When I introduce myself to people, I use a different name. I have quite a few – I like them. One of them I wear so often it feels more comfortable than my ‘real’ name – I wrap it round me like a blanket, and it makes me feel safe.
Unfortunately, one of the questions I’m asked most frequently is: “is that your real name, though?” Like somewhere deep in my heart there’s a secret and special name, and the people I’m speaking to will be elevated above the status of mere acquaintance and into, I don’t know, God, if they can determine what the deep and immutable truth is. Problem is, knowing my real name doesn’t give anyone special powers, it just gives them a fact. And hand-in-hand with that fact comes a fairly big problem for both of us.
When I first started blogging I decided that anonymity was the best way to go – for a whole host of reasons, but primarily employment. We still live in a world where talking about buttsex on the internet and holding down a job at a company that gives a shit about your social media life is, if not impossible, at least tricky. As time wore on, there were more reasons, and then more. Recently, Kilted Wookie wrote a post about anonymity on his sex blog and it got me thinking about a lot of stuff. The primary thing was that there are far more reasons to be anonymous than I’d considered when I first began.
Reasons to be anonymous
Here’s a non-exhaustive list of reasons to be anonymous:
- Work. I don’t have a ‘day job’ any more (get in touch if you want to pay me to write stuff for you!), but I did when I began the blog. My day job gave a massive shit about ‘bringing the company into disrepute.’ It’s possible that at some point I’ll need a job like that again.
- Family. Although most people in my family are incredibly understanding and supportive, understandably they probably don’t want to hear in detail just how much their sister/daughter/granddaughter enjoys getting fucked in the arse.
- Simple separation. Sometimes being ‘that one who writes/talks about sex’ means that it’s hard to talk about things other than sex without having people respond with innuendo. Or to have a place where I can talk about things which are not interesting to you who follow me for the sex. By keeping separate channels for ‘real-life me’ versus ‘GOTN me’ I have a space online where I can chat shit without worrying that I’m being irrelevant.
- Presentation. This one hadn’t occurred to me until more recently, but I think it’s significant: as GirlOnTheNet I am far more interesting than I am as me in real life. It’s a fudge, and it’s one that I try to temper by telling you about my mistakes as well as my fun times, but I’d be a dick if I didn’t admit that it’s clearly a factor. I did a radio debate recently, and one of the journalists who was there pointed out that in real life I’m “just a person,” and that that’s quite a boring thing to be. He’s right.
- Respect. The people I write about have the right to own their own stories just as much as I do. If I make myself identifiable, there will be people who automatically become so too. I appreciate I probably can’t be anonymous forever, but along with following my basic rules on how to kiss and tell without being a dick, I also want to try not to ‘out’ any of my lovers if I can help it.
- Safety. I’ve left it for last because it’s the biggest and most significant. When I first started writing the blog I was genuinely surprised that people got in touch to ask me to fuck them. I was briefly flattered. Then I was nervous. Now I am terrified. Some people send nice emails saying ‘hey I wondered if I could take you for a drink?’ not realising just how much email I get that’s along these lines. Others are a bit more demanding: ‘I need to meet you in a hotel. Tell me when you’re free.’ Others still more so, and I’m not going to quote them here because I don’t want the individuals who’ve sent them to know just how much they affected me. I doubt most of the people who send this stuff realise just how scary it can be – how something which they’ve phrased as a promise can sound more like a threat. I understand how people who stumble across one blog entry, which details my love of a particular sex act, can – through the horny blur of lust – think they’re doing me a favour by offering to fulfil my fantasy. I hope in turn you can understand why I don’t think writing about my desires should make me a target for people who threaten promise to fulfil them without my consent.
It’s this final point that I dwelt on when I read Kilted Wookie’s post. He makes a lot of great points about openness, and why it’s crap that we live in a society which makes it hard to talk publicly about sexual desire (and particularly kinky desire) without being shamed by some arseholes. I agree with him. But I also think there’s much more to it than that.
As a general rule, when anonymity comes up we talk mostly about that point – the reactions of employers and the like. But to focus just on that is to miss the wider impact of living in a society that treats sex with a certain level of shame.
We all need our spaces – anonymous or not
I’ve been incredibly lucky in my time of sex blogging: I’ve rarely had out-and-out threats, I’ve rarely had people getting deeply angry in my email inbox. I get a huge range of interesting, thoughtful, and genuinely welcome criticism in the comments section here, and very few comments which are outright hostile. Likewise on Twitter and Facebook.
Others aren’t so lucky. I may not be so lucky in the future.
I am very privileged, in a number of different ways. I am the product of a very fortunate life, and while I’d love to give you some bullshit about how I work hard and how I have overcome adversity, in reality I have worked no harder than you have, and my own adversity isn’t unique or special. If I ever am outed (and, again, allow me to reiterate that it’ll be quite a let-down) then I’ll probably survive, after perhaps a week or two of panicking and a lot of apologising to people who have now read things they’d rather not.
But the point here is that it’s a boundary I’ve set, and a compartment I’ve built in my life. Not everyone has the luxury of maintaining separation between parts of their life that they don’t think will mesh well together, but I think everyone has the right to try. To say ‘I’m happy to discuss this with you, but I’d rather not talk about it with them.’ In short: to tailor our stories to our audiences, and have certain contexts and spaces in which we can explore parts of ourselves that we cannot talk about elsewhere.
So when people discuss anonymity and say ‘it’s a bit hypocritical, isn’t it? Saying we should be more open about sex but doing so under a pseudonym?’ I can’t help but think they’ve missed a pretty crucial point. Yes, it would be lovely if we lived in a world where we didn’t have to do this: where there were no shame in expressing our desires or being open about our kinks. But we don’t. We live in a world in which people will get wildly different reactions to their sex chat depending on a whole heap of factors – their gender, their age, their job, their status as someone either ‘in’ or ‘out’ of a particular group. In short: we all have different kinds of privilege, and myriad reasons to try and keep those separate spaces. I think saying it’d be nice if no one was anonymous (or that it’s hypocritical to retain anonymity or pseudonymity) does a disservice to the people who genuinely cannot be open: to those who’d potentially get trolled, abused, or ripped to shreds when two or more of their worlds collide.
What I think is nice is that the option to be pseudonymous is open to many people regardless of their reasons. I think it’s nice that people who go to Buzzfeed and comment via their FB name can – when they come here – pick a pseudonym and comment anonymously. Want to be Jane Doe over here where you talk about gardening, and Janet Dee over there where you talk about fisting? Why not? It’s a perfectly rational way to organise your life, because it’s your life, mate. If you’re not engaging in hypocrisy (and I don’t think I am – I’d never say one thing as GOTN then the opposite under a different name), then who am I to tell you what you do and don’t have to tell me? Why should I only respect your thoughts on sex if you’ve also told me which school you went to and what town you grew up in?
I am accountable
When it comes to the anonymous blog debate, by far the thing that annoys me the most is the conflation of anonymity and a lack of accountability.
As GirlOnTheNet I am only anonymous insofar as you don’t know the name on my birth certificate, what my Mum calls me when she’s annoyed, or what my lovers whisper to me while we fuck. But you do know me, and I am not anonymous. I am here, I am contactable, and most importantly I am accountable. I’m not a swiftly-created Twitter egg screeching opinions around the internet: I’ve been here at this url for over 4 years, and the same on Twitter. I’m on facebook. I’m contactable on email. If I say something appalling then you can call me on it. If you have a question, you can ask it. My opinions have impact – not that they’ll change the world or anything, but they’ll be online for a long time, and so I have to be able to justify them. If I change my mind on something (which I often do) then I can be called to explain why I’ve done that.
What’s more, I actually have far more conversations, state far more of my opinions, and tell people more about my emotions via GOTN than I do in real life. Barring late-night chats with a few very close friends, this site is where I do most of my talking. If you ask me, face to face, how I am or what I’m up to, you’ll get a cut-and-paste polite answer: “I’m fine. Busy. Working. Writing.” If you ask me as GOTN I’ll tell you far more. There are plenty of people who know my real name but who could be said to know far less about me. There are people in my life who don’t know what it is I do for a living, or that I’ve spent the last few months writing a book. They’ve just been confused and – horribly, horribly – occasionally hurt when I’ve brushed off their requests to meet without giving a good reason why.
So back to the start – when people say ‘is that your real name, though?’ my answer isn’t going to be a sigh and a long speech about how I just wish I could tell them the truth. I don’t wish I could tell them the truth. I like having a space where I can talk about fucking and fun, where I can try to work through ideas that I wouldn’t elsewhere. I like having a fake-name buffer between me and those people who ‘promise’ to fuck me. There are lots of reasons to want to be anonymous, as there are reasons to want to find out just who is behind the mask. Curiosity is natural and understandable, but it can also put people in difficult positions: if someone presses me really hard on my ‘real’ name, they subsequently become someone I’m going to struggle to connect with and hang out with. Because as soon as you have my ‘real’ name you become the bridge between one space and another – you can put details to things that I’d rather not link, for any of the reasons I mentioned above. Each question you ask from then on sounds like an interrogation, and each secret you tell me is a red flag that you’ll be spilling mine to other people. So I don’t tell people my ‘real’ name because I never want them to feel like they’re somehow a risk. As soon as someone knows my ‘real’ name then even by mistake (because I doubt it would be malice) they could easily crush something that’s incredibly important to me. Torch that safety blanket, and give me reason to curl up into a ball of panic and want to hide from the world.
I don’t think I’m entitled to anonymity, by any means, and I’m grateful to those few who do know for helping to keep it secret. But there are lots of reasons to use a pseudonym, and we never know what those reasons are – our best guesses will be tainted by our own assumptions and experience. Even their reasons for anonymity might be things they’d prefer to keep private.
Just because someone reveals one truth, they’re not obliged to reveal the whole.
29 Comments
Great post, eye-opening in places. It horrifies me that you endure interactions that leave you fearful. By the very nature of your blogs, and book, you undoubtedly “stir my loins” but it would simply never occur to me to confuse the fantasies created by your visceral prose with the real world. Thanks for doing what you do, your posts are 3 minute bubbles of fun in often humdrum days.
Welcome to the world of women, I guess. It’s sad, isn’t it?
If there’s anyone who does not deserve anonymity, it’s the people who send those kinds of emails. I’m all for anonymity/pseudonymity in general for the reasons expressed in this post, but I have no sympathy at all for those who abuse it as an opportunity to harass people. If I was King of the Internet, anyone who sent an email threatening to kill or rape someone or something similar would be forced to post it in public under their real name, and forward it to all their friends and relatives.
Brilliant piece; it resonates so much with me because I am anonymous for the same reasons. But in giving myself a name in my blog, it seems people are less focussed on a real name because they know what to call me. I have also argued that my readers know more of the real me than most people who know my name and my job and the tilt of my nose.
And unfortunately I’ve also recently experienced being “found out”. By my currently-ex boyfriend, who searched for me in anger and read things he didn’t like. While one time I was happy to be high in Google search results, finding out I’m in the top few results of “dating sex blog gang bang” is now a bit scary.
You’ve summarized this better than I’ve been able to it my posts about the same topic; thank you :)
Really glad you brought up the name thing: if I were to start over and do this again, I would give myself a real-sounding name. People don’t tend to like addressing me just as ‘gotn’ or ‘girl’ even though I prefer it, and often the start of the ‘real name’ discussion just happens because someone wants to refer to me by *a* name.
Really sorry to hear about your being ‘found out’ – that sounds horrible. One of the things I find most nervewracking about being high for certain search terms is that those posts are often found devoid of context – a regular reader might be able to understand your individual posts as part of an overall story, whereas others will only ever see that one post. It’s a tricky balance, I think. Thanks so much for your feedback on this post – it means a lot! This was a tricky one to write =)
Quite true about those posts… The ones I’ve written about swingers / sex clubs, the gangbang, and the time I let a guy cum on my face are the ones people find from Internet searches. But they don’t tend to translate into readers or engaged commenters. Thankfully I haven’t gotten too many icky emails as a result… They tend to happen the few times I’ve posted nude pics online…that’s when people seem to translate seeing my boobs to “please send me emails asking me to have sex with you”. One guy sent me his wife’s boobs in response, saying they both wanted to have sex with me. At least buy me a drink first :)
Oh and yes, the boyfriend thing was awful. He’s the first BF I’ve trusted with telling him I blog (he didn’t know the blog name). He was completely fine with knowing until he got angry and decided we were over. Now he wants me back and I have to decide if I can trust him…
Our breakup texts (yes, he did it over text) are posted on my blog :/
I think “Girl” is a fantastic name. In context. :-)
Thanks =) Although I’ve had a couple of people say they feel like they’re doing a cheeky Ryan Gosling meme…
i am glad that Kilted Wookie’s post inspired your post, and i love that you focus on accountability. we are revealed meaningfully even in anonymity…
This is perfectly put. I can’t see how anyone can argue. Everyone feels so strangely *owed* these days. Why is that?
I needed to change the name of my blog last year, not because of anonymity but privacy. The person concerned knew who I was and since at the time we were both (knowingly) involved with the same man, and since things were going better for me than her, I had two choices, move or leave blogging all together. I remain anonymous to 99% of people who visit and the 1% are people I met in real life because of the blog or fetlife. I use my real first name, no surname. But I do need the anonymity, I work in the UK health service and I have a family who knows nothing of this part of my life. But anonymity is no excuse for not being accountable – to yourself and to those who read what you write as some kind of reality. I don’t claim to write fiction and what I write is therefore real.
Great post GOTN, and also good to read Kilted Wookie’s post too.
Agreed, and beautifully stated.
A blog I can totally identify with.
Well done for listing all those things, good reasons. And now I have a partner and children it is important to allow them their anonymity.
I’ve had a number of pseudonyms for the past 20 years and had exactly that badgering – just occasionally.
I just tell ’em, “Honestly its my real name.” Because it is for them and that relationship but the very fact that they feel the need to ask (and it is not the question so much as the way they ask it) tells me a lot (of negative things) about that person.
BTW, I have met GotN at a writing event
and she told me A name.
For me that is the name I will call her without even needing to think about whether she has other names.
I know a whole bunch of writers, some I know by a few names. It’s not a problem.
What is a “real” name anyway.
I know many people who are not called by the name on their legal documents.
Thank you so much Helen!
So yeah, great blog.
The obsession with ‘real names’ that some people have is very silly, and arguably a rather ‘old media’ way of looking at things. Those of us who’ve grown up with the Internet are used to online pseudonyms: I’m pretty sure I’ve written far more online under various pseudonyms than I have under my real name. And as long as a pseudonym provides a consistent identity and isn’t being used to deceive people, what does it matter what someone’s ‘real name’ is? When someone becomes known for writing under a certain name, that name arguably becomes ‘realer’ than the one on their birth certificate. I’m sure more people are familiar with John le Carré than with David Cornwell.
Of course, this is particularly important to people writing about sex or something similarly personal, and to women in general. I understand that Facebook has loosened its policy on requiring ‘real names’ from people, which if true is good and long overdue news (also, notably, to trans people, who have even more reason than most not to want to use their birth name).
It’s been said that the need for anonymity/pseudonymity when writing about sex is partly due to backward social attitudes, and if society was more tolerant people could be more open about themselves in that respect. I guess there’s something in that. But I’m not sure that such a social change is likely, or perhaps even desirable. As you say, people will always need their spaces to talk about these things. I think it’s actually healthy to keep certain aspects of your life separate: maybe I’m being very British and reserved here, but I wouldn’t *want* to live in a world where everyone talked openly about their sex life under their real name.
Our attitude that such things should be kept private does have its downsides: for instance, because very few people write about being into BDSM and fetishes under their real name, people don’t realise (until recently?) how common and ‘normal’ they are. But such privacy is surely worth preserving.
As a final thought, there’s a special place in hell for journalists who expose the identities of sex bloggers: The Sunday Times, I’m looking at you. (And while it’s not quite the same thing, what the News of the World did to Max Mosley was utterly disgraceful as well.)
Great advice. I was planning on starting my own blog and now I have the right knowledge to do so. Thank you!
At some point, something interesting happens with bloggers: they become known under their online identities and become anonymous under their civil identity. That’s a good turning point :)
Every day, I am 5 identities, 5 “personae”. I love that word: “persona”. While I used well over 100 pseudonyms and nicknames, 5 of them show one or more specific aspects of my life or opinions, who don’t mix together and I deem very difficult to link to another without technical info like IP addresses or credit card numbers (even writing syntax analysis would be difficult since I’m using different languages). This for the very reasons GOTN pointed out in the post (safety too even if, as a guy, I have the privilege of not receiving emails from people asking me out for a fuck – however I made some political statements who could lead to pitchforks at my housedoor so yeah.. I can’t afford bodyguards).
While keeping separate identities gives more freedom of expression on each specific aspect, technology tends to make it more and more difficult: Whois name protection, IP addresses, face recognition, writing analysis, browser history, EXIF metadata… I saw bloggers getting doxed in horrible ways and who had to shut down and move in a hurry, or happened so bad they were torn into pieces and self-harmed. It infuriates me so much when people get treated as prey for merely expressing opinions or having fun online.
In each of my personae, I feel and am unique. In my “real name”, I’m anonymous one in a million or so with the same name as me. So I’m also protecting those people with the same name as me when I decide to keep my kinky stuff under unique pseudonym :)
This blog, and the others that I have read over the years, from the trailblazing Girl With a One Track Mind to a Dissolute Life, are the most wonderful sex education I’ve had in my 30+ years.
Not in a classic pedagogical sense (I’m not proposing they put them on the national curriculum!), but by reading the thoughts, feelings, urges of three women has been an eye opening, educative and liberating experience for a straight guy from a conservative background (and for thousands of others I’m sure).
It is also very inspiring and brave.
If it requires anonymity then so be it.
Please keep writing and sharing.
What I also want to add (I’m a bit high so this might not come out clearly) is that through reading these blogs, reading your words my views on gender equality have been partially shaped (alongside for example having had the good fortune and honour to go out with a couple of very strong and emotionally assertive, socially conscious women).
As context, I grew up in a conservative Muslim family in the UK where the views of/toward women, held by women and men alike, were retrograde to say the least. However, sexual curiosity took the better of me (and if I might say, something which would work well on your sex blog as a guest post would be how a sexually curious Muslim in a socially liberal country is permanently stamped with the sexual branding iron of “shame” at a conscious and subconscious mental level…..and manages to subvert it…and subvert it…yet stay emotionally afloat) and I started stealing my sister’s Cosmo as a young lad.
Years later I started reading these blogs and they replaced the real conversations that I wasn’t having with female peers (for fear of being “caught” talking to girls), girlfriends (‘cos you’re not allowed one and would have fifty shades of shit kicked out of you if you were caught…..and my, oh my, you would always get caught because there’s a network of aunties….Asian aunties spying on whose son got caught kissing a *white* girl behind the tube station) or friends.
There’s a period of my life up to the age of 21 where I didn’t know girls….
So, I’m a late bloomer, but a sexually inquisitive one and crucially, an egalitarian.
Reading these blogs combined those two traits and have helped to push my beliefs from the conservative upbringing that I had and towards being a full on supporter of sexual liberalism and gender equality. That’s why your writing is so valuable to me.
All of the points GOTN and Kilted Wookie mention regarding the subject of our blogs hold true. Why should the discussion of something which the bulk of the population of the world enjoys and takes part in cause such embarrassment? It really shouldn’t.
I started to post a long comment here and it turned into a post all of its own which you will find here: http://wp.me/p4bMUU-XT
I suppose if someone was really determined they might be able to find us out, but I hope they would have trouble disseminating that information once they’d done so. It will always be a hazard of blogging and we’d manage somehow if it happened.
brilliant post. All of it. I’m curious when you say ‘I don’t think I’m entitled to anonymity by any means’. Why not?
Thanks! And the anonymity thing – it’s mainly because given that I talk a lot about the people I’ve slept with, it would be odd of me to demand that they were to always remain anonymous, because that’s totally up to them. As a general rule, I don’t ever say to people I’ve shagged ‘don’t tell anyone’, but I do ask them to keep my identity secret if at all possible, and I explain some of the reasons above. The ‘not entitled’ thing mainly just means that I don’t take their compliance with that for granted, and I don’t think I should, because who am I to say what they can do? I’m lucky because most of the people I’ve shagged are awesome. Some of them know about the blog, others (from longer ago usually) don’t, and probably wouldn’t recognise themselves if they were in it, and a few still see me fairly regularly and are happy to have input or chat about it.
I’ve waffled a bit there, sorry – hope that makes sense though.
That’s a good point about not demanding others keep quiet/anonymous. After all it was their experience too. But it raises interesting questions/problems. How much can we demand (consider ourselves entitled) other people keep our secrets? For example in an extreme case, and sadly all to common nowadays, people do share pictures of intimate moments that one party had hoped or at least assumed would be secret (eg revenge porn ) . Its cruel. But then would it be wrong then to oppose any new legislation that made publishing such images illegal? After all it was their story too. Another question that worries me (as an anonymous blogger) is should i ask for consent before blogging about real people even if they are kept anonymous? since the chance of being outed is real, and not entirely unlikely, as is the hurt and potential damage once they are outed. All of which i would be entirely my responsible for. There’s a grey area between freedom to tell ones own stories , freedom to use real names, the freedom to be free from public scrutiny, the freedom to talk anonymously and right to consent to information published about you Sorry i have no answers myself. But I worry about the balance and I’d like to see it discussed much more in public debate than it is. Which is why I was so pleased to see this post. My general belief is (and i have by no means made up my mind yet) that the freedom and entitelment to anonymity should be strengthened to prevent any of the above being an issue at all. The harder it is to out someone (say by strengthening rights to anonymity in law) the harder it is anyone will be outer/hurt. You can’t really publish revenge porn anonymously (generally its easy to guess the perpetraror) Thats not often a deterent tho. So I’d like to see a strengthening of law, where if someone does publish names/identity without consent it would result in prosecution unless theres a public interest defense. But we can only do this if we also strengthen laws to allow people the right to anonymity online and making it easier for people. I’m not entirely sure that can work. Eg. Anonymous threats can also be pretty harmful. But generally I think online anonymity has benefited society, made us more honest and open , broken taboos, and allowed us to exchange fresh ideas that previously were inconceivable. Its the modern equivalent of our ancestors parties where people wore masks so they could speak more freely. And then some.
Very good points, and I don’t think I really have any answers. I went to a really interesting workshop a while ago in which a lot of sex writers discussed the ethics of sex writing, and we talked about our own personal codes of ethics. I think in legal terms, revenge porn and photos fall into a fairly easy category of ‘totally unacceptable’, and so things like laws against revenge porn (if properly drafted etc etc) can be incredibly helpful. When it comes to the other stuff, though, you’re right that it might be hard to work out what the right option is. Apart from anything else, an agreement with one person about what it is and isn’t OK to reveal may be completely different with another person.
This:
“generally I think online anonymity has benefited society, made us more honest and open , broken taboos, and allowed us to exchange fresh ideas that previously were inconceivable. Its the modern equivalent of our ancestors parties where people wore masks so they could speak more freely. And then some.”
is really interesting! I don’t think I’d ever thought before about whether anonymity was, on balance, a good or a bad thing, but I think you’re right. I think one of our biggest challenges now that most children grow up with the internet comes in developing a broad code of ethics around online behaviour. A lot of our cultural/etiquette/ethics rules grew out of a society where we couldn’t conceive of people being able to talk to anyone else in the world, potentially anonymously, and I think there’s a lot to do around exploring the ethics of this.
Brilliant post, full of things that simply hadn’t occurred to me. Sorry to hear about the unpleasantness you receive. Sad to think that someone who goes out of her way to help people enjoy their lives more gets that kind of response. Most of the time when online anonymity is discussed, it’s in the context of how it encourages people to act like dicks and send rather vile threats to people they’ve never met (encourages/allows – there is some debate there, if I remember rightly). It’s wonderful to see the issue approached from the other angle. Thank you.
Thank you! And yeah, it’s gutting that I get emails like that although I should stress that the people who send them very rarely intend to be horrible. I don’t get the same kind of threats that other people get, or messages from ppl being nasty. It’s mainly, I think, a lack of awareness that what might be a super-horny message to you, when presented in the way people do, often sounds sinister. Couple that with a fair few refusals to take a polite ‘no thanks’ for an answer and I get a bit panicky.
Cool! So these are the facts and tips I have been waiting for.
I will be starting my own blog in coming days. I think this information is sufficient.
I’ve only looked at a few of your pages and I’m hooked. Looks like a fab site to get my teeth into.
Nice arse btw, couldn’t comment on the images.