Not sure where to begin. The parents of the Dayton shooter published two obituaries: one for the shooter, which doesn’t mention the shooting and praises him as a “funny, articulate and intelligent man”, and one of the shooter’s brother, whom he shot and killed, but using his deadname instead of Jordan Cofer.

To make it worse, when one of the authors of the CNN article on the obituaries was challenged on Twitter for deadnaming the shooter’s brother, they pushed back while trying to sound empathetic.

There are conflicting reports based mostly on anonymous sourcing. The victim’s voicemail uses Megan. We don’t deadname people when we know how a person chooses to identify. We don’t know that here, but we are aware of the anonymous reports and purported social accounts. Thanks.

There’s nothing anonymous about the sourcing in the Teen Vogue piece; there’s a friend who wanted their last name omitted. And given that Cofer was not out as trans to his parents, of course his outgoing voicemail message still used his deadname, so bringing that up without acknowledging other explanations is a dodge. To dismiss this as just a few anonymous reports and some unconfirmed (they aren’t actually unconfirmed) social media accounts is dismissive beyond the concerned tone McLaughlin tries to convey.

Meanwhile, given the obituaries the parents chose to publish in the first instance, I think it’s safe to say the family had some problems, and I’m not especially surprised that Cofer hid who he was from them.