decades as a whole. What can you do. See ¹, though, for my current preferences.