We all know what the blogosphere was talking about for the last two days, and finally we’re moving beyond semantics to the big picture. I don’t really care about electoral politics two years before the election, or what the so-called netroots thinks, or how bitingly our succinct commentary can take down Offender X Du Jour. I’ve never been one for details. Instead I’m thinking of Dooce, yes, Amanda and Melissa, and as usual, of myself.
Back when the internets sent me to Blogher, I had just quit blogging at the mothership because I felt too exposed and wanted to put my metaphorical clothes back on. Flown to California where I expounded in front of a crowd on what it felt like to be so “out there”, making wild hand gestures (do I really do that?), and interrupting poor Mary Scoble, I was hit with the weird realization that this blogging thing really was way out of control. It used to be that a simple Google search of my first and last name led to endless strings of Alaskan college athletes and goth band singers, and now it led directly to Feministe, where any yahoo in the fucking world could read every stupid thing I’d ever written in the previous three years. It sucks, a little, all the stupid flecked with bits that I was really proud of. And that’s why I walked away from the old blog, fiddled around with a half-baked blogging experiment, and started this one.
The biggest question for me at that time was Who am I? and not in the boring introspective sort of way. Who am I? Anyone could take me down, ruin my reputation, all for my opportunity to bloviate in a public space. Someone sure as hell tried once and there was very little I could do about it.
I attended a Blogher panel right before mine on sex blogging, headed by Halley and Susie, two women I’ve long admired, and one of the first questions the panel asked was a little confrontational. Why don’t you blog about sex? When I stood up to answer I was shaking with rage*, the answer was so obvious to me.
Who am I? Nobody. Somebody. Maybe. I don’t have a safe career writing about or having sex, sex doesn’t pay the bills, and I’m not about to roam the internet with my tits out to make a political statement.
Politics? Faith? Who knows. I lost a job last year because I didn’t “fit in,” i.e. I wasn’t Christian enough to trust. Could my blog have had something to do with it? Actually, it’s very likely.
Blogging could cost me a relationship with my parents, my son, my coworkers, any future employers, you name it.
Could I write about other people having sex? Sort of, within the realm of reproductive rights I felt okay, and I had written about the rape, but I was plagued more with another memory of having to justify everything I had ever written on the internet to a court of law that had never heard of a blog, or of bloggers, or of blogging, in order to justify my fitness as a parent to keep custody of my son.
I sure as hell didn’t drag my blog into it (one guess who). Yes, it was humiliating to stand in gront of a group of middle-aged family lawyers — whose experience with computers was years telling their secretaries to turn the gosh danged thing on — and explain that the internet community was my only daily contact with the world outside of a small group of people, and that it meant something to me. All they wanted to know was why I had a “diary” that was open to the public, and then they shat on it, calling it irresponsible and risky. I only know of a few other people whose blogs have made it into custody court and one of them lost her kids. I ran a political blog.
That, in short, is why I eventually left Feministe and trod back into the world of “safe” and “non-political” blogging, because we can’t even begin to anticipate the consequences of participating in this community if we can’t respect that other common people, common people with kids and jobs and lives that exist apart from the internet, have opinions they don’t deserve to suffer for. Do you deserve to lose your livelihood over a flamewar? Are you always to be responsible for some off-the-cuff thing you published on a whim that, even though it was in dire need of clarification and editing, started a really good conversation, oh, four years ago? I don’t want to be, and sometimes I imagine sleuthing into the Feministe archives and erasing every stupid thing I’ve ever written. I don’t regret anything at this point, but I don’t want to regret it in the future either.
For that matter, are politics reserved for only those whose pasts scoured can only come up clean? Am I too incompetent to participate in my own government because I uttered the f-word once? Because I’ve made some bad decisions and somebody I stepped on back in the day is all too glad to tell the world about it? Because I have a previous body of work?
Brownfemipower asks: Has the feminist blogosphere just been censored? I think we, all bloggers, already are. Obviously there are ideas one can censor if one is blogging for a business or a campaign, but we’re all censored, blogging under pseudonyms, leaving out the important bits, changing the way things happened in order to protect others’ identities who aren’t as brash as we are, taking out the ums, uhs, and crazy hand gestures — and on some level I suppose this is a choice, this hanging it out in the open to see if others feel like we do, to spread silly and serious ideas as safely as we can without jeopardizing everything with this hobby.
Anyone could take a look at this little, more moderate blog and find ways to make me look like a crazed, controversial idiot, and some days I don’t want to give them the ammo. Most days, I don’t want to write anymore at all. The turn the blogging community has taken saddens me — outing, public humiliation, personal vendettas pursued, fueled by wisps of offline power. Most of us do this for fun. It sure as hell ain’t a living.
_____________________
* Not at the panel, obviously. Their point was similar to mine.
Also, thanks to Erica for posting the video.
Well, it seems a bit self-serving for me to praise you the minute you praise me, but what the fuck, as we evangelicals sometimes say when we feel like being naughty and worldly.
Great post. I’ve taken shit, and I’m a tenured professor. Point is, I’m more protected than most who blog, and I still get in trouble (like being kicked off committees for blogging that I don’t share the mainstream Christian position that all pre-marital sex is sin.
I do think about you, and Amanda, a lot in this regard. You aren’t women I’ve ever met, but you’re blog friends I think about and care about, and you’ve both taken — in different ways– some huge risks. And you’ve both paid a price (in Amanda’s case, a front-page of the New York Times price, but she kept her job).
Sometimes, blogging about things like sex is a luxury for the privileged. Two years ago, I admitted on my blog what all my colleagues know: I slept with a whole bunch of students when I was a young, dumb, reckless, good-looking asshole of a professor. I blogged it to document a narrative of transformation, and because I am now someone who mentors junior faculty members who might be tempted to do the same thing. I could write this because I had tenure — and even then, it was scary.
Point is, it’s pretty rich to demand courage and risk-taking from bloggers in a world where the consequences can be so nasty, so harsh, so very sudden.
Joonko thanks you for the kiss, by the way.
This is why I got so pissed off at both Ann Bartow for waving around the fact that she’d figured out who I was and at Chris Clarke for acting like it was no big deal to reveal your real name on the internet (and for suggesting that you’re not really committed to a cause unless you’re willing to expose your identity for every flying monkey to latch onto).
I don’t worry so much that potential employers might stumble across my writing on Feministe. I worry about the kind of unhinged attempted takedowns like Amanda and Melissa just experienced. What’s worse for me is that there are two other women in my profession in my city who share my name, and at least one other woman listed in Brooklyn who shares my name (I’m unlisted and have always used an initial anyhow). What happens if the flying monkeys get a name and a city only? What kind of abuse are these poor women in for?
I took a big risk recently and posted altered-by-face-recognition-software but still theoretically recognizable pictures of myself. I think I got a little ahead of myself, being all unemployed at the time.
And yet a part of me wants to drop the pseudonymity, remove the threat from people like Bartow. But I just can’t take the chance that someone will track me down at my job and bother me there, leading to getting fired.
Well, you could do what I did, adopt an unwieldy and pretentious pseudonym that probably alienates everyone who sees it, but gives you cover to make weekly professions of your unflagging communism.
I also think that providing your writing with a name and especially a face makes for stronger personal reactions, both positive and negative. Even if you use your real name, you’re still just a spectral internets personage until you show people your face and start writing about at least a few details of your daily life. zuzu mentioned when people were railing against Jill for shaving her legs that, even though she had also written about feminine things, the anger was directed at Jill because she lives in Manhattan rather than Brooklyn. That might be part of it, but I think a lot of it was also that people know Jill’s name, where she goes to school, have seen pictures of her, etc. I think that the pseudonym blunts people’s emotions, at least somewhat.
Beautiful, Lauren. Don’t know what else to say besides that.
Exactly. You know how this is why you were pissed at Bartow and Clarke? Substitute “Go1dstein and Trevino” there, and you have me.
Put plainly, I am sick and tired of people who make using their real names a macho thing worthy of much chest-thumping and self-administered pats on the back. It is not a macho thing. It is a privilege thing–some people are privileged to be able to post under their real names. Others of us are not.
Also, and this is so self-evident as to be almost facile, the fact that your name is Lauren and not Loren has a lot to do with it. I’m not saying the hypothetical Loren, or Adam, or Mel (this is fun) get off lightly, but there’s a whole new level of risk - even simply emotional risk, it seems to me - for women using their real names. This also relates to Heraclitus’ point about stronger reactions: Real names make the people real, and a lot of men hate real women.
Sincerely,
Auguste, who has no French ancestry, even
Well Lauren, youy know EXACTLY when I got all caught up on blogging and fanatical blog-reading (A year ago, about, now that I am thinking about it) because not so long after that you helped me figure out WordPress!!
So I am a total Newbie, and I am growing CONCERNED about how vulnerable blogging makes us; I never really THOUGHT it through (I don’t have a normal life anyway, at least to the extent that no one really cares what an unsuccessful songwriter has to say, or their waitress).
But the whole Amanda/Shakes thing has been really upsetting. CLEARLY, if Edwards was FAMILIAR with their WRITINGS then he should have KNOWN he was hiring two brilliant FEMINISTS. ANd he should have told the Nutroots to “piss up a rope” (I quote), and defended the fact that FEMINISTS object to the POPE’S stance on BC and Abortion. I mean DUH. That does not make them Anti-Catholic. (I am surprised that the headlines didn’t scream “EDWARDS CAMPAIGN HIRES ATHEIST!!!”)
But back to vulnerability: If a prospective employer googled me BEFORE, they would have gotten a lot of reviews of my albums, and obviously, may have objected to my quasi-punk-rock background. But NOW, they get to read ALL my comments, all in the Pinko Feminazi stance that I actually profess.
So, am I just stupid? Because I committed myself to a public persona from the get-go, backing down and going anonymous seems unthinkable. It is hard not to imagine that this sort of thing won’t come back to bite one on the ass eventually.
But goddamit, I AM a foul-mouthed Progressive! (AND a baby-killing Tree-hugger!! BWa ha ha ha ha).
I just hate the thought of being cowed by assholes. But I equally hate that stellar folks like Amanda and Melissa can be so easily misrepresented; that their words can be twisted and used against them like this.
Jesus, thank you, Lauren. I couldn’t have said it any better. I’ve gone through times when I really wanted to make a serious go of blogging, try to get a decent sized audience - I know I could be good at it - but I chicken out every time. Hell, after I pissed some people off on a soccer message board by saying that it was bad manners to gossip about their women friend’s asses on the internet, I was worried, because I knew it was within the realm of possibility that one of them would come find me at a tailgate and attack me.
Yet another big fat STFU from the world. And we’re all so vulnerable.
P.S. Yes, these guys really were that angry that I suggested maybe they shouldn’t talk about so-and-so’s ass online.
Oh, Lauren, this post made me cry. I’m semi-anonymous, now. Most people who want to know who I am know who I am. I don’t advertise it, but I don’t hide it.
I got maliciously outed a while back. Someone figured out who I was and posted my real name and my work and home addresses and telephone numbers in the comments of a bunch of Nashville blogs. They even claimed to have pictures of me and of my house. Everyone deleted it as fast as humanly possible, but for the better part of a day, it was out there on the internet where folks saw it.
This is going to sound stupid, but the worst part was that they had my work address wrong and I just kept thinking that someone, who got really pissed at me, was going to show up at the wrong address and hurt the wrong person and I would never, ever be able to live with that.
I just think, though, that this is how we’re kept silent. They can say it’s because we have no interest in intellectual things, or because we don’t have an aptitude for writing, or because we’re too busy or whatever (and by we, I guess I mean both women and poor people), but the truth is that they just make the cost so damn high.
We’re supposed to sit down and shut up and then act like we agree that sitting quietly is just our nature.
And amen to Auguste for saying, “Real names make the people real, and a lot of men hate real women.”
Very true.
Well said.
As I am not American, and as I am not female, I don’t have quite the same problems as most people here.
Among other things, I can’t get fired for what I write on the ‘net, except if I am illoyal to my employer, or tell company/client secrets. People probably haven’t noticed it, but I rarely mention my job, and never mention details (though I do some time explain things in the context of job experiences).
Personally I find it fucked up that internet commentary (be it in a blog or otherwise) can come back and haunt you, though I guess it’s naturally - for example, if I found out someone had praised racism on the internet, I would certainly take that into account if I was going to hire them.
This post would be an interesting point of discussion in a class that I’m TA-ing right now on new media technologies. Currently, our material is dealing with surveillance and how new media (teh Internets being a form of that) are employed to watch people.
Really, all these outings sound like an example of Foucault’s panopticism. Everyone’s watching everyone else.
Being a public figure sucks. The tricky thing about blogging is that when you begin, you aren’t a public figure, any more than the lady putting up a 3×5 about her missing cat at Safeway is a public figure. Eventually, however, if you’re lucky/unlucky, you attract a real audience and the transition begins. It’s a difficult transition, all the more difficult because for most people it’s both unexpected and unwelcome. (At least Hollywood stars set out to become famous.)
Lauren, Another post that confirms for me why I am such a huge fan of your writing. Back in 2005 when I finished my MA thesis (on how blogging might contribute to feminist knowledge(s)) I came up with a similarly frustrating conclusion at the end of the process. Blogging has so so so much to offer (I believe) for feminists in its facilitation and support of collaborative writing, activism, and provision of a space where personal writing can be recognised as professional , as political. I was (and still am) coming from the perspective of a feminist academic who finds the seperation of personal and professional problematic and frustrating. What is so frustrating for me is that what this technology affords us appears to be immediately compromised by the kind of repercussions that engaging in this kind of writing can have. When I was writing my thesis I concentrated on the example of the Tribble article ‘Bloggers Need Not Apply’ but obviously the trend has not stopped there. It really makes me sad because there is a window there that appears to be slammed shut on our fingers as soon as we dare to peek outside. I truly believe that it will take a huge shift in public thinking before it is ’safe’ to present our selves/thoughts/opinions in anything other than a limited and partial fashion. This isn’t to say AT ALL that blogging hasn’t achieved much and won’t achieve much - I’m as big a fan as they come. You and Jill and ZuZu and Piny and the Feministing gals and Amanda and all of the feminist bloggers I admire and respect so much take a huge risk by putting yourselves out there. I am very thankful. You all give me a lot of hope.
Best,
Georgia
p.s. Congratulations to you and Chef.
You nailed it, Lauren. Thank you. I started out blogging anonymously, as I work in an internet-savvy profession where it makes sense to google a colleague or job applicant. I don’t work for a religious organization, but I work for an institution with close ties to one; in fact the name of a major religious denomination appears on my paychecks. So I don’t want my blog, such as it is, to be the first thing people see when they do a websearch of my name. I do have a bit of a potty-mouth. Plus I am upfront (in person and online) about not being a christian myself and I live right close to the buckle on the damn bible belt. I’m not likely to lose my job, but I don’t want to alienate people I might have to work with at some point.
On the other hand, I wouldn’t want to work for or with anyone who hadn’t read my blog, or who was offended by its contents. So if my anonymity is compromised, it’s no big deal. But on the other hand, I have long been fearful of the kind of hoo-ha that Amanda and Melissa experienced. I have no political ambitions, but I still find myself engaged in occasional self-censorship even under cover of a pseudonym.
And I can’t even imagine what it would feel like to have my blog read and used as evidence for (more likely against) my suitability as a parent (not that I have any children, but you know what I mean). Bless your heart, Lauren — what an awful experience.
As someone with a very unusual surname (anyone you meet with this name is almost certainly related to me), it has always struck me that it is a lot easier to blog under your real name if the name itself is not unusual. With an unusual name, you’re that much easier to find.
For example, already anyone who googles my real name can find that I am a feminist, that I have had two letters published in a left-wing newspaper, that I graduated from an Oxbridge university, that I used to write poetry, even that I once left a comment in a museum guestbook in France which was quoted in a random person’s PhD thesis… and I never intended for any of that information to be out there and set about making it public. It just IS, whether I like it or not. In fact, only in two cases (the letters in the paper) was I even aware that I was posting anything for publication at all. So I’ve started to be a little more careful about what information I make publically available, especially on my blog. And even as I’m typing this, I’m aware that I’ve made yet another link between information about the real-name-me and information about thegirlfrommarz-me (and thegirlfrommarz is a name I use all over teh Internets). It’s sad to have to think like that, but I do - and what happened to Amanda and Melissa gave me one more reason to think twice before posting.
When I started participating in the comment threads on feminist blogs a few years ago, I realized that I had to choose between being honest about my sexuality and being honest about my identity. In choosing the former, I foreclosed myself from telling people what area of law I practice in, which is really a strain, because it is such a part of me and of my politics. But telling people what I do tells them who I am, and it would be inevitable that my sexuality would become an open book to my professional colleagues, which would get me discriminated against.
My $0.02.
I told Joel about this thread, and he says he sympathizes with you, Lauren, after having his blog dragged out against him.
I’m also in the position of having an unusual surname and working in an Internet-savvy field; it’s guaranteed that if I ever look for a job, they’ll Google me and find my blog. But when I started out on the net, I was doing pretty much the same thing of posting my opinions, but it was all Usenet, no news media paid any attention to it (except during Tiananmen square when Chinese students used it for organizing), it wasn’t searchable, and just about everyone was below the radar, with only a few people like Gene Spafford having enough of a Usenet presence to be even limited public figures. I remember someone posting to Usenet about her husband’s drunken arrival home, getting (among the suggestions to attend Al Anon) a guy chewing her out for publically shaming her husband, and her response was, it’s just Usenet, and no one who knows us will ever see it.
Publicity can certainly creep up on you. Sometimes I’m relieved that I’m more of a C-list blogger, especially when it comes to the posts that touch on my sex life. And if those posts involved a sex life like Thomas’, rather than the more usual thing of simply not having still been a virgin when I married, I would never have dared blog them under my real name.
I do not run any popular sites, which is probably a good thing. I try to fly under the radar, and my “most popular site” is one in which I just post mostly joke links and other people’s quotes, rather than say anything particularly insightful or try to spark discussion.
One of the nice things about having an incredibly generic first name: I blend in. While last I checked there were over thirty Jennifer Mylastname’s online and god knows I wouldn’t have been able to figure out which was me unless I knew what to look for, for the most part I don’t use my last name anywhere on my blog sites. This seems to work- well, that and I doubt I’ve said anything that controversial anywhere. I was a little nervous admitting somewhere the other day that I am taking a class in Wicca, but hell with it.
I also don’t link to anyone unless they wrote something I am linking to. I don’t do “found via XPerson’sBlog” links, because from what I have heard, those really get the traffic and make you popular. I loathe, loathe, loathe TrackBack and stat-checkers.
Hopefully this is enough to keep me off the radar of trouble. But with the Internet, you never really know.