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| Question Mark by Marco Bellucci on Flickr |
During my inchoate blog years, I always went by a gender-neutral user name. Not because I thought entering online discussion would be easier if I were a man, but because that's what I assumed one did: it was terribly uncool to blog under one's own name, or so I thought. I usually went with some obscure passage from a book, or lyrics from a song (again with the coolness factor), but often I lazily used my initials. And I was always guessed to be male. Because male is the default human.
As I moved into mostly female spaces, I started using my own name, or some version of it. I try to be as transparent as possible without sacrificing my own safety. Granted, I have a ridiculously common, but unmistakably feminine, first name. Outside of feminist circles, I would probably go back to something less likely to mark me as "woman. talking."
If this sounds a little panicked, think of someone like Kathy Sierra, who dared to be a female tech blogger and faced hate mail and death threats. Transparency is admirable, but with the vitriol leveled at female bloggers in particular, I'd never underestimate the value of a good pseudonym.
One question that was raised in the blog I linked to that I hadn't given much though although I blog under my real name now: are bloggers who use their real names less likely to delve deeply into big, important topics for fear of reprisal? Are pseudonymous bloggers more likely to personal details? I think the answer is pretty obvious. As someone who's been online long enough to remember Usenet, I can say with certainty it feels no better being called a "bitch" when you're Kathy than when you're pixiegrrrl73, but I know I've said enough under my real name that I could probably never run for office either. My personal life and my family is off-limits, though I was never good at diary-type blogging in the first place. The truth is, I no more apprehensive using my own name than a made-up one, but I tend to stay away from the dudliest of online spaces.
I blog under my own name but have a separate name for the blog (The Delphiad). Even so, I still delve into deeply personal and often embarrassing topics, because the personal can be political and social, and because fear and embarrassment come from precisely those places that we need to expose and dismantle as tools of patriarchal oppression. Well, that's my view and I'm sticking to it. When someone insults me, I ponder the insult and how it's supposed to silence me, then I point that out. My blog is small so I don't get death threats. It's heavily moderated and I just hit delete at anything that stinks. So far, so good.
ReplyDeleteI've had few really nasty comments -- I think I've had to outright delete maybe two in the past year. I can't imagine what some of the more well-known bloggers go through.
ReplyDeleteI keep my comments on full mod for one reason" blogger doesn't always catch the spammy comments. It's better this way, I hate that someone might interpret it as my being thin-skinned. I know I really don't like when I have to wait for my comment to appear on other blogs, so I should give the few commenters here the same, but I've gotten spam hit more times than I've been name-called.