The person involved is not a girl, and never was. “Girlfriend” is not an appropriate term, with the perspective of what I now now.
Imagine there’s someone named George who came out of the closet as gay, but you have a photo of George from before he came out and was still publicly presenting as a straight person.
Much later in life George publicly claimed his identity as a gay man. We now know he’s gay and was gay back then, even if he hadn’t yet found himself able to live his true identity openly when that photo was taken. You would, therefore, not look at that photo and say “this is a picture of heterosexual George, he wasn’t gay back then.” It’s still a photo of a gay man, we just didn’t know that yet.
On a similar note, my previous relationship was not with a “girlfriend” despite that being how things seemed at the time. I know better now, and the respectful thing to do is refer to that person by their true pronouns and name even in context of the past, and to use the correct terminology around that
The person involved is not a girl, and never was. “Girlfriend” is not an appropriate term, with the perspective of what I now now.
Imagine there’s someone named George who came out of the closet as gay, but you have a photo of George from before he came out and was still publicly presenting as a straight person.
Much later in life George publicly claimed his identity as a gay man. We now know he’s gay and was gay back then, even if he hadn’t yet found himself able to live his true identity openly when that photo was taken. You would, therefore, not look at that photo and say “this is a picture of heterosexual George, he wasn’t gay back then.” It’s still a photo of a gay man, we just didn’t know that yet.
On a similar note, my previous relationship was not with a “girlfriend” despite that being how things seemed at the time. I know better now, and the respectful thing to do is refer to that person by their true pronouns and name even in context of the past, and to use the correct terminology around that